Today more than ever, federal policy must support investments in the skills of the American workforce. Lawmakers face an exceptionally challenging fiscal climate, but reducing federal investments in workforce education and training will have an immediate impact on businesses’ ability to find qualified workers and for unemployed workers to retrain for available jobs. It will do lasting damage to our nation’s competitiveness in the 21st-century economy.

To stay ahead in the global marketplace, we need workers who can quickly adapt to new technologies and business processes, and can be active partners in driving innovation and improving service delivery. Despite record unemployment, employers increasingly struggle to find workers with the skills and credentials to fill even current job openings, and to plan for future growth due to uncertainty about federal investments in training.

Click on the tabs below to explore current and historical federal funding for key job training and workforce education programs. Learn how the nation’s current investments can better align with labor market demands and the needs of America’s workforce. For more detailed materials and analysis related to the federal budget, click here. You can also download a complete PDF file of the budget chart here.  

 

Latest Budget News - April 2011

On February 14, President Obama submitted his Fiscal Year (FY) 2012 budget request to Congress, which provides the administration’s proposals for all federal appropriations for the Fiscal Year beginning on October 1, 2011. However, the budget conversation has been significantly impacted by political concerns about rising federal deficits. Just days after the President released his budget request, the House of Representatives passed an FY 2011 continuing resolution (CR) that cut more than $60 billion in federal spending compared to FY 2010 levels, including $3.8 billion in cuts to workforce development programs under the Departments of Education and Labor. While the final CR approved in April 2011 included fewer cuts than the original House version—about $38.5 billion in overall spending reductions, and $1 billion for workforce programs—the debate about the law helped to ensure that deficit reduction and spending cuts remained the focus heading into FY 2012.

On April 15 the House of Representatives approved its FY 2012 budget resolution (H.Con.Res.34).  The resolution sets overall spending limits across nineteen broad “functions,” and provides the guidelines for the appropriations committees as they allocate federal funding for specific programs. The House budget would reduce federal spending by approximately $4.3 trillion over the next ten years, primarily through steep cuts and structural changes in health care, income support, and other programs that have traditionally provided the social “safety net” for working individuals and their families. Of particular concern to workforce development advocates are a series of recommendations and assumptions included in the House budget resolution relating to job training and education assistance programs that promise to significantly reduce access to these critical services for a broad range of U.S. jobseekers and students.

The “Current Funding” charts provide final FY 2011 appropriations for a number of key workforce programs as included in the CR, as well as the President’s proposed funding levels for FY 2012.