House and Senate Reach Agreement on WIOA Reauthorization Bill But Concerns Remain
On Thursday, Nov. 21, 2024, leaders of the House Education and the Workforce Committee and the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee announced that they have reached a bipartisan and bicameral agreement on legislation to reauthorize the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA) for the next five years.
Details, including legislative text, have not yet been made public. However, committee leaders provided a high-level initial briefing earlier today highlighting some of the major components of this proposal. The new bill largely appears to build on the House bill, A Stronger Workforce for America Act (HR 6655), about which we expressed significant concerns when it was passed by the House earlier this year.
Similar to H.R. 6655, the bipartisan agreement would maintain a narrowly defined 50% training mandate for Title I Adult and Dislocated Worker funding streams. The emerging agreement would, however, allow for up to 8% of this required training services expenditure to be used for supportive services—a small departure from this provision in the House’s earlier WIOA proposal.
Details regarding state-level set-asides remain unclear, but committee leaders have indicated that these funds would support statewide initiatives similar to the House and Senate’s proposals regarding critical industry skills funds and sector partnership efforts. It also remains unclear how local workforce area redesignation efforts, another area of significant concern for NAWB and other local partners, would be structured in this agreement.
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