People Investment Strategy

Oklahoma partners with Guild for a fresh take on industry-driven skills training, backed by the Trump administration. Also, the president’s requested budget cuts to workforce programs, the latest on AI and job displacement, an essay on fixing the school-to-employment system, a research brief on semiconductor investments and workforce development, and a new reporting fellowship. (Subscribe here.)

Public-Private Workforce Training

The new Oklahoma Talent Accelerator is an employer-led and performance-based take on job training, with a focus on high-demand roles in industries that are driving economic growth in the state. It also could be a model for federally backed workforce training.

The accelerator, which went live in February, received $6M from the U.S. Department of Labor. That award was part of the $86M Industry-Driven Skills Training Fund, which supports workforce projects across 14 states. The Trump administration says the experimental fund seeks to help fill “mortgage-paying jobs” across shipbuilding, AI, advanced manufacturing, and other critical industries.

Training under the grants is for recent hires or the upskilling of workers. Awards went to state workforce agencies, which were required to partner with employers in key industries to apply. Participating firms get partial, outcomes-based reimbursement of training costs on a per-employee basis. 

The Oklahoma Employment Security Commission leads the state’s accelerator project, which is focused on aerospace and defense, advanced manufacturing, and AI infrastructure. Employers can offset up to 80% of their training costs through the initiative.

“It’s a people investment strategy,” says Trae Rahill, the commission’s CEO and a chief advisor to Kevin Stitt, the state’s Republican governor.

The goal for the accelerator is to expand worker access to employer-funded upskilling, to empower them to move forward in their careers and earn higher wages. The state project also seeks to help employers forge deeper relationships with job training providers, including community colleges.

“We want to be very ambitious in serving the ultimate outcomes of people in business,” Rahill says. “We’re performance focused, not compliance focused.”

Guild is helping to coordinate the project as a grant subrecipient. The workforce development company has expanded beyond corporate education benefits and now also works on public sector projects. For example, Guild has partnered with the City of Birmingham, Ala., and UAB Medicine on a healthcare training program that includes job placement assistance. The city received federal funding for that effort through the $500M Good Jobs Challenge from the Biden administration.

The public sector work is a direct extension of Guild’s model, says Zoe Barrett, who heads public sector partnerships for the company: “We’ve spent years helping to solve workforce transformation challenges for employers that span across state lines and manage a wide range of talent complexities.”

Barrett says the hurdles states face are remarkably similar. 

“Just like employers, states are seeking better alignment between their workforce strategies and priority talent pathways,” she says, “which requires closer ties to learning institutions and the ability for those institutions to act nimbly.”

For the project in Oklahoma, Rahill says, the state wanted a strategy that looked across agencies and pulled in the many industry and education partners necessary to make it pay off for workers and employers.

“It’s about activating as many people as possible,” he says. “Employers are our most important customers.”

Rahill says Guild offered a proven track record of engaging company partners. “We are not as good at that as we’d like to think across government,” he says. “We wouldn’t have won that grant without Guild.”

The project seeks to train 700 workers. The grant will reimburse training of up to $12,500 per participant. Employers cover training costs up front and can later receive reimbursements tied to performance milestones. 

Eligible training programs ideally should take less than two years to complete, for roles in supply chain and logistics, maintenance technicians, aviation management, operations, and engineering technologies. Flexibility is baked into the accelerator’s approach, with training that could range from short-term credential programs to apprenticeships.

“We don’t know what sector-specific employment is going to look like in five years,” says Rahill.

America Achieves helped Oklahoma land the $6M grant and is a strategic advisor for the project. The nonprofit has worked with dozens of communities around the country to design and secure roughly $250M in bipartisan economic and workforce development initiatives.

Jon Schnur, the group’s CEO, says the grant-backed Oklahoma accelerator is a powerful example of a public-private partnership. State workforce initiatives often fail to simultaneously expand access to good jobs and the talent supply for critical industries, he says. And a lack of employer engagement and skin in the game is a common challenge.

“Oklahoma is driving ambitious, performance-based solutions to address those problematic gaps,” says Schnur.

Rahill is confident that the capacity the state develops for the project will have long-lasting benefits, including for state agencies with purviews ranging from commerce to education to corrections.

The Kicker: “This is the one massive unlock project,” says Rahill. “It could be a cure-all for a lot of government institutions.”

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A Rinse, Repeat Workforce Budget

The president’s budget request for the 2027 fiscal year re-ups plans to consolidate and cut workforce programs that are nearly identical to proposals Congress rejected last year. The big difference is that the overall budget proposal sets up a far more dramatic fight between military and domestic spending this year—and it’s not clear how that will play out.

The Trump administration has again proposed consolidating a host of programs—including registered apprenticeship and the adult, youth, and dislocated worker programs under the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act—into a new “Make America Skilled Again” block grant for states. It would then cut the combined funding for those programs down to $3.4B, a roughly $1.1B reduction from this year’s estimated spending. 

States would be required to spend at least 10% of their allotted funds on registered apprenticeship, which would represent a bump for apprenticeship appropriations. In a new move this year, the Labor Department’s budget doc also calls for setting aside an additional 3% of the MASA funding for efforts to modernize and expand apprenticeships, as the administration hopes to hit a goal of 1M apprentices a year

Other workforce programs would see steep cuts, with overall funding for the Labor Department reduced by 26%, from $13.4B this year to $9.9B. A large chunk would come through eliminating Job Corps and the Senior Community Service Employment Program. The budget would also officially move career and technical education programs to the Labor Department and keep funding for Perkins Act grants steady.

Oddsmaking: The president’s budget is just the opening of negotiations. Last year Congress largely ignored the White House’s wishes for cuts and consolidation in workforce programs. Democrats have vowed to do so again.

“Last year, I said I’d rip up President Trump’s budget and make sure Congress wrote a new one instead—that’s exactly what we did and will do again,” Senator Patty Murray, a Washington Democrat and vice chair of appropriations committee, told Bloomberg Law.

Republican members’ response to the overall budget was more mixed, Politico reports. Many rallied around the call to dramatically increase military spending, but others were skeptical about the steep cuts that would be required to domestic spending.

It is, after all, an election year, and one in which voters are riled up about the cost of living. —By Elyse Ashburn

Tracking AI’s Impacts on Jobs

A growing number of economists are joining AI industry insiders and corporate leaders in worrying about AI’s potential to disrupt the job market.

While evidence remains elusive, some experts think the technology already is displacing workers in customer service, marketing, software, and other industries. And AI’s impacts may be starting to emerge in labor market data, with new reports finding that AI-driven job creation and elimination during the past year resulted in a tiny net decline in employment.

AI continues to advance rapidly. For example, Anthropic is previewing an unreleased frontier model, Mythos, with 40 major tech firms. Many experts agree with Anthropic’s view that Mythos is a step change that could pose serious cybersecurity risks.

Meanwhile, resistance to data centers grows amid a broader public backlash to AI, with some saying the tech could dramatically worsen this country’s massive wealth gap. And urgency is building over policy debates about how to help AI-displaced workers find their footing in a rapidly transforming economy.

I’ll be bringing back the Cusp podcast soon to tackle some of these questions. This season of the show will focus on which workers are most at risk, as well as on education and training programs that could prepare Americans for AI-driven challenges and opportunities. Who should I interview? Which topics should we explore?

Open Tabs

Skilled Trades
The Lowe’s Foundation will invest $250M to help train and develop 250K skilled tradespeople by 2035. The foundation says the fivefold expansion of its workforce investment is in response to an urgent labor shortage. The investment will back partnerships with nonprofits and community colleges. The foundation also is enhancing its CareerStarter job connection platform and releasing a three-part film series on aspiring skilled tradespeople.

Job Alignment
The National Association of Higher Education Systems, through an expanded partnership with the National Student Clearinghouse, will connect academic data with workforce data from the U.S. Census Bureau. The project from the association, which includes systems of community colleges as well as universities, seeks to create a foundation for system-level insights that support program alignment, advising, transfer pathways, and workforce relevance.

AI Skills
The U.S. Department of Labor is seeking to accelerate the integration of AI skills into registered apprenticeships, in part to strengthen workforce pipelines for data centers, telecomm, and advanced manufacturing. It seeks a contractor as a national intermediary for the effort. The department also signed an MOU with the National Science Foundation on AI-related workforce development, solidifying a partnership with the NSF on an AI skills training program.

Job Moves
Debbie Cochrane has been appointed executive director of the California Education Interagency Council. Cochrane has been chief of the state’s Bureau for Private Postsecondary Education since 2021, and previously worked at the Institute for College Access & Success.

Shruti Sehra has been appointed CEO of New Profit, a venture philanthropy organization. Molly O’Donnell is the new president. Both are veterans at the group. Tulaine Montgomery has stepped down as CEO.

I’ll be at ASU+GSV next week. Please say hi in the lobby if you’re there? If this newsletter was forwarded to you, subscribe here. —PF