about hardhat

there are over 27,000 registered apprenticeship programs, 670+ trade schools, and thousands of training pathways in the U.S. — and no unified way to navigate them. application windows are invisible, eligibility rules are scattered, and the data that should connect workers to careers is locked in incompatible systems.

hardhat's agentic pipeline scores 350+ occupations on AI exposure, wages, demand, and growth — then matches workers to registered apprenticeship programs, trade schools, and training pathways by trade, location, and eligibility. the result is open workforce intelligence infrastructure for the careers AI can't replace.

the careers that score highest require hands, presence, and judgment that no algorithm can fake. but the data layer that should connect workers to these careers is fragmented across hundreds of union locals, open-shop chapters, and state agencies.

so we built the infrastructure to unify it.

hardhat covers every skilled occupation you can enter through training, apprenticeship, or certification — not just construction. electricians, plumbers, and welders are the core. but so are nurses, dental hygienists, EMTs, diesel mechanics, cybersecurity analysts, and dozens more careers where you build skills through practice, not a four-year degree.

the survival index scores 350+ occupations daily. 60 have full career guides with salary data, training paths, and apprenticeship matching. the rest are scored in the index and will get full coverage over time. if the work is hands-on, skilled, and hard to automate — it belongs on hardhat.

the worker side. early-career workers can't compare trades, can't find programs, can't tell when applications open, and can't distinguish a free registered apprenticeship from a $17,600/year trade school. salary data is buried in federal databases. career outlook is scattered across disconnected reports. the result: thousands of workers end up on more expensive, less effective paths every year — or give up entirely.

the program side. JATCs and apprenticeship training committees recruit by word-of-mouth, local flyers, and union hall postings — methods that are 15–20 years behind corporate hiring. some programs turn away 10 applicants per seat. others can't fill their classes at all. there's no way to reach workers who are actively researching the trade online.

the employer side. construction needs 500,000 new workers per year on top of normal hiring. 92% of firms can't find qualified workers. nearly 30% of union electricians are nearing retirement. the IRA requires 15% apprentice labor hours on clean energy projects — with the full 30% tax credit conditional on compliance and a $50/hr penalty for falling short. employers need skilled workers on jobsites and have no data infrastructure to find them.

the government side. workforce boards allocate billions in training grants — but lack real-time supply and demand data to steer funding where it matters. state agencies can't see which programs produce results and which don't. the result: funding decisions based on last year's data instead of today's signals.

the gap isn't in program quality. it's in the data layer. the u.s. needs 2 million more skilled workers by 2028 — and only 7% of job seekers even consider the trades. hardhat is building the intelligence layer that connects all four sides.

hardhat isn't just a website for workers — it's open data infrastructure for the entire workforce system. an agentic pipeline ingests billions of data points across BLS, O*NET, DOL, state licensing boards, training program catalogs, and real-time workforce signals — normalizes it against a proprietary career ontology, and publishes continuously refreshed intelligence. the same data that helps a 22-year-old in South LA find an IBEW apprenticeship also gives counselors real-time program signals and gives workforce planners demand visibility they've never had. every decision one stakeholder makes creates a signal for the others — hardhat is the connective layer that closes the loop.

workforce data in the trades is fragmented across thousands of incompatible systems. salary figures are locked in federal databases. apprenticeship openings are posted on union hall bulletin boards. training programs are scattered across state agencies with no common format. employer demand signals never reach the workers who need them. the result: construction alone needs 500,000 new workers per year — and only 7% of job seekers even consider the trades. that's not a pipeline gap. it's an infrastructure gap. and it's costing the country skilled workers at exactly the moment $1.8 trillion in spending demands them.

we're building the GTFS of workforce data. before GTFS, transit information was fragmented across thousands of incompatible systems. Google created an open standard, and now 10,000+ transit agencies publish data that powers apps used by billions. workforce data is in the same state today — and we're building the open protocol to unify it. read the protocol →