Government-Supported Job Training in the US: Paths Toward Reforming the Workforce
American Enterprise Institute
July 21, 2023
- Funding for government-supported job training in the US has been declining since the 1970s, and the current Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act program needs administrative reform to cut red tape and increase flexibility.
- The program needs to incentivize rigorous evaluations of training programs to identify successful models for improving training and employment outcomes.
- Section 1115 of the Social Security Act offers a potential avenue for providing states with flexible waivers to test innovative reform approaches. Such experiments would provide insight and models for other states and localities to use as they adapt and scale.
- Rigorous evaluations of waiver-driven experiments and supplemental resources and implementation assistance are necessary to help build the workforce development practices of the future.
Introduction
The Workforce Futures Initiative is a research collaboration among the American Enterprise Institute, the Brookings Institution, and the Project on Workforce at Harvard Kennedy School’s Malcolm Wiener Center for Social Policy. The initiative aims to develop concise and actionable reviews of existing research for federal, state, and local policymakers. Since August 2021, the group has provided a forum for researchers and practitioners to discuss policy ideas, evaluate evidence, and identify priorities for new research on the future of work and the public workforce system.
As part of the Workforce Futures Initiative, the following reports analyze the effectiveness of federal programs funded through the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act, presenting options for experimentation at the state and local level.
The first report, Government-Supported Job Training in the US: The Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act Moving Forward by Peter Mueser and Kenneth Troske, notes that Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act programs continue to lag when it comes to positive outcomes for participants. These interventions are often bureaucratically cumbersome and inflexible in addressing emerging skill demands. Policymakers should rethink budget and authority structures to work more collaboratively. Further, expanding our knowledge base regarding US programs will help policymakers determine what programs and methods are most effective in the job-training space. The authors note that wise investment in improved outcomes can lay the groundwork for future increases in federal government investment.
The second report, A Response to Peter Mueser and Kenneth Troske by Brent Orrell, argues that Congress and the executive branch can support innovation through additional administrative flexibilities under Section 1115 of the Social Security Act. A limited number of states would be allowed to submit reorganization and innovation proposals with additional federal resources to support implementation. Innovations would be carefully monitored and evaluated and, if shown to be effective, made available to other states for replication.