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Minnesota is giving out nearly $2.4 million in workforce grants aimed at helping underserved adults enter new workforces, the state announced late last week.

The state’s Department of Employment and Economic Development (DEED) will distribute the grants in two major chunks, which will be disbursed to 24 organizations across the state. The Women’s Economic Security Act (WESA) grant program will provide $1.4 million to help women find long-term employment in fields where they’re not historically represented. Additionally, DEED’s Adult Support Services Competitive Grants — totaling $950,000 — will be used to provide services like job training, employment prep, internships, and more for low-income adults with a special emphasis on BIPOC communities.

Both WESA and Adult Support Services are competitive grant programs that have administered millions of dollars in grants over the past decade to break down employment barriers for many marginalized communities. Despite the grants’ limited eligibility, DEED commissioner Matt Varilek said their benefits will be felt throughout Minnesota.

“In partnership with organizations around that state, we’re helping Minnesotans gain work-ready skills and find new jobs — strengthening Minnesota families, communities, and the entire economy,” Varilek said in a statement.

The WESA grant program it not meant to find women any job, according to DEED deputy commissioner Marc Majors. Instead, it’s focused on helping women take first steps on a new career path in “nontraditional” fields.

The U.S. Department of Labor defines nontraditional careers as any in which no more than a quarter of its employees are women. Some of the most in-demand nontraditional fields for women over the next five years are computer programming, dentistry, and carpentry — with average income ranging from roughly $37,000- $75,000 per year.

“Achieving union employment in the trades can completely a person’s life by providing family-sustaining wages on a strong career path,” Minnesota Training Partnership (MTP) executive director Jerome Balsimo said in a statement. MTP is a workforce development nonprofit and one of WESA’s largest recipients at $200,000.

Other recipients of the WESA grant include Dunwoody College, Northwest Indian Community Development Center, and Somali Community Resettlement Services.

The Adult Support Services Competitive grant program, on the other hand, funds organizations like the Global Fatherhood Foundation and Lutheran Social Services. The aim is to enable these organizations to uplift families — especially BIPOC ones — that have endured intergenerational poverty, and hopefully break the cycle.

While Minnesota’s workforce has been diversifying for decades, BIPOC communities continue to experience higher unemployment rates than white contemporaries, largely due to lack of opportunity, according to Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis research.

Even if employment opportunities are taken, Minnesota currently has one of the highest income disparities between white and Black workers in the country, with an average income gap of more than $46,000 per year.

“Creating opportunities for all Minnesotans to reach their full employment potential helps individuals and their families establish economic stability and generational wealth,” DEED deputy commissioner Marc Majors said. “It helps our entire state economy by utilizing our state’s greatest economic resource: our workers.”