Introduction
Five hundred tollbooth operators lost their jobs instantly last summer when the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission announced that a temporary expansion of electronic toll collection implemented to slow the spread of COVID-19 would remain in place permanently.1 Layoffs at Nordstrom Trunk Club, a styling service in Chicago that helped customers pick out new clothes, cost 446 workers their jobs.2 In Texas, the Gaylord Texan Resort in Grapevine laid off 1,426 employees between March and June; in July, nearly 900 lost their jobs at three J.C. Penney locations across the state.3
These are just a few examples of the surge in layoffs across the United States caused by the coronavirus pandemic. The pandemic recession put into sharp focus the labor market challenges facing workers, especially those without a college degree.4 The federal government in the U.S. spends far less as a percentage of GDP on job training and public employment than most other advanced economies,5 and when job loss occurs—even in the absence of a global crisis—laid-off workers may find only patchy support.
But the federal government is not the only source of public funding for job training and skills development. Most states also provide their own funding for workforce development,6 often with a focus on short job training programs that aim to help workers move quickly into new careers.
This brief begins by framing state workforce training policies in the context of a growing body of research on certificate and other workforce training programs. I then propose a structural taxonomy of three types of state policies that support workforce training, which focus respectively on program participants, training providers, and employers.7 Next, I use case studies of Indiana and Washington to provide examples where participant-, provider-, and employer-focused workforce training policies are combined to better support training access, utilization, and business engagement. The brief concludes with six state policy recommendations as well as suggestions for supporting state workforce training efforts through federal recovery spending.
Citations
- “News Release: PA Turnpike Announces 500 Fare-Collection Layoffs Due to Coronavirus Impacts,” Penna Turnpike Media & Public Relations, June 2, 2020, source
- Illinois WorkNet (website), “Archived WARN Reports,” June 2020, source
- Texas Workforce Commission (website), “Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Notices,” 2020, source and Natalie Walters, “March-September D-FW Layoffs Include 1,600 Workers at J.C. Penney and Hilton Hotels,” Dallas Morning News, July 23, 2020, source
- David Autor and Elisabeth Reynolds, The Nature of Work after the COVID Crisis: Too Few Low-Wage Jobs (Washington, DC: The Hamilton Project: July 2020), 3, source
- Among the 37 generally high-income economies represented by members of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), only Mexico spends less as a percentage of GDP (0.0 percent) than the U.S. (0.25 percent) on labor market investments such as training and public employment. OECD Data (website), “Public Spending on Labour Markets,” source
- Forty states provide some non-federal funding for workforce training initiatives, such as scholarships for certificate programs or grants or reimbursement for incumbent worker training. For a discussion of state incumbent worker training programs, see Amanda Bergson-Shilcock, Funding Resilience: How Public Policies Can Support Businesses in Upskilling Workers for a Changing Economy (National Skills Coalition, August 2020), source, which details such programs in 30 states. In this brief, I also describe state workforce training initiatives in Florida, Georgia, Michigan, and Virginia. Arizona, Kansas, Maine, Missouri, North Dakota, and Ohio also use state funds to support workforce training initiatives but are not discussed in this brief.
- In this paper, the term participants is used to refer to individuals enrolled in workforce training programs. I use this term instead of students to avoid implying that all are enrolled in colleges. Participants in incumbent worker training programs, for example, may not be. Job seekers would exclude incumbent workers who participate in training while already employed.