It’s 50 miles from where I live to the nearest community college. So if a laid off FF worker needs to retrain via an institution, they will spend at least $20 each day in gas, assuming they can afford a car. If they attend 3 days a week, there goes $240 of their unemployment each month (gas is $5.50/gal and there is no public transit option). I don’t know what they do when unemployment runs out in six months. Maybe join the homeless? That seems to be a popular option these days.
Don’t buy into the “workforce training is not the place of companies, it’s the place of institutions” lie. If it had not been for my internship at a company prior to graduation, I would have struggled to get a job out of college. It took my friend almost a year to find a job for less than I was making. Job experience is king, and you won’t get it from an institution. School teaches the basics, and the rest is on-the-job experience.