Outsourcing helping employers… to employers.

The difference between listening to employers and hearing them, as demonstrated by the Trump workforce blueprint.

Over the past decade, an outspoken corner of the political and policy conversation around workforce development has insisted that we don’t defer enough to employers in shaping federal workforce programs. It’s an old idea—and very Republican one.

You can see the dent it has made on the workforce structures we have now. The Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act, America’s main (and heavily Republican-shaped) pot of money for workforce, includes a legal requirement that businesses must have a majority on the government boards that mete out most of the federal government’s workforce cash. The law also includes several other employer outreach requirements, and it grades the effectiveness of workforce programs in responding to employer needs.

Still, the second Trump Administration has concluded that we haven’t been deferring to employers hard enough. From last week’s Trump workforce blueprint:

[P]ast approaches to workforce development have failed to prioritize industry needs or complemented their training investments to ensure economic prosperity. Forgotten in the midst of decades of failed federal workforce programming is the reality that it is the companies themselves within industry, not the government, that determine the skillsets and competencies needed for jobseekers to be adequately qualified for a position.

I agree with the blueprint that the current system doesn’t do a great job of helping skilled employers who need to train staff. It’s too complicated and bureaucratic due to (what I understand to also be Republican-shaped) documentation and performance requirements that make it a bear to take the money. WIOA also has a preference for the cheapest, fastest options in all things, which usually points workers toward a lower-wage job, not one with a skilled employer.

That said, it’s kind of weird that many employers don’t seem to feel like they have ever been heard or helped by federal workforce structures, even with all the contact points there (and an extended stay by the "We only listen to employers” leadership of Trump I). Some of that is just politics, of course, but I have encountered plenty of sincere concerns and gripes, too. By probabilities, something should have worked out, right?

On and off over the past couple years, I have had conversations with thoughtful and informed people—including employers—that end up touching on some form of this question, which was kinda key to the work I did shaping grants at the Department of Labor.

Here’s something interesting I feel comfortable sharing about what I have learned.