DOL offering you less WIOA in your WIOA, getting Congress to care about workforce, and $8.5 billion in grant listings.
Plus, Workforce Pell's rulemaking starts and Congress' busy workforce calendar.
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Greetings, and a holiday programming alert.
Hello from Washington, where my eldest told a crowd at church that I need to stop staying up so late because it might make it harder for Santa to do his job. I’m very proud of my daughter trying to make life easier for an experienced professional. I’m also very puzzled as a father of two and business owner who planned on a multistage conspiracy that ends with his being passed out at 8 p.m. on Christmas Eve, but I probably should have shot her a memo about that. With a picture of a Jedi so she’d read it.
Speaking of the holidays, this will be the last Friday edition of THE MONEY for 2025 to accommodate various holiday stuff. Here’s what publication will look like through the start of 2026:
This varietal of JOBS THAT WORK will move to Thursdays on December 11 and December 18.
December 18 will also be my last my full newsletter for the year (Trump Administration and/or Congress hilarity pending). I plan on taking a few weeks off to rest up, hang out with my wife and aforementioned puzzling children, and develop mysterious secret projects for this space that you’ve read nothing about. (Sssh.)
Paid readers still will get fresh grant listings every Friday while I’m away. I’ve seen December 27 grant opportunity publications in the past. Based on the federal application schedules we’ve seen in the last few months, I wouldn’t be surprised if we got a December 26 posting from a federal agency—and a deadline on December 30. At noon.
Behind today’s paywall.
Click here to jump to today’s paid content.
A workforce-y week of congressional hearings on workforce.
DOL releases guidance calling for doing less WIOA to make WIOA better.
Cutting out workers from WIOA boards?
Toplines.
News you should know about money and things getting people to work.
Can Congress care about workforce in a workforce crisis?
If you feel a loafer dangling over you, it’s that we don’t have anything resembling resolution yet on whether Congress is going to pick up a big chunk of America’s (under)spending on workforce programs, stuff it into a flaming sofa, and hurl it into a dumpster.
It’s worth acknowledging that it’s been a frustrating year for folks dealing with the Hill on workforce matters. I have heard complaints about the majority’s aching low levels of interest about workforce, even amid a cooling economy and big business’ bet on AI shrinking their payrolls. It’s either status quo of the current system or cuts, cuts, cuts—nothing else seems to get through.
That’s also pretty much the choice the two chambers have put out for the future of workforce. As a refresher, Senate appropriators in July moved a compromise bill through committee in the summer that would have restored workforce funding to 2024 levels. In September, House appropriators advanced a bill cutting workforce funding in half.
The justification from House appropriators was that these programs were “nice to have,” not need to have. It’s very hard to get any political leaders to do more than give lip service to workforce—something I’m genuinely going to try to investigate the why of in 2026—but even with that, it’s probably not ideal to roll with that justification heading into an election year after private payrolls were shockingly down in November.
Republicans, though, remain stuck between a rock and a White House on their legislative agenda, which is pretty unpopular. The indications I have seen from the House majority—for whom a Trump un-endorsement in the primaries is a bigger threat than the general election—is that they would want to see meaningful cuts in any 2026 spending bill.
If I had to guess what programs are most vulnerable today, I would be preparing for cuts, not eliminations, of the WIOA Youth program (eliminated in the House bill) and the Adult program (takes a year off to learn how to paint and love itself again in the House bill) as well as DOL’s program for prisoners re-entering the workforce.
The good news is it looks like we probably won’t get a rushed compromise, which I think would favor some especially painful cuts. Bills to fund the government for the year likely won’t happen before Christmas, Majority Leader John Thune said this week. We could see bill text before then, though. Based on how both appropriations committees have worked this session, I doubt the text will get a significant airing out before it moves on to the full chamber. Their hearing calendars are clear for December as of this writing.
Oh, and we’re under 56 days until the next possible government shutdown—or about two weeks more time than the length of the last shutdown.
One more thing to watch: based on timing, if this Congress has a major workforce system redo in it, now’s probably the best time to introduce it and see if it has legs. My understanding is that GOP legislative staff had wanted to reintroduce last year’s uninspired (and unresponsive to current conditions) redo WIOA after the appropriations process. We’ll see if a dragging appropriations process changes that strategy.
The Workforce Pell-ening.
Who’s ready for days of regulatory hearings about operating a student grant program for accredited institutions’ short-term workforce programs for a recognized credential stackable into a degree?!
Woo.
Monday is the start of Ed’s negotiated rulemaking hearings on Workforce Pell. You can review draft rules published on Thursday here. From a quick read, they don’t seem to ease up on some of the issues I wrote about here.
This is a pretty vital stretch for how Workforce Pell will work out. I have heard quite a bit that Ed’s staff really, really, really needs to hear about the mechanical problems of the statute. Unfortunately, I have mainly seen testimony at these kinds of hearings be broad and broadly political like a congressional hearing, instead of the nuts-and-bolts components that the technicians planning these programs really need to hear (and can be open to hearing). If you’re sharing at next week’s hearings, I strongly recommend talking shop more than talking messaging.
Meanwhile, my friends at The Century Foundation published a piece this week that called for a more phased rollout to Workforce Pell, which isn’t the worst idea given that very few programs currently qualify. It also calls for hiring guarantees for programs and talks about guardrails that could protect students.
This week’s grants listings number: $8.5 billion.
Even with several opportunities falling off the board, the number is up because of the return of the Department of Transportation workforce-adjacent grant formerly known as RAISE is back, along with a new NIST funding opportunity for manufacturing.