Premier Gladys Berejiklian said the NSW Government had committed almost $160M to match the Federal Government’s JobTrainer funding, which would be a key component to the State’s COVID-19 Recovery Plan.
“COVID-19 has presented an unprecedented challenge to our State, and Skilling for Recovery complements our current skills and training strategy,” Ms Berejiklian said.
“It’s crucial we look to reskill, retrain and redeploy the workforce to industries where there are skills shortages and emerging employment opportunities. We are committed to ensuring the NSW workforce is the most highly skilled in the country.”
Treasurer Dominic Perrottet said getting people back to work was pivotal to the state’s economic recovery.
“Hundreds of thousands of jobs have been lost in this pandemic and we need to get people off the Centrelink queues as quickly as possible,” Mr Perrottet said.
“The innovative thinking we’ve seen during lock-down will help drive our economy back to prosperity, supported by almost $16B in economic and health measures which focus on getting people into jobs and keeping businesses in business.”
Minister for Skills and Tertiary Education Geoff Lee said this investment would help job seekers retrain or up-skill to enhance their credentials and support school leavers to enter the workforce for the first time.
“We have to skill the workforce to take advantage of future job opportunities which may be very different to jobs in the pre-COVID economy,” Mr Lee said.
