HCTC Workforce Exchange Connects Employers, Students in Perry County April 16

With a 200,000-square-foot build-ready industrial pad set to open at the Coal Fields Regional Industrial Park later this year, Perry County is trying to make sure the workers are ready before the doors are. On April 16, Hazard Community and Technical College's Workforce Solutions team is bringing employers, students, and economic development partners together under one roof to close that gap.

The HCTC Workforce Solutions Workforce Exchange runs 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the First Federal Center, Room 123, in Hazard. The three-hour event follows a structured agenda: workforce-services tables open at 11 a.m., a provided lunch follows at noon, and a direct student-employer engagement session begins at 1 p.m. HCTC is specifically targeting businesses in manufacturing, healthcare, trades, and logistics, the same sectors where Workforce Solutions already trains students in commercial driver's licensing, lineman work, welding, and healthcare.

A central draw for employers unfamiliar with available funding is the KCTCS-TRAINS program, a workforce grant fund designated by the Kentucky General Assembly and administered through the Kentucky Community and Technical College System. Available to any Kentucky company, TRAINS is designed to help existing firms offset the cost of upskilling their workforce. The program requires a 25% company cash match plus a 10% administrative fee, and funds are awarded on a project basis. HCTC staff will be on hand to walk employers through the application process directly. The scale of the statewide program puts the opportunity in context: more than 200 employers currently hold TRAINS and Bluegrass State Skills Corporation grants and tax credits worth over $12.6 million, supporting training for nearly 43,000 workers across Kentucky. In fiscal year 2023 alone, more than $10 million was approved for 115 applicants training nearly 35,000 employees.

The exchange lands at a pivotal point in the county's economic development push. Perry County is investing $4.2 million in the Coal Fields Regional Industrial Park's build-ready pad, a regional project supported by Breathitt, Knott, and Perry counties that also received $10.2 million in state site development funding in October 2024, tied to a secondary water treatment plant and transmission line for the park. The Hazard-Perry County Economic Development Alliance, led by Zach Lawrence and operating under the One East Kentucky umbrella, has positioned workforce availability as a primary selling point to prospective industries. Lawrence previously served as a project manager at the Kentucky Cabinet for Economic Development. The Metals Innovation Initiative, a Cabinet-backed effort to build industry clusters in Eastern Kentucky, has already grown to more than 250 metal-sector workers in the region as of 2025, offering a template for how fast targeted training pipelines can scale.

HCTC, founded in 1968 as Hazard Community College and renamed in 2003, enrolled 3,039 students in Fall 2023 across six campuses in southeastern Kentucky, with 2,236 attending part-time. The college also runs the K-TECH Apprenticeship program, which places students in grades 9 through 12 into STEM apprenticeships in healthcare and IT tied to local employer demand.

Employers planning to attend are encouraged to RSVP and bring job descriptions and recruitment materials. HCTC Workforce Solutions is located on the Technical Campus at 101 Vo-Tech Drive in Hazard.