WIOA redo talk, why Arkansas got paid, The Turkducken Scandal, and $3.8 billion in grants.
Plus, the appropriations process lives, big companies and apprenticeship, and Congress talks the Ed-DOL marriage's strain.
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Behind the paywall today.
I talk about how I keep getting asked why the Labor Secretary remains employed after a rough week of news.
A big company’s interesting comment and what it means for apprenticeship.
Congress signals interest in WIOA changes (kinda), highlights Ed-DOL strain (totally), and talks community colleges (yep).
Toplines.
Big things to keep an eye on if you work on getting people to work.
Why Arkansas got its big apprenticeship award.
NPR has a great on-the-ground story about Arkansas’ pay-to-train program for manufacturing, which had a weird rollout to say the least:
Arkansas is a small state with some 3 million people, but it's growing apprenticeships at a fast clip, including in manufacturing. The Labor Department told NPR that's why it chose Arkansas to spearhead a national effort to grow apprenticeships in manufacturing. To be clear, Arkansas didn't apply for this role. The government came to the state with nearly $36 million to run [its apprenticeship incentive fund].
Arkansas hasn’t run its own State Apprenticeship Agency deputized to handle apprenticeship registration. That makes it unusual that it’s running a national fund that will require it to answer questions to programs trying to register.
But hey man, this is an answer. That’s a major advancement for a project that took six months to get announced.
That said, there’s been a little bit more talk this week about the Inspector General’s interest in allegations that Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer’s team improperly tried to steer grant funds to certain recipients. DOL proactively reaching out to Arkansas won’t help shake off any scrutiny there, if that’s where the OIG wants to go in an investigation that reportedly has included interviews with dozens of people.
The appropriations battle is over. It’s also just begun.
My vibe from around workforce right now is that people are tired. It was a rough 2025 with a lot of bullets fired at America’s most consistent sources of workforce funding. Those bullets appear to have been mostly dodged with the bill President Trump signed last month. A lot of money is finally hitting the street. It makes sense folks would be a little deflated and a little done with worrying about the money.
Well, sneaking by in the midst of Everything is that the fiscal year 2027 appropriations process started last week. House Appropriations Committee staff sent out the technical details to members for asking for changes and money for the funding year starting in October.
You generally don’t expect a lot of shifts in a midterm year, especially when the majority feels like it’s in trouble in otherwise safe territory. Republicans already seem iffy about selling the significant cuts kicking in after the midterms that they passed at the President’s direction last summer.
That doesn’t mean that the Trump White House budget office won’t ask for more cuts, though. I have my doubts they’ll chill on those asks this year, good politics or no.
If they do ask for big cuts, it’ll be interesting to see how much the re-upped proposed cuts line up with the Trump Administration’s current workforce spending projects. The Department of Labor, for example, has signaled it could invest another $65 million in Workforce Pell deployment at community colleges with Strengthening Community Colleges dollars that become available on July 1. When paired with the currently open competition for Strengthening Community Colleges, the total investment will amount to $130 million.
Yet, last year’s White House budget proposal called for eliminating the source of those funds. Same for much of the quarter billion dollars DOL has invested in pay-to-train incentives. Doing the same this year would look weird, particularly with the stridency with which Trump II usually demands cuts.
This week’s grant listings number: $3.8 billion.
I have a note below about a significant change in my listings going forward.