By: Nick Moore, Performing Assistant Secretary for the Workplace of Profession, Technical, and Grownup Training
A scholar with a welding certificates from his native vocational faculty desires to use for an auto restore gross sales job. However the job description requires automotive expertise or an industry-recognized credential—and the employer isn’t assured that welding abilities will translate to auto restore. In actual fact, the employer isn’t certain easy methods to translate lots of his candidates’ abilities and {qualifications} for this place: night time lessons in engineering, an internet gross sales course, an electrician apprenticeship.
That is America’s workforce problem in a nutshell. College students and employers face a jigsaw puzzle of lessons, trainings, certificates, and postsecondary pathways the place items not often match, leaving expertise untapped and alternatives out of attain.
The workforce advocacy group Credential Engine stories that there are over a million distinctive diploma and non-degree credentials obtainable in america, awarded by a sundry mixture of 60,000 credential suppliers. It’s no marvel employers battle to confirm their worth, and jobseekers lack clear pathways to in-demand jobs. A 2023 UPCEA report exhibits 65% of employers need extra information to validate non-degree credentials. When creating coaching packages, asking the employers within the {industry} what their talent wants are needs to be an apparent strategy to start—however a full 44% of employers stated they’ve by no means been requested to take part within the design of such packages.
To resolve this longstanding drawback, the U.S. Departments of Training and Labor have solid a historic Interagency Settlement (IAA), transferring $2.18 billion in FY 2025 from Training’s finances over to Labor. This cash is meant to manage Perkins V profession and technical training (CTE) and WIOA Title II grownup teaching programs. The partnership, beneath which Labor leads the trouble whereas Training retains oversight, was approved beneath 20 U.S.C. §1231(a) and 31 U.S.C. §1535 and aligns with two Government Orders from President Trump to streamline federal workforce methods and scale back forms on the Division of Training.
This IAA can have far-reaching results. It is going to scale back state reporting burdens, align WIOA and Perkins plans, and create a single federal level of contact for states who need to drive workforce packages. It is going to additionally allow the creation of a nationwide “lingua franca” of abilities credentialing, the place studying is translated into machine-readable, industry-recognized competency statements through Studying and Employment Data (LERs).
LERs are digital information that seize a learner’s abilities—welding, coding, administration, building—as verified competencies. Now, within the AI period, these information factors can rapidly turn out to be a part of a platform whose algorithm matches jobseekers to employers’ skills-based job descriptions, creating interoperable expertise marketplaces that confirm coaching and streamline hiring.
States have already laid stepping stones to this new system. Whereas serving beneath Governor Kay Ivey of Alabama in 2023, I helped launch Expertise Triad—a statewide registry that matched credentials to skill-based job descriptions by means of LERs. Indiana developed the same program, Achievement Pockets, in 2021, by means of a partnership with Western Governors College. Achievement Pockets translated tutorial achievement to in-demand job abilities that employers search for.
Because the IAA with Labor is carried out, we will scale these state-level successes massively by constructing a cohesive nationwide framework through which credentials—diploma or non-degree—function as bundles of verifiable competencies, stackable into versatile profession pathways. We are going to use funds from Perkins Innovation and Modernization (PIM) grants, WIOA, and Registered Apprenticeships to assemble a two-pronged profession pathways mannequin for youth and adults.
For youth, the mannequin will speed up entry to postsecondary training and jobs through work-based studying, micro-credentials, and expertise marketplaces. College students can earn postsecondary credit score whereas exploring careers in high-demand fields, similar to these coping with new technological improvements that don’t but have academic levels related to them. For adults, it provides a number of entry and exit factors, enabling unemployed or underemployed learners to earn stackable credentials, reenter the workforce, profession pivot, and upskill for wage positive factors. AI-driven algorithms will map talent taxonomies, creating interoperable expertise marketplaces that match jobseekers to employers.
By way of this IAA, Training and Labor will revolutionize skills-based training pathways. By unbundling levels into competency-based micro-credentials, modular packages will turn out to be a viable various to diplomas which are changing into outdated. This IAA is our first step towards a unified, skills-driven workforce system—maximizing every learner’s potential and constructing a stronger nationwide workforce.
Nick Moore is Performing Assistant Secretary for OCTAE on the U.S. Division of Training. He beforehand served as Director of Governor Kay Ivey’s Workplace of Training and Workforce Transformation, the place he helped launch the Alabama Expertise Triad initiative.
