WIOA's future, most Americans don't have good jobs, and $52 billion in grants listings.
Plus, the grim-and-gritty stage of the shutdown and your questions about Workforce Pell and IRAPs 2.0.
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Greetings.
Hello from D.C., where I’m thrilled (shutdown modified) about the responses I have gotten to last week’s invite for questions. There’s a Cheat Sheet today, but the next couple weeks are heavy on reader questions.
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Toplines
News you should know about money and things getting people to work.
The shutdown enters its grimdark phase.
Let’s talk about the thing I get asked the most: I don’t think the shutdown ends this month. I think we’ll go as long as six weeks. And I think it’s going to get rough. There will be downstream furloughs and layoffs because the money is not flowing out of the government.
In terms of this week’s specific grimdark news, everybody who knows the money appears fired, pending a court order. The Departments of Education and Health and Human Services laid off hundreds of personnel from offices that run competitions and spend money. The firing of Treasury officials involved with the Consumer Development Financial Institutions also bothered Hill Republicans.
Not enough for them to do anything, but they are concerned. From Politico:
[Sen. Mike Crapo, R-Idaho] would not comment whether he had spoken with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent or the White House on the matter but said that “Congress has a role anytime Congress chooses, it can take some action.”
Neat-o.
I think the layoffs are more for show than not. Some of these people will be hired back, a thing HHS has done since parting with swaths of staff earlier in the year.
Ed, though? I feel doubtful. Education Secretary Linda McMahon posted something to the effect it was time for Ed to part with these staff because schools are still operating even during the government shutdown, and she asserted that no “education funding” was impacted by the layoffs. (I would have many questions if the money got laid off, so that’s good to know.)
Constructively, nothing about spending money in the federal government is automatic, and you still need people to do it. If and when there are downstream consequences due to money not reaching schools because of lack of people, that will be bad territory for McMahon’s communications team to have staked out.
Job quality: there ain’t enough of it.
Only 40 percent of Americans have good jobs, per research published this week by Jobs for the Future, The Families and Workers Fund, the W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research, and Gallup.
That’s concerning both for workers and business. My simple explanation is that a good job is one where a worker is paid and treated fairly enough that they stick around and thrive. As the report highlights, that tends to be more cost-effective for employers and helps them raise productivity, which can lead to better profits by letting the employers do more.
Gallup conducted the study between January 13 and February 25, meaning it spanned the very, very end of the Biden Administration and the Grr We’re Tough on Workers Now Grr ethos that some in corporate America adopted alongside the start of the second Trump Administration. That philosophy shift is important, and not just because I used it to write “Grr” in relation to a really helpful piece of serious workforce research and analysis. The numbers could be worse now as employer roll back protections, flexibilities, and worker inputs based on the Administration’s cues.
The second Trump Administration worked hard to keep the words “good” and “jobs” from touching each other in the initial months of the administration. It also has re-embraced concepts like "skills gap,” the idea that workers aren’t filling open jobs because they don’t have skills, not because of other things, like broken hiring and talent evaluation systems, lack of access, and a beloved tradition managers at one plant refer to as “Tire Fire Friday.”
Yet, placing workers in good jobs is not incompatible with Trumpian ideas of “efficient” spending of workforce dollars because getting a worker into a good job could make it less likely a worker could need public resources in the future. In that sense, it’s been interesting to see some hairline cracks in the thick ice between the Biden good jobs approach and the Trump Administration’s fuzzier strategies.
Last month’s reissue of Tech Hubs grants called for placing workers in “great, high-paying jobs,” for example. Reducing the load on entitlements is among the priorities articulated in that document. Still, saying you want “great” jobs is one thing, making them happen through policy is another, something I can confirm from personal experience. I didn’t see that type of connecting of the dots in the Tech Hubs solicitation.
Other things that caught my eye in this week’s good jobs research? Men are 11 percent more likely to have good jobs than women. Also, even if everyone hates The Academy, workers with bachelor’s degrees and graduate degrees are more likely to have quality jobs.
This week’s grants listings number: $52 billion.
Steady even with lighter federal listings this week—probably because of the whole “shutdown of federal operations” thing. There also is a new private opportunity and a couple new state additions, too.
Behind the paywall.
Realism and rigidity in WIOA reauthorization.
IRAPs 2.0 and an odd statement on the Trump one-million apprentice push.
How states should get ready for Workforce Pell.