What's next for workforce on the Hill, what's up with DOL's apprenticeship money, and $7.3 billion in grants listings.
Plus, public-sector skills-first hiring and now there are two scandals that could impact federal workforce dollars.
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What’s up with that $145 million in apprenticeship money?
Oh hey, another scandal that could impact workforce funding.
An big pot of money that we haven’t heard much news about.
Toplines.
News you should know about money and things getting people to work.
What’s next for workforce on the Hill? There’s a good chance the answer is ‘Nothing,’ but things still could get interesting.
As I covered last week, the new appropriations bill ended a nine-month journey in which much of American workforce funding looked in peril on the Hill. The question, then, is if anything else is going to happen this year on workforce in Congress.
As you gathered from the headline, the answer is probably not, with a large asterisk I call the “WIOA Caveat.” The Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act, America’s most consistent source of workforce dollars, passed in 2014 with bipartisan support, a brutal election year for the party holding the White House—to the surprise of some of the people working on it, I understand. I wouldn’t expect the same this year absent some pretty terrifying AI-related layoffs (or big advances in artificial general intelligence, the next level in AI evolution that could entice investors and executives to send workers out the door.
I struggle to see the Trump White House, with majorities in both chambers, settling for anything less than a reinvention. I think the Trump White House still prefers block grants that don’t have Hill support. Trump appointees are still in favor of cutting out bureaucratic pieces from the WIOA system. Separately, if Democrats think they’ll take one or both chambers in this year’s midterm elections (and they very much do), they’re not incentivized to act before 2027.
WIOA’s underwhelming sequel—A Stronger Workforce for America Act—is lingering and has bipartisan support, but I don’t think it goes far enough for Trump II (which probably doesn’t love the whole “bipartisan support” part, to be honest). Dealing with WIOA’s expensive performance tracking system—which doesn’t do a great job tracking performance—seems to be a nonstarter on the Hill. Ohio Sen. John Husted’s bill that merges part of WIOA into a block grant pilot is also lurking, but I haven’t seen evidence of meaningful support for it.
If there is going to be movement, I would keep an eye on apprenticeship. As I wrote a couple weeks ago, Louisiana Sen. Bill Cassidy, who chairs the Senate HELP Committee, has hinted at something on apprenticeship, but what that something is remains unclear. Apprenticeship World is teeter-tottering between “Everything is beautiful” and “Everything hurts” due to the murkiness of the $145 million Trump II has promised (more behind the wall). Frankly, Trump II might need to look to the Hill if it needs extra-strength help reaching one million apprentices.
But Cassidy is in a primary battle against a candidate endorsed by President Trump and he is down in the polls. He might not be inclined to help. And again, there isn’t a ton of incentive for Democrats (or key constituencies such as unions) to help get an apprenticeship change through the Senate if they think they’ll be in a better position to define terms and policy in 2027.
State and local governments dig deeper into skills-first hiring.
Opportunity@Work and The Volcker Alliance announced this week that they’re tripling the size of their Transformers in the Public Sector accelerator aimed at helping government employers hire more based on skills. The program will go from five state governments to fourteen states and the transit agency for Austin, Texas. It’s a pretty purple mix, including states such as Louisiana, Alaska, California, Colorado, and Wyoming. You can read the full list of states and their activities here.
Public-sector employers really have been standouts in skills-first hiring, which hasn’t necessarily produced massive results despite a rush by companies to end degrees requirements a few years ago. Thirty-two states have taken some sort of official action to improve access for workers without degrees, and government employers tend to rave about skills-first hiring for its ability to get different and fresher talent into their jobs.
What makes the public sector’s growth here so interesting is that government employers face so many more hurdles and restrictions in how they hire than the private sector, where uptake appears much slower. Opportunity@Work, which calls skills-first hires Skilled Through Alternative Routes (STARs), cites in a release that “45% of STAR hires in [O@W’s] STARs Public Sector Hub network gained 10% or more in pay after switching jobs—five points higher than the national average (40%).”
Eleven of the participants in the program announced this week will receive hands-on assistance as they actively drive implementation of skills-first hiring strategies. Four participants will get help building up “foundational” expertise in skills-first hiring.
This week’s grant listings number: $7.3 billion.
New private cash and public money in California and Michigan.