July 20, 2026
US skills academies compete in a crowded credential market. Postsecondary institutions conferred about 1.0 million certificates in 2021-22, 5 percent more than a decade earlier (source: NCES, Postsecondary Certificates and Degrees Conferred, 2024). At the same time, the labor market graduates enter is growing more slowly. Total US employment is projected to rise 3.1 percent from 2024 to 2034, well below the 13.0 percent recorded over the previous decade (source: Bureau of Labor Statistics, Employment Projections 2024-2034, 2025). When growth slows, placement stops being a byproduct of demand and becomes something an academy has to engineer.
The demand side is real but selective. The US economy is projected to add 5.2 million jobs from 2024 to 2034, taking total employment to 175.2 million, with healthcare and social assistance the fastest growing sector (source: Bureau of Labor Statistics, Employment Projections 2024-2034, 2025). The supply side is crowded, with about 1.0 million postsecondary certificates conferred in 2021-22 alone (source: NCES, Postsecondary Certificates and Degrees Conferred, 2024). For a skills academy, the constraint is rarely learner demand. It is proving, cohort after cohort, that the training leads to real jobs.
Spacewalk gives your academy a private, branded job board, so your team spends its time coaching learners into work rather than forwarding job links.
Build your branded Spacewalk job board and invite your talent community in minutes
Whether you choose to stream roles automatically, invite employers or post them yourself they are automatically matched to your talent pool
Track applications, placements and community engagement from one reporting dashboard
Unlike generic job boards, Spacewalk gives you a branded, private or public jobs marketplace your talent actually trust, with sourcing, matching and reporting running automatically in the background.
Learner records carry federal protections where FERPA applies. FERPA gives rights to access education records, to seek amendment and to control disclosure of personally identifiable information, and those rights sit with the student once they turn 18 or enter a postsecondary institution at any age (source: US Department of Education, What is FERPA?).
On the hiring side, EEOC protections against discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age (40 or older), disability or genetic information extend to job advertisements and recruitment (source: EEOC, Prohibited Employment Policies/Practices). Employment eligibility verification stays with the hiring employer, which must complete Form I-9 for every individual hired in the United States (source: USCIS, Form I-9, Employment Eligibility Verification). This is context, not legal advice.
This is an illustrative scenario, not a customer story. A US skills academy training healthcare support workers stands up a branded job board and invites each cohort in the final weeks of the program. Graduates see live, employer-direct roles matched to the skills they just earned, and coaches watch application and interview activity instead of chasing updates by email. When prospective learners ask about outcomes, the academy exports landings by cohort rather than collecting anecdotes.
With cohort-level data. Spacewalk tracks registrations, applications, interviews and landings by cohort, so your team can show what happened to graduates rather than quoting anecdotes.
Because the roles are curated and employer-direct rather than re-listed from public platforms. Each graduate sees verified, active vacancies matched to the skills your academy taught them.
Yes. Your graduates get a board under your academy's brand, so career support feels like part of the program rather than a hand-off to a generic job site.
From an employer-direct stream of verified, active roles with direct apply links, not scraped from job boards or aggregators. Your team can also invite employer partners to post.
No. Form I-9 employment eligibility verification stays with the hiring employer. Spacewalk connects graduates to live vacancies and tracks their progress.
About 30 minutes to stand up a branded board and invite your first cohort, with a 14-day free trial to run it on a live cohort first.
Spacewalk supports skills academies worldwide, including job board software for UK skills academies, skills academy job boards in Australia and career platforms for South African skills academies.
Explore Spacewalk for US skills bootcamps, US adult education providers, US job placement programs and US college career centers.
