Recommendations for Reauthorizing the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act

Ten years ago, a comprehensive law supporting U.S. workforce development came into effect. The Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA), signed into law in 2014,¹ is the primary federal legislation that funds and authorizes the nation’s workforce development system. WIOA was passed with the goal of better connecting workers with opportunities in the labor market, including workers who face barriers to employment.

Now, as WIOA turns 10, discussions among policymakers on both the role of WIOA and the broader workforce development system have intensified amid a tight labor market and as the Biden administration has pursued an ambitious industrial policy strategy. The country has also experienced labor market shifts and changes over the past decade and in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. These trends have underscored the importance of adequately investing in and modernizing WIOA to better serve federal workforce strategy and goals.

In December 2023, the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Education and the Workforce marked up WIOA legislation called the Stronger Workforce for America Act, which passed the House in April 2024.² More recently, the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) has been discussing workforce issues and WIOA reauthorization.³

Policymakers should aim to train and connect workers with good jobs that provide family-sustaining wages and promote economic mobility and U.S. global competitiveness. This report presents recommendations for the next reauthorization of WIOA that would benefit workers, employers, communities, and the economy as a whole for the next 10 years and beyond. These recommendations include analysis on adequately funding WIOA; approaches to better align higher education and the workforce system; the establishment of sector training partnership grants; and strategies for helping young people, older people, and people with disabilities secure good jobs, among others.

WIOA was passed in Congress with overwhelmingly bipartisan support as an overhaul of its predecessor, the Workforce Investment Act. The goal of WIOA is to strengthen and improve the public workforce system and to benefit job seekers, including dislocated workers, youth, new and currently employed workers, veterans, older workers, and workers with disabilities, as well as employers seeking to hire and retain workers.⁴

WIOA is decentralized, with a share of the funding provided to states via formula grants. WIOA coordinates and aligns the majority of federal workforce and related programs and includes the five titles listed below, focused on workforce investment, vocational rehabilitation, employment, training, literacy programs, and more.

In program year 2022, WIOA served 299,910 adults; 212,018 dislocated workers; 132,506 youth; and 2,344,726 through the Wagner-Peyser program.⁶ In terms of performance among core WIOA programs, the employment rate after the second quarter of exiting the program in 2022 was 74.4 percent for adults, 71.4 percent for dislocated workers, 73.9 percent for youth, and 68.2 percent for Wagner-Peyser participants.⁷

WIOA has been due for reauthorization since 2020 and has continued to be funded through temporary extensions in annual appropriations.⁸ In the 117th Congress, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a reauthorization of WIOA, which the Senate did not take up.⁹

Amid a tight labor market, WIOA is a powerful tool to increase labor force participation, especially among those workers most likely to be left out or behind from opportunities.

The U.S. unemployment rate has remained at 4 percent or lower for 27 consecutive months, the longest stretch since the 1960s.¹⁰ In 2024, job openings in the U.S. economy continue to outnumber¹¹ the people actively seeking work. The rate of hiring in many sectors is also currently outpacing¹² quit rates, creating a tight labor market that favors workers and that has led to consistent wage increases. In fact, a majority of workers’ wages are outpacing inflation, and the economic recovery following the COVID-19 recession has featured historically strong real wage growth.¹³ At the same time, however, labor force participation is still below pre-pandemic rates.¹⁴ Given the demographics of an aging workforce, labor force participation is expected to remain lower, meaning policymakers will have to focus on workforce development to a greater extent.

Certain sectors have particularly high levels of vacancies, such as education, health care, social services,¹⁵ child care, and long-term care facilities. Additionally, some states are experiencing a tighter labor market than others, with states such as the North Dakota, South Dakota, Vermont, Maryland, and Nebraska consistently ranking among the states with the lowest unemployment rates.¹⁶ Acknowledging that some sectors and states are more in need of workforce support than others will be helpful as policymakers work to determine how to address current labor market needs in a targeted way.

A reauthorization of WIOA should focus on these nine principles:

1. Centering workers. A key goal of WIOA is to support good jobs that provide family-sustaining wages that grow the American middle class and lead to economic mobility. Good jobs provide security and standards that incentivize positive working conditions. Policymakers should prioritize outcomes around wages first, not just education and training program completion rates or the number of workers trained, as well as high road training programs and employers. Workers should be given a seat at the table, and worker representation should occur at the state and local levels and include participation from unions. The United States’ workforce development system should support workers’ rights, including collective bargaining rights.
2. Encouraging fair pay. WIOA should encourage pay transparency in the recruitment and hiring process. Workers should be able to expect wages that are stable and predictable and that will increase over time with training and skills development. Policymakers should encourage equity in hiring by promoting policies such as pay audits and eliminating problematic job interview questions on salary history, age, and/or graduation year, which can lead to discrimination and bias.
3. Providing supportive services. Wraparound supports for workers, such as child care, adult care, and transportation, are crucial to ensuring that no workers are left out or behind and promoting equity in the labor market. Supportive services are an evidence-based strategy to help underrepresented workers remain in the workforce. A reauthorization of WIOA should include funding to provide wage subsidies for workers in training and education programs to increase retention and completion rates.
4. Ensuring diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility. WIOA should ensure inclusive access to good jobs for historically marginalized and underrepresented workers. Discussions of policies should include and center the lived experiences of workers and communities who would be affected by these policies to improve program design and outcomes. WIOA should also aim to continue work to increase access for workers with barriers to employment, such as those with disabilities, long-term unemployment, and young people facing challenging circumstances, among others.
5. Promoting skills and career advancement. Training and education services and programs should lead to transferable skills and career advancement. Workers and job seekers should have access to lifelong learning and training opportunities to help them pivot at necessary junctures in their careers.
6. Using evidence-based decision-making. Decisions should be informed by evidence and studies about what works in workforce development and reflect the body of research that has been built since 2015, the year after WIOA’s passage. Good outcomes should be prioritized for workers and job seekers, and proven models should be prioritized and scaled to reach more workers.
7. Prioritizing accountability. A reauthorization should prioritize safeguards for workers, including measuring job quality and outcomes, and maintaining existing protections.
8. Factoring in current technology. The changing role of technology in work should be factored into WIOA program design. Additionally, a reauthorization should include funding and resources for technology to assist job seekers and incumbent workers in taking advantage of aspects of services, such as educational opportunities and career navigation.
9. Aligning with adjacent programs. WIOA reauthorization should take into account the broader ecosystem of federal programs and laws around workforce development and workforce-adjacent programs and align with the broader landscape to maximize outcomes.

The federal workforce system cannot realize the goals of WIOA and the national workforce strategy without adequate funding. Since 2015, the value of WIOA funding has not kept pace with the size of the economy, with inflation plus population growth, or even just with inflation. The current funding level for the employment and training services portion of WIOA is approximately $400 million to $1 billion short when accounting for these economic measures. (see Figure 1)

Furthermore, using fiscal year 2024 WIOA levels, which the analysis above established as already having fallen behind, the Center for American Progress analyzed what a five- and 10-year reauthorization should look like if WIOA funding grows along with inflation, population growth, and gross domestic product. At a five-year authorization level, WIOA would be funded at just more than $5 billion, and at a 10-year authorization level, it would be funded at approximately $6.1 billion.

A reauthorization of WIOA should prioritize the policy areas and recommendations detailed in the sections below.

Higher education and community colleges

Community and technical colleges are a key element of the public workforce system and provide a significant portion of worker and student training. A reauthorization of WIOA should prioritize alignment between higher education and the U.S. workforce system, as well as provide dedicated funding for community and technical colleges. These institutions have a strong track record of responding to local and regional needs and evolving to adapt to a changing economy.¹⁷ Community colleges are well-positioned to provide training at the scale that will be needed to prepare workers for the opportunities created by the Biden administration’s industrial policy agenda.

Community colleges can also serve as anchors of rural communities. Research on 66 public two-year institutions located in rural communities across West Virginia, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina found that in many rural communities, community colleges are the only source of higher education and technical training.¹⁸ Community colleges in rural areas also function as major employers, providers of essential services, and real estate holders, and they drive economic activity in the community.¹⁹ Greater federal investments in community colleges in rural areas would have positive economic development effects.

Furthermore, community colleges enroll disproportionate numbers of demographic groups that are most likely to be left out of the workforce, including Hispanic students (27 percent), women (59 percent), students with disabilities (21 percent), and first-generation students (30 percent).²⁰ These institutions also excel at serving nontraditional²¹ age students, with 43 percent of the students who enroll over the age of 22. This makes community colleges essential pathways for older workers to gain new skills.

A reauthorization of WIOA should ensure a significant increase in funding for community and technical colleges, many of which lack adequate resources, to meet the moment created by recent public investments. Although tuition-free community college fell out of the negotiations that led to the Inflation Reduction Act,²² policymakers should continue to prioritize this proposal as a way to make college more affordable and increase access for low-income students.

A reauthorization of WIOA should also codify, with increased funding, the Strengthening Community College Training Grant program, which provides awards to community colleges and other institutions to develop and provide equitable education and training and create partnerships with employers and the public workforce system.²³ Relatedly, the expired Trade Adjustment Assistance Community College and Career Training grant program²⁴ and the Trade Adjustment Assistance program²⁵ also have useful lessons for providing assistance for workers affected by trade and decades of outsourcing. Both programs are successful models for how to assist workers transitioning into new, in-demand industries and help them attain skills, training, and education, including at community colleges.²⁶

Additionally, policymakers should allocate funding for college-connected and degree apprenticeships to provide resources for colleges to overcome barriers to implementing such programs.²⁷ The momentum for investments in registered apprenticeship programs has increased during the Biden administration²⁸ and can create more high-quality career pathways for workers alongside the other opportunities created by WIOA programs.

Sector training partnerships

A reauthorization of WIOA should invest in sectoral training programs and authorize dedicated federal funding toward them. Sectoral training programs bring together employers, workers, colleges, workforce boards, unions, and community organizations to address workforce needs and better connect workers with in-demand opportunities. In addition to helping match workers with jobs, there is evidence that sector partnerships raise wages for workers involved in the training programs.²⁹

Although states have been required to support sector partnerships through WIOA, there is no dedicated federal funding for this requirement. As a result, workforce systems at the state and local levels often use a patchwork of funding, which can undermine the stability and success of these partnerships.

Existing programs, such as the Wisconsin Regional Training Partnership, the California High Road Training Partnership, or Massachusetts’ Workforce Competitiveness Trust Fund, can serve as models for how to successfully establish sector training partnerships at the federal level.³⁰ Successful sectoral partnerships should lead to transferable skills needed within an industry that can benefit workers through job mobility and career growth.³¹

Sectoral training partnerships could be especially important to address the workforce needs that will arise from the suite of public investment laws passed in the 117th Congress.³² For example, specialized jobs in the semiconductor and clean energy sectors are well positioned to benefit from such training partnerships. Several unions have existing training models for these positions that could be scaled and incorporated into new sectoral training partnerships.

The House-passed Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act of 2022 included a federal program for sectoral training through the Department of Labor. This bill is a valuable model. Another useful model to consider is the Good Jobs Challenge (GJC), which is funded through the American Rescue Plan Act and strengthens regional workforce training systems and sectoral partnerships while removing systemic barriers for workers through support services and creating a variety of paid on-the-job training opportunities.³³ Current awardees, such as Philadelphia Works,³⁴ should provide lessons learned on best practices for sector training partnerships, including among critical industries such as health care and energy.

Another model that focuses on building equity and supporting high-quality jobs is the U.S. Department of Energy’s Solar Energy Technologies Office, which is focusing on developing the domestic solar workforce.³⁵ This initiative prioritizes jobs that are accessible to all workers, provide good wages and benefits, and give workers access to join a union, especially in an industry that has not always provided pathways to high-quality jobs.

Policymakers can also learn lessons for sector training partnerships from labor-management training partnerships, another proven model that helps raise standards for workers and expand workers’ collective power. Labor-management training partnerships help workers find good jobs and support career advancement.³⁶

Among the tradeoffs of sectoral training partnerships is that they can be expensive to fund on the federal level, especially if designed with formula funding as opposed to competitive grants. If part of the program authorizes formula funding, then higher levels of funding are critical to ensure effectiveness and success at scale. At the same time, sectoral training partnerships successfully ensure that training is high quality and leads to in-demand jobs with earnings gains for workers.

Additionally, it is important that a reauthorization prescribe that the funding itself goes primarily to the partnership—and specifically, for the training—in order to be most efficiently used to benefit workers, especially for economically distressed communities. As was the case with the GJC, an intentional process is necessary to ensure that equitable access to opportunities is baked in that will percolate down to the local level. Accountability safeguards should prioritize measuring job quality and outcomes, and existing protections such as prevailing wage requirements can assist with success.

Youth employment

Opportunity youth, or young people between the ages of 16 to 24 who are disconnected from school and work, represent another pool of untapped talent and opportunity for economic mobility. While favorable labor market conditions in the post-pandemic period have increased labor market participation for young people ages 16 to 19, millions still face barriers to employment.³⁷ In 2021, 12 percent of those ages 16 to 24 were opportunity youth—nearly 4.7 million young people.³⁸

Investing in young people is beneficial for them, as well as the economy, and pays off in dividends. Early labor market success is linked with better outcomes for young adults, and these opportunities can lead to greater economic mobility, lifetime earnings, and health outcomes, among other measures.³⁹

There are a variety of ways to support the next generation of workers through WIOA. Investing in pre-apprenticeship and registered apprenticeship programs can benefit those starting out in the labor market. Continuing to align WIOA programs and services with other education and training opportunities for youth, such as career and technical education, work-based learning, and other pathways, can engage youth earlier and expose them to a range of career options.

WIOA is well equipped to serve opportunity youth since it includes WIOA Youth, YouthBuild, and Jobs Corps, which target young people who experience significant barriers to employment. WIOA Youth focuses primarily on out-of-school youth and requires that local areas spend at least 75 percent of WIOA youth funds on this population. YouthBuild is a community-based pre-apprenticeship program that provides job training and educational services for opportunity youth ages 16 to 24 who left school without a degree.⁴⁰ Lastly, Job Corps is a national career training program that serves opportunity youth in a residential program; since 1964, it has trained and educated more than 2 million individuals.⁴¹

WIOA Youth has shown promising results. In 2022, the program served more than 132,000 young people—and 73.7 percent of participants were working or in school or training during the fourth quarter after they had finished a funded program.⁴² Other successful training models also provide valuable lessons, such as Year Up, an up to one-year program focused on education and training services for young people. A 2022 evaluation found significant long-term earnings benefits for program participants, as well as a net benefit on investment of $33,884 per participant.⁴³

One opportunity for policymakers in a reauthorization of WIOA is to create a dedicated federal funding stream to subsidize wages of summer and year-round employment programs. These programs are proven to increase incomes, provide essential skills, and decrease interactions with the criminal legal system.⁴⁴ Policymakers should also consider the unique set of needs and supports of young adults disconnected from work and school after incarceration. A reauthorization of WIOA should dedicate funding toward reentry services for youth, especially supportive services, to help them succeed in the workforce.⁴⁵

It is worth noting that increased access to education and training opportunities for youth comes against the backdrop of a troubling rise in child labor violations across the United States.⁴⁶ Youth employment should be focused on creating high-quality career pathways, not endangering the health and safety of vulnerable young workers.

Older workers

Even as the employed share of “prime working age” Americans⁴⁷ (ages 25 to 54) has recovered to prepandemic levels—and in the case of women,⁴⁸ now exceeds those levels—employment rates still lag for people 55 and older.⁴⁹ Over the next decade, older workers (individuals 55 and older) are predicted to drive 42 percent of U.S. labor force growth,⁵⁰ with women leading the way. In other words, future economic growth will hinge on older workers’ participation in the workforce. While the ranks of older workers have been growing for decades,⁵¹ many need help finding good jobs.

The Senior Community Service Employment Program (SCSEP)⁵² is the only federal employment and training program geared specifically toward people ages 55 and older who want to work but face barriers to securing employment. SCSEP was established by the Older Americans Act of 1965, predating WIOA and some of its prior iterations. Older women account for two-thirds of those served by the SCSEP, and an expansion of the program would help more older women who face significant barriers to finding work.⁵³

A reauthorization of WIOA should continue to prioritize greater alignment and coordination with SCSEP, including through the American Jobs Centers. The job navigation and training needs of older workers are different than the needs of other groups, and information and resource sharing between SCSEP and WIOA will lead to better outcomes for older workers, especially as their needs continue to grow as a share of the labor market.

In addition, WIOA programs could be tailored to the needs of older women workers, including through targeted training, job search support, and supportive services that directly address barriers they face. This is important as the workforce development system often fails to meet the needs of older women because no special programs exist to serve them, despite their unique needs.⁵⁴

Workers with disabilities

Across the country, millions of people with disabilities would benefit from improvements to federal disability employment programs, including Title IV of WIOA, which includes rules around vocational rehabilitation services. In 2023, approximately 1 in 5 people with a disability were employed.⁵⁵ Although this represents the highest percentage recorded since data were first collected in 2008, in 2023, the unemployment rate for people with a disability was nearly double that of people without a disability.⁵⁶ Additionally, adults ages 65 and older represent half of individuals with a disability, meaning that older workers are more likely to have a disability.⁵⁷ A reauthorization of WIOA presents an opportunity to improve Title IV, which authorizes employment-related vocational rehabilitation services for individuals with disabilities.⁵⁸

Equity and access to good jobs

WIOA programs are crucial as part of the federal workforce development strategy to ensure that all workers and job seekers have a pathway to high-quality jobs. WIOA should continue to work toward ensuring equitable access to good jobs for historically marginalized and underrepresented workers. Efforts to increase this access to high-quality jobs continue to face headwinds, and a reauthorization of WIOA should set this goal as a North Star.

Discrimination and inequities in the U.S. workforce system leave many workers out or behind. Policymakers should center the lived experiences of workers and communities who would be affected by workforce development policies to improve program design and outcomes.

A sizable share of the jobs that will be created by public investments made during the Biden administration will be in manufacturing and construction. Yet these industries have a harder time recruiting and retaining women, especially those who are Black or Hispanic. Women are especially underrepresented in higher-paying manufacturing sectors, and the earnings gap is even wider for Black and Hispanic workers.⁵⁹ It is worth noting that manufacturing jobs can vary greatly in terms of wages and job quality, and an increasing share of manufacturing jobs pay less than in the past.⁶⁰

WIOA is another vehicle for policymakers aiming to increase the share of women in male-dominated occupations, including through proven models such as preapprenticeship and registered apprenticeship programs.⁶¹ Policymakers can also leverage community benefits agreements, apprenticeship utilization requirements, and project labor agreements to better connect WIOA participants with jobs created on publicly subsidized projects. Lastly, increased coordination and alignment between workforce development, education, and supportive services can help increase the number of women in better-paying industries and occupations.⁶²

As policymakers consider the reauthorization of WIOA, they should prioritize ensuring outcomes around wages and job quality, not necessarily the number of workers trained in a program. A system that leads to family-sustaining wages and economic mobility is key. In a similar vein, policymakers should address pay equity issues by integrating policies such as pay transparency and pay audits, and eliminating problematic job interview questions on salary history, age, and/or graduation year.

Policymakers should also include sexual harassment trainings and policies to address workplace issues cited by women in the construction and manufacturing fields.⁶³ Existing federal programs, such as the Manufacturing Extension Partnerships, could be leveraged and aligned with WIOA, since a focus of policymakers has been on developing best practices to promote diversity, equity, and inclusion in U.S. manufacturing.⁶⁴

Technology’s benefits for and threats to workers

While technology was affecting workers long before the recent developments around artificial intelligence (AI), a reauthorization of WIOA should account for this changing landscape with regard to workplace technologies and the potential for systemic disruptions.

AI and workplace technologies pose both potential benefits and potential threats to workers. Policymakers must continue to learn how these new technologies are affecting workers—and can do so by centering workers’ voices and collaborating with workers and labor on how these technologies are implemented in the workplace.

Training and education programs will be instrumental to preparing workers to work with AI, as well as to helping them pursue new opportunities in the labor market. More workers will need on-the-job training to develop AI literacy and understand how these technologies will fit into their roles. Therefore, education and training services will need to be nimble, and that will require new systems, resources, and funding.

Additionally, promoting workplace protections, and advancing workers’ rights generally, will give potentially affected workers more power over decisions around technology. Changes at the federal level to strengthen U.S. labor law should support workers’ bargaining rights so that workers who want to form a union can, as well as take additional steps to help workers better use collective bargaining as technology increasingly disrupts industries.⁶⁵

Displaced workers affected by technological changes will need other robust supports as well. Existing social safety net programs, such as unemployment insurance (UI) and the expired trade adjustment assistance from the Department of Labor, could serve as levers should there be job losses due to technological disruption.⁶⁶ Modernizing and expanding UI would be an initial step toward assisting workers. The WIOA Adult and Dislocated Worker Program could also be utilized for workers seeking training and education during periods of transition.

Data collection and evaluation

One of the challenges of the federal workforce system is a lack of sophisticated data systems and evaluation. While WIOA includes the Workforce Data Quality Initiative (WDQI), it represents a very small portion of overall funding. The WDQI is administered jointly by the Department of Labor and the Department of Education, and it has supported the development and improvement of longitudinal administrative databases that integrate data on the workforce and education, including through grants to states since 2010.⁶⁷ Increased funding, as well as a focus on making the data more transparent and accessible, would improve the utility and impact of the WDQI.

A reauthorization of WIOA should further encourage states to collect and report publicly more data on program performance and outcomes, while keeping privacy considerations in mind. This data should be disaggregated to improve efforts around equity, diversity, and job quality. Useful outcomes measures, such as earnings gains or wages upon completion of training, would help policymakers address job quality and promote accountability.

Additionally, some states have described the WIOA state plan process as difficult to understand and administratively burdensome. A reauthorization of WIOA should strive to simplify and streamline these plans with input from states.

Better data would go a long way toward promoting accountability across training and education programs. Additionally, it would provide workers and job seekers the best information when navigating career options and pathways.

National workforce trust

Given that WIOA is chronically underfunded, policymakers should establish a national workforce trust (NWT)⁶⁸ that would share the cost of training for workers by requiring employers of a certain size to pay into the NWT. This would create a sustainable source of funding for workforce development and give more certainty to programs and the workers who benefit from them, especially as there is evidence that employers are investing less in training their workers.⁶⁹

The NWT would be jointly governed by a multistakeholder partnership comprising business, labor, and the public. This partnership would give a seat at the table to relevant stakeholders to prioritize future financial stability and economic mobility for workers.

The NWT could serve as a support for workers as part of a broader domestic AI national strategy, as well as provide additional funding should job loss or displacements occur as these technologies evolve and are implemented across various occupations.

Federal workforce technology infrastructure

The current technology infrastructure that underlies the federal workforce system is outdated and inadequate to meet the current needs of workers and employers alike in the labor market. A reauthorization of WIOA should commit considerable resources to modernizing these systems. The U.S. Digital Service, housed within the Executive Office of the President and tasked with improving and simplifying federal websites, would be well poised to lead this overhaul in partnership with the Department of Labor and the Department of Education, and it should be given the funding and capacity necessary to reimagine current tools, such as CareerOneStop and the American Jobs Centers. A federal effort could benefit from lessons learned from the states that have recently undertaken similar efforts. Additionally, once such a tool is created, it would be beneficial for the federal government to devote resources to advertising the website and resources available to workers and industry.

Policymakers can center workers and job seekers in a reauthorization of WIOA by taking the following steps:

• Prioritize outcomes on earnings, demonstrated earnings gains, and ensure that targeted industries pay above median wages, or a living wage.
• Prioritize alignment between higher education and the workforce system and provide dedicated funding for community colleges.
• Establish a sector training partnerships program with dedicated funding through WIOA.
• Create a dedicated federal funding stream to subsidize the wages of summer and year-round youth employment programs, which are proven to increase incomes, teach essential skills, and decrease interactions with the criminal legal system.
• Invest in increasing labor market participation for older workers via increased funding and supportive services.
• Account for recent technological changes—including artificial intelligence—and promote worker voice and input in how these are implemented in the education and workforce system. Additionally, policymakers should consider how to leverage these technologies to bolster federal workforce technology infrastructure and use new tools for career navigation and other services.
• Encourage states to collect and report publicly more data on program performance and outcomes, while keeping privacy considerations in mind. This data should be disaggregated to improve efforts around equity, diversity, and job quality.

A reauthorization of WIOA presents policymakers with a crucial opportunity to remake and prepare the federal workforce development system for the next decade. From opportunity youth to older workers and everyone in between, generations of Americans should benefit from the education and training programs and opportunities offered by WIOA.

Policymakers should also aim higher and include new, evidence-based strategies, as well as increased funding and resources for the existing system as a whole. Employers, who routinely report difficulty in finding workers, would also benefit from such an effort and should be active participants in the design, implementation, and cost sharing of modernizing the U.S. workforce.

Policymakers should pursue a workforce strategy that centers workers and their rights by ensuring that the jobs created by WIOA lead to family-sustaining wages, career pathways, and mobility and give rise to a stronger American middle class.

The author would like to thank Jared Bass, Karla Walter, Beth Almeida, Stephanie Hall, Sara Partridge, Bobby Kogan, and Kyle Ross at the Center for American Progress for their valuable feedback and contributions to this report.