The State Department of Economic Development is ready to provide more than $10-million in state assistance to help businesses train and retrain 32,000 new and current workers in 244 companies. Mike Waltman with the Missouri Division of Workforce Development says it is through this training and retraining that Missouri companies become more competitive by making sure each company’s workforce has a chance to live up to its full potential.

The funding was appropriated by the General Assembly with the training and retraining to be administered locally by community colleges and area career schools.

Amy Deem with the Department of Economic Development says training and retraining results in multiple benefits: It helps a company to do training that it might not have been able to do without state assistance, it upgrades the skills of workers to keep up with the ever-changing demands, and it benefits a community by keeping a healthy business and well-trained workforce in that community.

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