At the Center for Employment Training in San Jose, Boxer watched as students practiced mounting solar panels and solar power irrigation devices.
She told the students they are training for the jobs of the future.
"If we keep focused and we make sure that we don't go backwards we will see these workers here working all over the state putting those roofs on schools on office buildings and on homes," Boxer said.
The CET received $3 million from a stimulus grant. Students are confident their training will pay off.
"I think the market will come up and there will be jobs out there this technology is going to be worldwide," Don Plazola said.
But a couple of miles away at the NUMMI Career Transition Center, unemployed auto workers from the NUMMI plant have been disappointed to find the solar jobs are not there.
"Not at the moment, everything is still emerging, and as an agency we're working with a lot of the construction companies," center spokesperson Karen LeDoux said.
LeDoux says she is warning people away from training for solar jobs, at least in the short term.
So the jobs of the future may be further into the future than these CET students are willing to wait.
Which is a nerve Boxer's Republican opponent touched on Friday when her campaign criticized Boxer and the stimulus spending saying, "Such programs are of little use when small businesses are struggling, employers aren't hiring and there just aren't any jobs for graduates."
"I'd like to respond to that; these are hard times everybody knows it," Boxer said.
Boxer went on the say the difference is she is promoting job training and Carly Fiorina is talking it down.
But Fiorina was not talking down the job training, she is talking down the stimulus spending, as she did 10 days ago at an event in Los Altos.
"You know when you throw hundreds of billions of dollars at something you're going to create a few jobs, the question is at what cost and at what price," Fiorina said.
As ABC7 has reported, the Pew Trust has studied green tech job creation and found it is growing at a faster rate than the overall economy. The problem for Democrats is unemployment is still high -- 12 percent in California. And unless it improves, Republican candidates are going to push that message all the way to November.
