1.7 million openings a year. Texas can’t fill them.

Demand for frontline workers is greater than supply.

1.7 million….let that number sink in.

That’s how many skilled-trades openings the U.S. will have every year through 2035, according to a national report the Alliance for America’s Skilled Trades just released. Electricians, welders, pipe fitters, plumbers, truck drivers — the people who keep everything running.

Here’s the number behind the number: training programs are producing about 55 workers for every 100 the industry needs. And Texas is one of the states where demand has already outrun supply.

Read that again. Fifty-five for every hundred. We’re not closing that gap by recruiting harder.

I’ve spent my career in workforce development, and I’ve watched this math get worse for years. The standard employer response has been the same: hire harder. Post more openings. Take from each other.

But 55 per 100 is arithmetic that doesn’t work. The workers you already have — the ones on your floor, in your warehouse, on your crews — ARE the workforce. Training them isn’t “development” anymore. It’s capacity.

And here’s the part nobody says out loud in the boardroom: a growing share of that workforce speaks Spanish at home.

So the question isn’t just “are we training enough?” It’s “can they understand the training?”

Safety procedures. Equipment handling. Lockout/tagout. The dozen things a frontline worker has to get right in a year. If a worker can’t fully understand the training, it isn’t training — it’s liability. Incidents. Turnover. Audit findings. The costs every HR and safety leader already knows by heart.

The associations see it coming. A few weeks ago I wrote about ISSA and Tork spending 18 months building a bilingual course for frontline cleaning pros. Then the roofing contractors’ association put real money into bilingual leadership. The industry is telling us where this goes — the only question is who’s building for it.

So here’s the question I’m putting to every frontline employer reading this: is your training built for the workforce you have — or the one you wish you had?

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I’m spending four weeks talking to Texas HR leaders about what’s actually working for bilingual training on their floors. If you lead HR or safety at a frontline employer and want to share what’s working or broken on your side — Reach me at [email protected] or 469-677-8136 — Cheri Thompson, Founder, eTrainers.org.