Tons of welding jobs already exist and already pay a minimum of approximately $15/hr. Unless you meant welding engineers when you said 'study', like some of my compatriots building automated robotic weld cells, who get paid 4x that much.

And there's plenty of training courses at the local caterer center and community college for both those jobs at reasonable rates. Local manufacturers often pay hourly+tuition for their best fabricators or line workers who want a promotion to the welder position to go through one of those programs.

Why would the gov. need to pay people? if there is a demand for welding people in the market, their pays would signal people to study for it isn't it?

They get payed for the work, not the training (with some exceptions). Not being payed for training is a barrier for people who are not in a good financial situation.

If there are lot of potential people with willingness to train and a market to pay for trained people a market for training them with deferred loans etc. would be there?

I wonder why banks don’t offer loans for job training programs. Seems like it might work. Or maybe they do?

You can get student loans to go to welding school - yes.

People change plans now to need fewer welders (like deciding not to build things) - because there are too few welders - which results in fewer welders in the future. Becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Government action can help break that cycle.

This sort of thing has been theorized under the name of the Job Guarantee.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Job_guarantee

Welding seems to be this fruit that people reach for when they think of Trades.

There's lots of welding schools churning out 'graduates' throughout the year. Welders are almost always the first guys laid off in shops.

The 'learn to code' thing thrown around would be better.

I wish it would not be the narrative. I think in university and where else appropriate, it should be taught, like a friend of mine who works in finance said, everyone will need this as a skill eventually for complex work

The whole narrative of producing more 'software developers' in general though? No thank you. I see enough people coming off of less than stellar bootcamps (there are, in fact, good ones, though I'm finding this less true over time) who just see dollar signs who have no interest in this as a craft. I don't want to encourage that, at all.

In fact, I want certification for the title of Software Engineer, no different than having to be certified like civil engineers do. Uncle Bob is right about this one.

What's special about welding? You also need carpenters, plumbers, electricians, civil engineers, etc for any major infrastructure undertaking, having 50,000 unemployed welders doesn't really make any sense.