Televangelist T.D. Jakes takes aim at automation’s job losses with STEAM program

Bishop T.D. Jakes, the televangelist and bestselling author, is aiming to help avert a looming employment crisis for minority communities by promoting a camp based on STEAM.

“We have to rethink how we train our children because we’re training our children as if the world is going to be like the world we knew,” Mr. Jakes said in support of science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics education.

The Dallas pastor said his megachurch’s annual, five-week STEAM Camp attracted 300 kids in person in its first four years, but online participation zoomed to 5,000 in 2020 and 2021 during the pandemic, 10 times the expected number.

By showing youngsters the possibilities in computer coding, graphic design, mathematics and allied fields, Mr. Jakes said he can bring a larger world to Black and other underrepresented groups while helping to build a cadre of future workers for these burgeoning fields.

“We do not excel in areas where there is low exposure,” said Mr. Jakes, whose ministry includes The Potter’s House Church as well as a global TV outreach. “I cannot emphasize [enough] how important it is to expose these kids at early ages to get in their thought process. That ‘this is something I can be, this is something I can do. This is something I can aspire to,’ because it’s hard to aspire to something that you have no exposure to.”

At the same time, Mr. Jakes said he hopes the program will help companies “where there is a search for minority participation” in their ranks.

“Any company that is interested in equity and inclusion often lives in a bubble where they only interact with people who look like them, think like them, and vote like them,” he said. “We want to be a bridge between them and our populations of people to create a pathway so that we have more diversity.”

He said African Americans “are facing a huge crisis” as automation and artificial intelligence technologies threaten 4.5 million jobs in the community over the next eight years.

As many as 42% of American workers are in jobs with a “high risk of automation,” according to a Jan. 27 report by the brokerage data website Commodity.com, citing data from the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics and an Oxford University study.

In addition, a 2019 Brookings Institution study found workers in production, food service and transportation facing the greatest risk of replacement by automation.

Mr. Jakes said his eponymous foundation works to create job opportunities for the people “returning citizens,” those who have completed prison terms.

By working with companies such as Walmart and AT&T, which is headquartered in Dallas, Mr. Jakes says helping these people find work and housing breaks the “release and return” cycle too many have been caught up in.

“People were getting out of jail and couldn’t get an apartment because they had a record,” he said. “Even if it was a nonviolent crime, they couldn’t get a job, and then they went back to jail. We castigated them. Where else could they go?”

Mr. Jakes said those who are concerned about these issues should look to form “strategic alliances” with faith-based organizations and others “to solve some of these problems,” whether it’s more STEAM education, programs for those released from jail or to help people break out of poverty.

“We’re also going to need elected officials to remove the barriers that are restrictive from making these connections possible. And perhaps tax incentives for companies that are sensitive to this need,” he said.