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Acting Secretary Sonderling Tours Kern County Employers on Workforce and Technology Skills, October 2026

October 21, 2026 · USDepartmentofLabor · 0:01:57

Embedded from the source channel — never re-uploaded. Watch on YouTube

What happened

In a 23ABC news segment uploaded by the Department of Labor, reporter Sam Howell said Acting Secretary Keith Sonderling toured California for a week, with two Kern County stops on the Tuesday covered: the Wonderful logistics center in Shafter in the morning and Grimmway Farms in Arvin in the afternoon, where he held a tour and roundtable, as the report stated it. (The segment’s captions are Arabic-rendered auto-captions; this account paraphrases them faithfully.)

Sonderling told 23ABC he was in Kern County to hear employers’ workforce challenges and to find ways to encourage more people to pursue careers in agriculture, as the report stated it. He said a main takeaway was that workers need to be technology-literate in today’s agricultural world — working with automation is a new skill workers will especially need in farming — and that the department is working not only with employers but with workforce development boards, community colleges and the K-12 system to bring those changing skills into schools, as he stated it.

Asked about Kern County’s historically above-average unemployment, which the report noted peaks in winter because agricultural work is seasonal, Sonderling pointed to his earlier visit that day to the Wonderful facility, describing the jobs being built there as non-seasonal, higher-skill trade and technical jobs created by the technology going into such logistics facilities — jobs whose skills, he said, have not been taught in schools — and said the administration is working with employers to bring back high-wage, high-skill jobs, as he stated it. Howell reported Sonderling would continue on to the Los Angeles area rather than returning directly to Washington, according to the segment.

Why it matters

The segment records the Labor Department’s workforce message in a major agricultural county: that farm and logistics employers say technology skills — not only seasonal labor — are now the binding constraint, and that the department is pressing schools and workforce boards to teach them, as Sonderling stated it.

Sources: USDepartmentofLabor, “Secretary Keith Sonderling visits Kern County, CA (23ABC)”, 2026-10-21 (official upload, embedded above; published 2026-10-21). Transcript via Supadata (private research store, paraphrased and attributed, not republished). All figures and characterizations as stated by the speakers.