The Trump administration proposes significant changes in consolidated workforce plan

The U.S. Departments of Labor, Commerce, and Education (the departments) released a strategy for workforce development with six overarching themes: industry-driven strategies, worker mobility, integrated systems, accountability, flexibility, and innovation. The plan was written in response to an April 2025 directive from the White House mandating an overhaul of the federal approach to supporting workforce training. 

The plan’s industry-driven strategies lay out narrow guidelines for the career pathways and industries the administration will support, noting that companies should identify these pathways are for critical, hard-to-fill demand occupations and that the pathways to these careers must have “clearly defined destinations, …explicit employer validation and offer job guarantees, interview guarantees, or other mechanisms that ensure training leads directly to employment opportunities.” The plan mentions Registered Apprenticeships as an important delivery tool for this plan pillar. The plan is specific about which industry sectors are priorities, noting, “The (a)dministration is focused on growing manufacturing and adjacent industries, such as semiconductors, aerospace, shipbuilding, biopharmaceuticals, data centers, energy production, and other industries that serve as the foundation for American economic and national security.  

The plan’s authors conclude “the ‘college-for-all’ approach has failed” to guarantee worker mobility. Alternately, they recommend that the nation “clearly identify non-college-degree credentials that are valued by the labor market.” The plan calls for training toward “skills-based practices … that prioritize demonstrated ability over formal credentials.” It says that the federal departments will support the shift to demonstrated ability by evaluating the direct demonstration of those skills. This support includes using simulations and scenario-based assessments within career navigation, training programs, and hiring pipelines, using, “where feasible,” federal funding and technical assistance to help states, businesses, and providers adopt these practices at scale.  

Federal workforce programs, the plan notes, currently are spread across multiple federal agencies; the integrated systems pillar calls for streamlining program administration and simplifying governance requirements “to empower states to integrate disparate funding streams and improve service delivery.” The plan states that “the administration will work with Congress to implement the MASA (Make America Skilled Again) proposal described in the President’s FY 2026 Budget, which will consolidate multiple programs into a single grant for states’ flexible use, through WIOA reauthorization or through FY 2026 appropriations provisions.” The money for the block grant approach would come from a consolidation of DOL grants, and the total pool would be cut by $1,640 million, as laid out in the administration’s Fiscal Year 2026 Discretionary Budget Request. The budget request also specified that the MASA grants would require states to spend at least 10% of those grants on apprenticeship programs.  

 According to the plan, the departments will “identify opportunities to direct their competitive grant resources towards effective states and grantees…. Specifically, the (d)epartments will structure competitive grant opportunities to award funds to state applicants, as allowable, who will integrate state workforce investments and deliver industry-driven training through central points of access.” 

Accountability “will be achieved by reforming or eliminating ineffective programs and redirecting funding to programs that demonstrate success in connecting Americans with high-wage jobs.” In calling for the elimination of two Congressionally authorized programs, the administration states that Job Corps is a “failed experiment to help America’s youth” and the Senior Community Service Employment Program (SCSEP) is "ineffective" in helping seniors transition into gainful employment. It also proposes eliminating the Adult Education Program, stating that it duplicates other Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA) programs. The document also proposes to "substantially" reform the Federal Work Study program. How the authors of the plans drew those conclusions is not included in the 27-page document. 

Another proposed accountability measure is to allow agencies to terminate grants failing to meet first-year benchmarks. The plan also proposes, perhaps in addition to the state block grants or as conditions for those grants, the use of pay-for-performance contracts, which puts the risk and costs on the service provider prior to payment. 

Reforming administrative processes to “enhance efficiency and reduce burdens on grantees” is another accountability strategy. The plan cites streamlining and reducing reporting burdens and focusing on performance metrics that demonstrate reduced unemployment and moving workers into higher-paid jobs, as examples of the anticipated impact of their proposed reforms. 

The departments fault the past interpretation of the WIOA waiver authority a barrier to reform and says it will clarify the administration’s interpretation and “promote new waivers to statutory requirements that are barriers to reform and innovation.” DOL will encourage states to propose reforms to realign their workforce system to match the strategic pillars discussed in this strategy plan.  The plan highlights the specific need for an AI workforce. It describes the creation of an AI Workforce Research Hub that “would produce recurring analysis, conduct scenario planning for a range of potential AI impact levels, and generate actionable insights to inform workforce and education policy.” It also proposes convening a network of community college and university AI centers “to explore how best to integrate AI education across institutional offerings to equip graduates for an AI-driven economy. To support the expansion of an AI-integrated workforce strategy, DOL will pilot new models for rapid training, workforce transitions, and innovation.  

Tangential to its workforce goals, the plan also proposes consolidating federal statistical agencies and reorganizing the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Bureau of Economic Analysis, and the Census Bureau within the Department of Commerce. This effort will likely affect regional innovation strategies and policymaking decisions well beyond the workforce development community.