My name is Brad Turner-Little, and I am privileged to serve as the President and CEO of the National Association of Workforce Boards (NAWB). We represent the nation’s nearly 600 Workforce Development Boards, which coordinate with education and economic development stakeholders to administer regional workforce programs to meet the needs of jobseekers, employers, and their communities. 

I appreciate the opportunity to submit this testimony in support of an increased federal investment in the primary Title I formula programs authorized by the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA), including Adult and Dislocated Worker Employment and Training, and Youth Employment Activities. Specifically, we encourage the subcommittee to invest at least $3.08 billion, collectively, for these three WIOA programs as part of the FY2025 Labor-HHS-Education appropriations bill. This represents a five percent increase over current levels of investment. 

Right now, there are approximately 6.5 million jobseekers in America. And there are an estimated 8.5 million jobs that businesses are struggling to fill. How do these two populations find each other? In many cases, it is a local Workforce Development Board. 

How do Workforce Development Boards (WDBs) implement WIOA? 

• WDBs are the conveners, collaborators, and navigators of the public workforce ecosystem facilitating opportunities that leverage a wide variety of federal, state, and local stakeholders and investments to support economic expansion and develop the talent of the nation’s workforce. 
• WDBs bring together members of the business community, local community colleges, training providers, elected officials, nonprofit organizations, and workforce program leaders to evaluate the local employment landscape and match workers and employers with opportunities within in-demand and growing segments of our economy. 
• WDBs preside over more than 2,000 American Job Centers across the country that directly deliver services to workers and employers. 
• WDBs help job seekers identify opportunities for employment and then support individuals in identifying the education and training programs needed to be successful. 
• WDBs create training opportunities in the community—according to local employment needs—which provides young people and workers with new skills, and underemployed workers with more skills to remain competitive. 
• WDBs cultivate partnerships with employers, leverage labor market information, and craft training solutions to meet identified talent needs and related challenges. 

The results are clear: In the most recent program year, core WIOA programs served three million individuals across the nation, many with the most significant challenges to finding and obtaining family-sustaining employment. Over 70 percent of all individuals served during this period were employed after receiving critical career and training services. These same individuals also earned more than 100,000 credentials of value. 

WDBs must be prepared to respond to national trends such as artificial intelligence (AI), tech, outmoded industries, robotics, and more. WDBs need greater resources to achieve these objectives. 

Just last week, the Senate unveiled its bipartisan roadmap addressing challenges related to AI. This included a clear call-to-action related to workforce policy, “…a conscientious consideration of the impact AI will have on our workforce, including the potential for job displacement and the need to upskill and retrain workers.” 

Upskilling and retraining workers is precisely the work funded by WIOA. 

The roadmap concludes, “…[T]here are opportunities to collaborate with and prepare the American workforce to work alongside this new technology and mitigate potential negative impacts. Therefore, the AI Working Group encourages…[d]evelopment of legislation related to training, retraining, and upskilling the private sector workforce to successfully participate in an AI-enabled economy. Such legislation might include incentives for businesses to develop strategies that integrate new technologies and reskilled employees into the workplace, and incentives for both blue- and white-collar employees to obtain retraining from community colleges and universities.” 

The bipartisan Senators who wrote this roadmap (Senators Schumer, Rounds, Heinrich, and Young) agreed that the roadmap should inform public policy, and investing in WIOA presents a critical opportunity to do so. 

It should be noted that investing in WIOA is a win-win: it shores up the ability of workers and jobseekers to remain competitive in a changing labor market, and it helps employers find the workers they need to be successful. 

There may not be a more vital investment Congress can make than WIOA in terms of boosting our economy by matching skilled workers with businesses that are hiring, especially for in-demand sectors of our shared economy. 

Unfortunately, funding for core Title I WIOA programs has eroded steadily over the past several decades. Without an increased investment for these programs, both jobseekers and businesses will face greater difficulty in training and hiring skilled workers. 

For example, as pointed out by one of our local WDB members in Kansas, funding from WIOA has fallen by 46% in the last 10-12 years, in real dollar terms not accounting for the impacts of inflation. 

In Mobile, Alabama a WDB reports a decrease of approximately 40% in the last 5 years, limiting their service to those that are seeking training for higher paying jobs, the businesses that are wanting to take advantage of On-the-Job Training, and the youth that are interested in Work Experience programs. Sydney Raine, president of the Southwest Alabama Partnership for Training and Employment explains, “We feel that we are suffering because one of the factors of funding is unemployment rates. This rate is low because we have many individuals that have exhausted their unemployment benefits; therefore, they are no longer counted in the unemployment rate...These individuals are still in the labor participation rate and are seeking skills and/or employment opportunities that pay self-sufficient wages. With our funding being decreased we are experiencing that we can’t serve all that are seeking help.” 

Increasing the investment in WIOA remains a critical way for Congress to ensure that employers have the skilled talent they need to be successful while also supporting some of our most vulnerable and underserved populations in participating within the labor market. This is especially important as the national labor force participation rate has yet to rebound to pre-pandemic levels and as tight labor conditions persist across the nation. 

NAWB therefore urges you to provide at least $3.08 billion for core Title I WIOA programs in FY25 which we believe would be an important first step and downpayment toward closing this funding gap that has grown considerably over time. 

I once again thank you for allowing me to provide this testimony to the Subcommittee.