Make America Skilled Again

An outline emerges of Trump’s plan to unify federal job training, boost apprenticeship, and give state governments more control of the money. But experts say the administration’s huge proposed budget cuts say more than its vague rhetoric. Also, an essay on covering living expenses for learners in short-term training.

Big Goals, Bigger Budget Cuts

The opening budget salvo from the Trump administration proposes a broad consolidation of workforce development programs while giving state governments more flexibility in how they spend that money. The White House also called for a huge budget cut to a public workforce system most experts say is woefully underfunded.

Details were light in Trump’s top-line budget request, which “guts a weaponized deep state” by seeking to slash nondefense discretionary spending by $163B—a 23% decline from this year’s budget. 

The proposed cuts include a $1.64B reduction of several workforce funding streams from the Labor Department. Those funds would be consolidated under a new program, dubbed Make America Skilled Again (MASA). Covered grants would include funding under the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act, leaving just shy of $3B in the new program, down from $4.6B.

“The budget proposes to give states and localities the flexibility to spend workforce dollars to best support their workers and economies,” wrote Russell Vought, director of the Office of Management and Budget, “instead of funneling taxpayer dollars to progressive nonprofits finding work for illegal immigrants or focusing on DEI.”

President Trump’s budget plan also would eliminate the $1.8B Job Corps and the $405M Senior Community Service Employment Program. Those cuts would add up to a total 55% reduction to federal funding for state and local job training, according to one estimate, with just $3B allocated in the next budget compared to $6.8B in this fiscal year.

Reactions: A skinny budget from any White House is about signaling priorities. Many of the proposed cuts won’t happen. But these are unpredictable times in Washington.

Workforce pros across a wide political spectrum generally support the Trump administration’s push for some consolidation in the federal workforce system, and to add flexibility through block grant–style funding.

“Block grants are the way to go,” says John Pallasch, a consultant who served as assistant secretary at the Labor Department during the first Trump administration. “You should allow a governor to put his or her reputation on the line.”

On the flexibility front, the department this week issued guidance that encourages state and local workforce boards to use waivers to tap WIOA funds for work-based learning and other training options that fall outside of the traditional parameters of those grants.

However, the strong consensus we heard from workforce experts was that the administration’s proposed budget gashing would overshadow efficiencies or other gains that could be realized even with a very well-executed creation of a MASA system. Most say the big plans sound disingenuous alongside an attempt to cut available federal dollars in half.

“There isn't any amount of flexibility that can absorb that kind of cut without cash-strapped states and tariff-burdened employers kicking in a lot more money,” says one veteran former official at the Labor Department.

Nathalie Gazzaneo, co-director of Harvard University’s Project on Workforce, also notes that block-grant funding has a history of further declining over time, in part because its diffuse nature makes it harder to track outcomes and demonstrate value.

As is, the U.S. only spends about 20% as much, relative to the size of our economy, on workforce development as other advanced economies do. “No structure, no matter how lean or efficient, can overcome a major structural deficit in funding,” Gazzaneo says.

Many experts applauded the budget proposal’s requirement that states spend at least 10% of their MASA grant on apprenticeship. But here, too, they say the flowery pro-apprenticeship rhetoric from Trump’s cabinet members and executive orders doesn’t fit an administration that is cutting funds for apprenticeship programs. Even the 10% requirement could be below current apprenticeship funding levels.

“We want to see the reform,” says Taylor Maag, director of workforce policy at Jobs for the Future. “But we want to ensure that the investment is behind that reform.”

Missing Workers: The National Association of Workforce Boards criticized the scope of the proposed budget cut while calling the consolidation idea poorly defined.

“We find the administration’s FY26 budget request extremely troubling and inconsistent with current workforce development needs across the country,” Brad Turner-Little, the association’s president and CEO, writes in a statement to Work Shift.

Turner-Little points to repeated calls from White House officials to revitalize American manufacturing, meet growing demand for skilled trades, and propel workers into well-paying jobs. That would require an increased investment in the public workforce sector, he says.

“‘Make America Skilled Again’ is a clever slogan,” says Turner-Little, “but a reduction in funding will not accomplish the goal of upskilling more of the American workforce.”

Starving an already anorexic federal workforce system won’t help manufacturing companies and other high-demand industries that the Trump administration says it’s trying to lift up, says Annelies Goger, a fellow at the Brookings Institution.

“Where are the workers going to come from?” she says. “You can’t just turn on a switch.”

Goger also says federal data systems fall well short of being able to adequately track results of workforce programs, calling for much more fundamental data systems policy.

But the big story, she and others say, are the proposed funding cuts.

“Any time there are block grants and consolidation, that means less money,” says Jane Oates, a senior policy advisor for WorkingNation who led the Labor Department’s Employment and Training Administration during the Obama administration.

Trump’s call to abruptly eliminate Job Corps, a free career training program for young people, and the Senior Community Service Employment Program, which provides job training and subsidized employment to low-income seniors, also alarmed a wide range of experts.

Few would dispute that both programs are flawed and in need of substantial fixes. (The department released data on Job Corps.) But even some critics say cutting off the vulnerable people who receive those services without some form of replacement would be a mistake, one that could be an existential crisis for some recipients.

“If they go to Job Corps, that’s their last chance,” says Oates.

Mixed Signals on Apprenticeship

Leaders in the workforce space were glad to see a continued focus on apprenticeship, both in the budget proposal and in executive orders last week—including one setting a goal for the country to hit 1M apprentices.

In that order, the administration specifically said it would expand registered apprenticeships—which was notable given that the first Trump administration eschewed that system and instead attempted to create a new class of industry-recognized apprenticeships. A second order on AI in education also called for a major role for apprenticeship.

Workforce leaders across the political spectrum publicly celebrated the elevation of registered apprenticeship. However, many we spoke with also cautioned that the specifics are still quite vague.

“As with many things in this administration, the devil is really in the details,” says Harin Contractor, director of workforce innovation at the Burning Glass Institute, who worked on apprenticeship in the Biden White House. 

Both federal spending cuts and economic uncertainty may work against the stated goals of the current White House.

To meaningfully expand apprenticeship in the U.S. requires not only sound policy and infrastructure—but also employer demand for skilled workers, says Deborah Kobes, senior fellow at the Urban Institute. “Success also depends on how much uncertainty exists in the market, because apprenticeship is a long-term strategy.”

What We Know: As of now, it doesn’t appear that the administration plans to put federal dollars behind its big goal, at least in the coming year.

• The budget proposal would direct states to spend at least 10% of their MASA workforce funds on apprenticeship. With current funding for registered apprenticeships at $285M, that would essentially keep funding flat. 

However, the budget document also did not specify that the 10% requirement would be for registered apprenticeships, and it stressed state control and flexibility. It’s unclear whether that was intentional signaling that states would be able to spend the funds outside of the registered system or if it was simply an oversight.

Work Shift reached out to both the Department of Labor and the Office of Management and Budget for clarification and additional detail on the proposal but had not heard back by press time.

“So far with this skinny budget we have no idea,” says Mary Alice McCarthy, senior director of the Center on Education and Labor at New America. “What we do know is that DOL is canceling grants and contracts to support the expansion of registered apprenticeship.”

A grant for teacher apprenticeships that New America was partnering with RTI International on was canceled just last week, she says. And others were cut in earlier rounds of grant cancellations as part of the Department of Government Efficiency’s cost-cutting and anti-DEI efforts.

“Any growth is going to require investment at the state and federal level,” says Vanessa Bennett, director of the Center for Apprenticeship & Work-Based Learning at Jobs for the Future. The group is out this week with a new apprenticeship policy blueprint that it hopes will inform federal and state action.

Stepping Back: Taken together, the executive orders, the budget proposal, and cuts to Labor Department staff make it clear the Trump administration plans to give much more responsibility for and control over apprenticeship to the states.

Many workforce experts expect that will include a push to move all program approval authority to the states, through State Apprenticeship Agencies (SAAs). The current system includes a mix of state and federal approval authority, with just under half of states still relying on the department’s Office of Apprenticeship to register and provide technical assistance for programs.

The number of states with their own apprenticeship agencies, the SAAs, has already been growing.

State View: Alabama made that move five years ago. Josh Laney heads the Office of Apprenticeship there, which is highly regarded by other states. He favors a state-led model for apprenticeship, in part because it can be more responsive to regional needs and to smaller employers. But that structure still requires strong coordination at the federal level, he says.

As it is, there is already too much inconsistency across states, with no universal occupational standards and limited reciprocity—which makes it hard for workers who move between states, and for employers with a multistate footprint.

“It still needs to be a national system,” he says.

Laney also questions the focus on growing the sheer number of apprentices—which has been a common goal metric in both Republican and Democratic administrations. In Alabama, his office focuses on the number of employers served and whether apprenticeships are moving people into high-impact occupations.

His biggest concern, though, would be a plan that just lumps apprenticeships in with WIOA programs, without major changes to the restrictions and reporting requirements that have historically turned employers off. Any such changes would have to be done through legislation in Congress.

The Kicker: “We don’t want apprenticeship to look more like WIOA,” Laney says. “We want WIOA to look more like apprenticeship.”

—By Elyse Ashburn

Open Tabs

Tracking Cuts
The newly launched Grant Watch tracks the Trump administration’s termination of research grants from the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation, Kathryn Palmer reports for Inside Higher Ed. Beyond posts by DOGE on X, little public information is available about slashed grants. Grant Watch has tallied 1K eliminated NSF grants, worth roughly $780M. The agency has stopped awarding new grants and funding existing ones.

Changing Accreditors
The U.S. Department of Education is moving to comply with President Trump’s executive order calling for colleges to be allowed to more freely change accreditors, and for the department to review new accreditors. The new guidance describes reasons colleges can make such a change, including a shift in state law. The department also lifted a temporary pause the Biden administration had placed on reviewing applications for potential new accreditors.

CS and AI
Taking a single computer science course in high school boosts wages by 8% for all students, regardless of career path or whether they attend college, according to a letter signed by 250-plus CEOs. The petition created by CS for All calls for making computer science and AI a required part of every school’s curriculum, citing bipartisan support for those requirements. It has been signed by leaders of major corporations in tech and finance, among others.

College for All
A high school education should be aligned with both college prep and in-demand vocational career pathways, Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, writes in The New York Times. She cites examples of noncollege training programs with roles for unions, including one aimed at the microchip sector. Weingarten also notes that career-connected learning is an area of rare common ground in U.S. politics.

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