Jyren Thomas knew cleaning airplanes every night couldn’t be his forever job.
One night on the job, he was backpedaling in the dark when he nearly tripped over equipment. A man reached out to steady him, then pointed toward the hangars and the planes as he asked if Thomas ever considered repairing aircraft instead of just cleaning them.
“I believe this is truly, truly God,” Thomas said. The stranger told him about airframe and power plant mechanic school. “From there, it almost felt like a command, like, that’s what you need to go do.”
There was a problem. The 23-year-old lacked a diploma. He had dropped out of high school to work full time. The conversation lit a fire under him to get his GED, which he earned through Irving ISD’s program. That’s where he met the Workforce Solutions Greater Dallas staff, who helped him plot a route into an aviation mechanics training program.
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“It wasn’t all peaches and cream,” Thomas said. He described “struggles, tribulations, days I didn’t want to go.” Still, he called the program “very helpful” with “teachers on standby who cared for students to get their GED.”
Workforce Solutions Greater Dallas client Jyren Thomas stood by his quote, which was displayed in the new Garland Workforce Center on Thursday, Feb. 26, 2026. Angela Piazza/Staff Photographer
Angela Piazza / Staff Photographer
Stories like his anchored the Thursday morning ribbon cutting for Workforce Solutions Greater Dallas’ newest career center at 530 Clara Barton Blvd., Suite 270, in Garland. The office is intended to make more of those second chances possible as North Texas braces for decades of job growth.
Inside, residents can get free skills training, career counseling, help with resumes and interview prep, and direct connections to employers. The center also guides people to child care and transportation support, adult education, disability services, veteran resources and help buying work-related clothing and tools.
Garland Mayor Dylan Hedrick told attendees the jobs connected to this center are not the kind people should fear losing to artificial intelligence. The center, he said, fits into a broader strategy to build streets and buildings while also building up residents.
“We are investing in two things at the same time, physical infrastructure and our people,” Hedrick said. “When you invest in people, you invest in long term possibility.”
Millions of new residents are expected to move to North Texas by 2050 to fill hundreds of thousands of new jobs, according to the North Central Texas Council of Governments. More than 60% of jobs in Texas require some postsecondary education or training, according to nonprofit public policy think tank Texas 2036.
Officials at the WSFDallas event cited a population of 250,431, a median income of $76,320, and a labor force of 134,703 workers. The city is projected to add 2,557 jobs from 2025 through 2028, largely in health care and social assistance, manufacturing and retail.
For Garland resident Crystal Gray, connections to the workforce system began with a call for help. She dialed 211 to ask about resources and found the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program, which led her into a subsidized work-from-home position.
From left: Nick Threlkeld, Workforce Solutions Greater Dallas director of continuous improvement, client Crystal Gray and Sandra Thomas, client Jyren Thomas’ grandmother, watched as Jyren was interviewed by media in new Garland Workforce Center on Thursday, Feb. 26, 2026. Angela Piazza/Staff Photographer
Angela Piazza / Staff Photographer
Her work lets her be more present for her 11-year-old, who already knows he wants to pursue cybersecurity and is “a straight honor roll student.”
Gray said she quickly became a team lead for her employer, where she trains colleagues on Excel and other software and often steps up to assist older residents who struggle with computers.
She said training through her employer taught her how to calculate with Excel and helped her earn certificates backed by the Texas Workforce Commission, which she can use when applying for new jobs. The program also helped her see a path toward dispatching work that could eventually lead to owning a trucking business.
Another client, Sunnyvale resident Catherine Milsap, described what it took to climb back after a period of unemployment. She started by looking for anything that could give her an advantage in an oversaturated job market.
Workforce Solutions Greater Dallas Garland Workforce Center Director Tammy Cooper (right) and Stacey Guillen Bridges, SVP of client relations for Career Management Partners, spoke during an event on Thursday, Feb. 26, 2026.
Angela Piazza / Staff Photographer
“I needed to find something that would create some specialty in what I did and a niche for me to give me that competitive advantage,” she said. She found Workforce Solutions’ Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act program through its website and was referred to a counselor at the agency’s Fair Park office when the previous Garland office was too busy to see her quickly.
Through the program, she earned six industry-recognized certifications and used a 24-hour e-learning platform to complete additional courses and exams, each one ending with a certificate she could list on her resume and LinkedIn.
She committed to training during classes from 6 p.m. to 10 p.m. while spending days updating her resume and applying for jobs. She also had to stay determined despite rapid rejection emails.
“The end result was a six-figure job,” she said.
Workforce Solutions relies on a mix of private and government funding to support those kinds of outcomes. In 2025, the organization served 70,549 job seekers and 20,314 children and families and provided 45,190 services to employers.
Dallas County Judge Clay Lewis Jenkins (right) and Garland Mayor Dylan Hedrick shook hands during a ribbon-cutting event for Workforce Solutions Greater Dallas’ new Garland Workforce Center on Thursday, Feb. 26, 2026.
Angela Piazza / Staff Photographer
Dallas County as a whole has a population of 2.6 million, a labor force of 1.4 million and projected job growth of 61,740 between 2025 and 2028.
City of Dallas workforce czar Lynn McBee said the Garland center “is engaging” and “feels like opportunity” from the moment visitors walk in and see staff, computers and images of local residents who advanced through training.
The new Garland location is part of a larger expansion. WFSDallas is preparing to open two additional centers in Irving, at 1081 W. Shady Grove Road and 2110 W. Walnut Lane, Suite 100, to connect more North Texans to the education and job prospects that changed the course of Thomas’, Gray’s and Milsap’s lives.
This reporting is part of the Future of North Texas, a community-funded journalism initiative supported by the Commit Partnership, Communities Foundation of Texas, The Dallas Foundation, the Dallas Mavericks, the Dallas Regional Chamber, Deedie Rose, Lisa and Charles Siegel, the McCune-Losinger Family Fund, The Meadows Foundation, the Perot Foundation, the United Way of Metropolitan Dallas and the University of Texas at Dallas. The News retains full editorial control of this coverage.