Early this month, the White House announced details for a plan to help 1 million young adult Americans gain the experience and skills they need to enter the workforce.
According to a statement, President Obama is proposing $3 billion in competitive funding from his fiscal year 2017 budget to create more than 50 “Talent Hotspots” across the country. Called “American Talent Compact,” the program would expand talent pipelines in more than 50 regions to fill open jobs and attract new jobs from overseas. Employers, training programs, and workforce and economic development leaders would prioritize one sector and make a commitment to “recruit and train the workforce to help local business grow and thrive, attract more jobs from overseas and fuel the talent needs of entrepreneurs.” This would produce roughly a half a million skilled workers over the next five years.
Through a $500 million Workforce Data Science and Innovation Fund, the U.S. Labor Department would also help states find new ways to use technology and data analytics to improve training programs, as well as develop new open source data on jobs and skills to spur creation of new products to help match workers to better jobs.
The statement also said $200 million would be dedicated to the development and expansion of youth apprenticeship and pre-apprenticeship programs.
