The only-the-bad-parts workforce plan.
What is and isn't in the Trump plan to kill all the federal workforce programs.
The issue
Explain
Late Friday, the Trump Administration released its full budget proposal for the main workforce programs for the federal government, outlining much of its plan for what it has portrayed as a consolidation of federal workforce programs.1
It’s a big and confusing set of proposals, spread out over multiple, sometimes-conflicting documents. For that reason, I think it’s helpful to understand what this proposal is and is not.
What this proposal is: Killing all the workforce programs.
The proposal effectively kills every Department of Labor workforce program except for those serving veterans2 and an Office of Disability Employment Policy program helping provide reasonable accommodations for workers with disabilities.3
To share a little documentation that makes this very plain: below is what is in the White House funding request.
The proposal doesn’t replace those existing programs, but instead creates state-by-state block grants, with indications the Administration will shift many administrative costs carried by the federal government over to states. (Ignore the separate funding amounts for the Adult and Dislocated Worker formula programs at the very top of the table above. Budget documents indicate those dollars would be wadded into the block grants, too.)
This means that in addition to all the other cuts here, each grant is effectively a funding cut in and of itself via increased spending mandates that will further fragment things like data systems and other key resources. On top of that, the budget then cuts what’s left by about half a billion dollars.
Workforce development already was grossly underfunded. With this and cuts elsewhere, it would be starved.
What this proposal is not: Consolidation.
Nothing is being folded into anything and programs aren’t combining efforts. This is just killing everything and starting a new thing.
What this proposal is: A marginal increase in apprenticeship funding, with several asterisks.
The big calling card for the block grants is that at least 10 percent of each grant must go toward Registered Apprenticeship. There is no dedicated Registered Apprenticeship funding now—it’s a year-to-year appropriation of about $285 million.
Accordingly, if you add in the adult programs lingering at the top of the budget table above with the block grant budget estimate,4 then take 10 percent of the sum, the proposal increases current apprenticeship funding nationwide to about $11 million, or roughly $200,000 extra by jurisdiction served (and that will be distributed according to a formula, so it won’t be that much for our siblings in Guam, for example).5 The political enthusiasm for apprenticeship hasn’t led to real meaningful dollars behind it, meaning there is quite a bit of need for building up real apprenticeship infrastructure nationwide (something I’m writing a bit more about next week if there are fewer flames). That means $11 million is, at best, a drop in the bucket.
It’s also not unreasonable to think that administrative costs and shifts in funding strategy likely will diminish any on-the-ground benefits from this increase. If the Administration allows states to spend the money on building up state agencies for apprenticeship—something it’s already done—there’s a good chance that few of those actual dollars make it to apprentices and employers in the near term. Only 3 percent of apprentices benefit from the current pitiful congressional investment in apprenticeship, so one would hope there is only room to go up.
What this proposal is not: A good way to get to 1 million apprentices.
The Administration wants to get to 1 million apprentices per year. Several of the programs that would be cut actually create or fund or route workers toward apprenticeship, even if it’s not as much as it could be. Without them, the number of apprentices will go down, meaning the Administration will have to go a longer distance to get the apprentice numbers it wants and with virtually no direct financial tools for doing it.
What this proposal is: Undercooked.
There are very few specifics about why these block grants will work better than existing workforce development programs. They just will because of some generalized murmuring about red tape and efficiency and allusions that even where there are good results from these programs they aren’t good enough, assertions for which no real numbers or evidence are shared.
Some language makes it seem like the Administration thinks it is bringing fire down from the heavens. DOL’s budget request says it will set aside a small amount of the block grants “to help States transition to the new program and its requirements,” which include “incorporating apprenticeship into workforce programs; implementing information technology systems; and ensuring grantee and training provider performance management, performance reporting, and data management.”
Look, there is only so much you can expect from a budget request, but given everything being lit aflame, this is an absurd statement that I wouldn’t give the benefit of the doubt. More and more, I hear stories about how little the people steering these cuts know about the basics of these programs, including some downright painful behind-the-scenes corrections. This feels of a piece with that.
Knowing state workforce leaders, I don’t think incorporating apprenticeship and having computers will be new to them. They deserve a bit more front-end explanation of what will actually change for them at a technical level, and the Hill should expect that as well. Given that the Administration has now trained the entirety of every workforce program’s group of stakeholders upon their signature policy goal in this area without all that much political or evidentiary groundwork, I suspect the Senate will be looking for that type of explanation soon. (Maybe.)
What this proposal is not: A stack of cash left on a workforce provider’s doorstep with a Post-It saying ‘Do whatever. No downsides.’
This is how a number of political leaders and zealots of block grants portray moving to block grants.6 As I have not been subtle about in this space, I do think workforce money is overregulated, but I’m doubtful of how unchained these dollars will be. The Administration has indicated that these will be quite regulated—you can’t get the accountability aspect I write about below without it, nor address various concerns about “wokeness” et al.
I’ll also admit something here: I tend to dislike block grants from my time as investigative reporter in the Deep South, where they often were pitched with an air of “We can get that money for the poor people but really spend it on something else once it’s down here.” A consequence of my career path also means I have seen and heard absurd attempts to use workforce money on projects that don’t help workers, providers, or employers at all. They only were headed off because of federal guardrails and oversight—and barely so because of an already too-diffuse system.
That isn’t saying the people on the ground don’t know what they need to spend the money on—something the Administration seems to imply in the text I quote above—but that where there is money, there are bad actors trying to grab it for something else, and we’re removing one thick layer of protection for this cash. In my experience, an awful lot of those bad actors are people who are big fish in little ponds who don’t have any need for the money at all, but have real strong opinions about where money for poor people should go. Strangely, it’s not to poor people—or even employers.
Given that we’re not too far removed from a scandal involving block grant money for needy families with kids ending up used to build a college volleyball stadium in Mississippi, I feel pretty good about my instinct here.
What this proposal is: A bunch of new administrative costs for states that swallow money for employers, workers, and training providers.
Block grants also can have dwindling benefits when states don’t have the structures in place to effectively implement them, and block grants tend to work best with decent funding levels and clarity on what is being offloaded and why it is better with the states.
The Trump Administration generally isn’t good at those things or taking conditions on the ground into account, which shows in this proposal. There was definite disappointment among the Trump I political crowd in how they felt state workforce agencies weren’t up to their standards on open-ended projects. Having studied what happened in my last policy gig at DOL, much of that owed to that crew giving states a few contradictory notes on a cocktail napkin about reducing costs and expecting everything to work out to an incredibly precise vision. I don’t expect that to change here—if only because some of those Trump I folks who suggested doing other things are on the outs with Trump II—and I do wonder if the Hill will look into previous Trump I attempts in this vein before moving ahead.
The budget proposal and an awfully similar proposal from Stephen Miller’s America First Policy Institute suggest states will lose money if they don’t meet certain standards. Given that some of the states that receive too little money under the current formula often have the most need, and don’t have terribly well-defined government structures for the money they do have, and that neither of those things get fixed overnight, that ain’t great.
It’s worth noting again here that there appears to be a knowledge gap by the people disassembling everything. The DOL-specific budget proposal maintains that it will relieve states and localities of the burden of “having to apply for and manage multiple Federal programs.” This seems to overlook that many nongovernmental providers, including religious organizations that Project 2025’s DOL section somehow thought don’t receive workforce funding, directly apply and deal with the federal government with no meaningful local government involvement at all.
So, yes, these state and local governments will be relieved of the burden of applying for and managing federal grant projects in exchange for running nearly every aspect of every grant project, which is now a state project that has to work—or else.
What this proposal likely is not: Relief from the most painful parts of current workforce funds.
The worst and most ineffective of current workforce dollars are about meeting Congress’ appetite that current workforce money move bodies and paper, something stemming from badly built performance requirements ironically long-championed by steadfast allies of this Administration. As wired, the goal is to spend as little as possible to move workers to the first job available—which is usually a lower-paying one—and document it through an unwieldy system of wage and employment data that doesn’t really say enough about whether the program was a good investment or not.
What will that be replaced with? Something that sounds awfully similar to what we have now.
[G]rantees will be held accountable for the employment outcomes of the American workers they serve, which the Department will support by collecting employment and earnings outcome data[.]
The accountability part is undefined, but judging by the AFPI writeup and the Administration’s approach to most things, the only thing that makes sense is taking away grant dollars. I’ll admit I would be open to this idea of a stick to go with my usual preference for a bag of financial carrots—depending on finer details like, say, if we’ll give states a break for massive layoffs out of their control and/or Godzilla attacks—if there was an emphasis on job quality in the actual performance numbers rather than the broken thing Congress soldered together 11 years ago. But the Administration has turned on job quality, and this still has to get through the Hill crowd who called good jobs policies “rancid” last year. Even though some Republican-led states are using good jobs to better grade their investments, I doubt that will be picked up here.
For that reason, then, it’s not far-fetched to think that the same broken systems from current law will perpetuate, then take even more money away from where it’s needed.
This is another reason why the extra cut on top of cutting everything is so painful. If big chunks of these block grants go toward building systems desperately maintained to keep the block grants, that’s less money for actual workforce development. There will be more needs because people who otherwise would be served by YouthBuild or Dislocated Worker Grants will need to be served by these block grants too.
So what you’re getting on balance is less, with not that much flexibility, and all the bad parts of the old regime likely lingering in place or made worse.
Card subject to change
Well, that sucks. I’ll clearly have more to unpack in THE MONEY on Friday, including the block grant proposal that I think would actually get a good bit of bipartisan support and maybe make me reconsider my block grant skepticism.
This week or next week, I also plan on publishing estimates of how much each state stands to lose based on the formula cuts alone. It will be a highly conservative estimate—I expect worse—but I think it’s a useful illustration of the pain coming if this plan goes into effect.
NEXT TUESDAY: The make-or-break moment for apprenticeship. And yeah, cutting the money for everything doesn’t help.
The April Trump workforce executive order directed the secretaries of Labor, Commerce, and Education to conduct an intensive review of their programs and submit a report making recommendations for their elimination or consolidation. If you’re wondering what the point of this review is now, I don’t think you’re alone.
What I have long suspected about this report is that it will be used to try to paint these programs as failed and dig up as many unflattering details as possible. Based on the early results, the process of finding those unflattering facts either is not going great or the Administration doesn’t think it has to do so. There are a couple spots in the DOL-specific budget request that indicate there isn’t any evidence supporting getting rid of a program, but they’re doing it anyway for the following well-reasoned policy justification:
I’m not saying these programs are perfect—I spent a good part of my last job trying to get more out of them—but if I was, say, an Administration recently caught making up sources in a key report, I would better damn well do my research and make it verifiable.
Whether they will be OK with saying veterans should have safe jobs that pay them a living wage? Open question, based on recent Trump Administration actions.
The budget eliminates the Women’s Bureau’s workforce programs, all of the other ODEP workforce programs, and the mining and workplace safety grants that covered trainings key to helping workers get into riskier jobs. It’s very much a “You ate all the tarragon and you drank all the soy sauce” effort by the Administration.
Without them? This is a nearly 60 percent cut to apprenticeship funding at the current appropriations level.
Or, to look at it another way based on the budget table: it’s a nearly $80 million cut to the 2024 appropriated spending on apprenticeship.
If I was a national organization, I also wouldn’t bargain that I might be able to convince 30 states at once to fund me at the same level as the federal government. There may be a front-end bonanza as things are getting sorted, but state and local leaders tend to trust state and local faces, and cut-and-paste approaches won’t work for too long in the face of home ties. Unless you literally saved the lives of most state workforce agency leaders at a conference, or you are the Messiah of PowerPoint, getting money gets 50+ times harder under this plan.