EDC Team Jefferson joined leaders from shipyards, ports, colleges, and government agencies at the Port of Bellingham for the 2026 Maritime Workforce Forum. The theme, “Forging Maritime Capacity: Welding the Future of Shipbuilding & Repair” lines up with one of the five priority pathways to living wage employment reported in the EDC’s Jefferson County Workforce Needs Assessment.
Washington’s annual demand for welding professionals is three times the national average. Nationwide, 320,500 new welding professionals will be needed by 2029. The Forum's central message was direct: workforce shortages in welding and the skilled trades are reducing industry capacity for increased production, economic growth, and national maritime readiness. As Steve Dibert of the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard put it, "Nothing gets done without welding."
Learning a new skill requires investment in yourself; choosing to use your limited time and resources for future gains. Welding, like construction or health care, is a career path that is less exposed to generative AI job displacement. Welding crosses multiple industries - maritime, agriculture, construction, manufacturing and more.
Forum panelists returned again and again to a single word: awareness. Maritime and trades careers offer family-wage jobs, career stability, and strong advancement pathways, but many students and families don't know those careers exist or how to access them. Our workforce assessment found the same gap. Most local high school graduates don't enroll in any post-secondary program, even eight years after graduation. Early, consistent exposure to options is crucial for youth, especially before their High School and Beyond plans begin in 7th grade.
Second was education and training systems that meet industry demand. Speakers described their recent findings from a visit to Mississippi, where a community college partnered with industry to design and offer a successful 15-week, no-cost, non-credit program tied directly to employment.
Under funding from Recompete, Peninsula College (PC) is bringing mobile classroom and lab trailers into Jefferson County this summer, and one of them has welding bays. The first program will be scheduled at the Boat Haven in Port Townsend, where a welding skills class will be offered. The goal of the PC Mobile Training Program is to bring skilled trades such as welding, marine technology, and construction to remote communities and work sites. Watch the Peninsula College East Jefferson County web page for upcoming details on mobile training.
The Northwest School of Wooden Boatbuilding is a regional asset, but broader in-county access to technical training remains limited, and community college funding for these programs is at risk. Directing grants and public investment toward training in the workforce report’s priority pathways, and toward the specific gaps the data identifies, are crucial investments to support public education.
The Forum's keynote speaker, Port of Bellingham Commissioner Michael Shepard, drew a direct line between physical infrastructure investment and workforce capacity. The Port of Port Townsend's ongoing planning for development reflects the same logic locally. Investment in infrastructure with a corresponding workforce strategy work well together. Jefferson County is not a shipyard county in the way Bellingham or Bremerton is. But maritime is a thriving economic engine for our area. Marine trades provide real employment and career opportunities accessible to Jefferson County residents if we reinforce the pathways. Because here, too, nothing gets done without the people trained to do it.
For more information about welding training, visit MAC Welding and Fabrication at teachwelding.org. For more information on maritime careers, visit the NW Center of Excellence for Marine Manufacturing & Technology.
- Anne St George, Economic Development Manager