Big Picture Learning, EAS Carpenters, and the Carpenter Contractor Trust celebrated 35 graduates of the Carpenters’ Apprentice Ready Program on August 19th, a milestone that also marks New Jersey’s entry into a $90 million national push to rebuild the skilled trades pipeline.
35 Graduates, Zero College Debt, and a Union Card: Inside New Jersey’s Newest Path Into Carpentry
Thirty five young adults from communities around Edison and Hammonton walked across a stage on August 19th as graduates of the Carpenters’ Apprentice Ready Program, and walked out the door as first year union carpenter apprentices. The joint celebration, hosted by Big Picture Learning, the Eastern Atlantic States Regional Council of Carpenters, and the Carpenter Contractor Trust, marked the latest cohort to complete a pre-apprenticeship track built specifically to move young people directly from high school into a four year union carpentry career, no college degree or years of job hunting required.
What CARP Actually Teaches
The Carpenters’ Apprentice Ready Program, run through the EAS Carpenters Technical Centers, was built specifically to enhance opportunities for underserved populations, introducing candidates to the construction math, safety protocols, woodworking, and technical framing skills needed to pass into a registered union apprenticeship. Alongside the hands on trade instruction, participants complete professional development modules covering resume building and interview coaching, rounding the program out into genuine career preparation rather than trade skills alone.
The program has a real track record behind it. Since its founding in Philadelphia in 2016, CARP has expanded across Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Washington D.C., Maryland, and Virginia, training well over a hundred pre-apprentices in a single recent year alone. Part of its stated mission is expanding who gets access to the trade in the first place. Women currently make up just 10.8 percent of the construction industry nationally, and CARP, alongside the EAS Carpenters’ separate Sisters in the Brotherhood program, has been built specifically to help close that gap by removing some of the traditional barriers to entry underrepresented communities have historically faced in the building trades.
Three Organizations, One Pipeline
The program’s structure works because each partner organization owns a distinct piece of the pipeline, from recruitment through actual employment.
Big Picture Learning
An educational nonprofit built around interest-driven, internship-based learning, BPL identifies and recruits students directly from local high schools, connecting them into the trade pathway before they ever set foot in a training center.
EAS Carpenters
The Eastern Atlantic States Regional Council of Carpenters provides the training facilities, professional instructors, and standardized curriculum, running CARP out of its technical centers, including its Hammonton campus, one of 17 training sites the union operates across its region.
Carpenter Contractor Trust
CCT serves as the labor-management bridge connecting newly certified graduates directly with signatory contractors and developers actively looking for job-ready workers, ensuring the pipeline actually ends in real employment rather than a credential alone.
That structure gives CARP graduates a genuine head start most entry level workers do not get. Rather than applying cold to a union local and waiting for an opening, CARP graduates move directly onto live job sites as first year apprentices, earning real union wages alongside full healthcare coverage and retirement pension contributions from their very first day on the job.
Part of a $90 Million National Push
This graduation also marks New Jersey’s formal entry into a considerably larger initiative. EAS Carpenters and Big Picture Learning have joined Bloomberg Philanthropies’ 90 million dollar national effort to connect high school students directly to registered apprenticeships and skilled trade careers, with New Jersey selected as one of nine regions nationwide participating in the program. Over the next three years, the partnership plans to build out statewide Skilled Trade Apprentice Readiness Training Centers, known as START Centers, aimed at guiding more than 300 additional high school graduates into family sustaining, high wage union careers complete with healthcare and retirement benefits.
For an industry facing a well documented, nationwide shortage of skilled construction labor, that expansion carries real stakes beyond any single graduating class. Commercial construction, industrial carpentry, floor laying, heavy highway work, pile driving, and millwrighting all depend on a steady pipeline of trained workers, and CARP’s model, pairing a nonprofit’s recruitment reach with a union’s training infrastructure and a labor management trust’s direct line to contractors, offers young people who want a genuine alternative to a traditional four year degree a fast, structured path into a career that pays well from day one. With 35 more graduates now on active job sites and a multi year, multimillion dollar expansion already underway, the partnership behind this month’s ceremony appears positioned to keep training New Jersey’s next generation of union carpenters for years to come.
