Sec. 2. Findings

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Congress finds the following: About 60 percent of workers in the United States do not hold a 4-year college degree. These almost 70,000,000 workers in the United States without a bachelor’s degree have gained marketable skills through on-the-job training, boot camps, micro-credentialing programs, community colleges, and many other types of job training programs. Short-term workforce training programs have been growing in demand. Polling data finds that people in the United States are increasingly seeking education programs that are relevant for work and suited to their personal needs.

Over the past 2 years, even as community college enrollment has dropped, boot camps, and online training programs are growing in size and market share. Federal job training policy should focus on making more funding available to support high-quality sectoral training programs, including wraparound supports. Policymakers should prioritize options that boosts Federal funding for cohort-based sectoral training programs, including through the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act.

Complementary models could include grant competitions that encourage cross-sector partnerships and support training investments for high priority roles (e.g. the Department of Commerce’s Good Jobs Challenge). Further, the working poor are a pool of invisible talent and the source for a revitalized workforce to fill high-demand jobs in manufacturing, energy, health, technology, and science sectors of the economy. More than 32 percent of the United States labor force, or 51.9 million workers, currently make less than $15 an hour and 1.1 million workers earn wages at the prevailing Federal minimum wage ($7.25 an hour, or $14,137 a year).

Using United States Census Bureau data, the Bureau of Labor Statistics determined that 6,300,000 workers were living at or below the official poverty level in 2020, which represented 4.1 percent of the total workforce (U.S. Department of Labor, September 2022) and 25 percent of working families can be considered working poor. The United States is experiencing a long-term labor shortage, The Demographic Drought . As the size of the United States working age population shrinks, the country is experiencing record-low rates of labor participation, and it has the lowest birth rates in history.

Economic growth is dependent on a reliable supply of skilled and ready to work employees. The economy is expected to add 12,000,000 jobs between 2020 and 2030. Science, technology, engineering, and mathematics ( STEM ) occupations will experience the highest growth rates. Occupations in the STEM field are expected to grow 8 percent by 2029, compared with 3.7 percent for all other occupations. As of April 2023, there were 10,100,000 job openings and only 5,700,000 people looking for work (U.S.

Department of Labor April 2023 Employment Report). About 60 percent of workers do not have a bachelor’s degree, and about 45 percent of workers have a bachelor’s degree. More than 39 million people in the United States have attended some college but earned no degree. A 2015 evaluation by the Aspen Institute’s Economic Opportunities Program documented that poor, unemployed, and under employed students who earned an industry-recognized credential landed high skill entry level positions and earned 18 percent more in income than a similar group of people who did not receive this type of training.

African American men face a range of challenges in the labor market which hinder their employment opportunities. African American men comprise about 13 percent of the male population, but 35 percent of those incarcerated. One in 3 African American men born today can expect to be incarcerated in his lifetime, compared to 1 in 6 Latino men and 1 in 17 White men. African American women are similarly affected where 1 in 18 African American women born in 2001 are likely to be incarcerated sometime in her life, compared to 1 in 111 white women.

The effect of these realities is devastating and enduring, formerly incarcerated people are unemployed at a rate of over 27 percent which is higher than the total United States unemployment rate during any historical period, including the Great Depression. More must be done to break the cycle of generational poverty and reduce racial, economic, and social disparities in the United States.