Our country can reach its full economic potential only by aligning its workforce's skills with its employers' needs. Despite an improving economy and numerous programs, significant labor market challenges persist for both workers and employers.
Reframing and reimagining workforce development efforts as investments—instead of social services—can lead to scalable solutions and measureable outcomes. Investing in workforce development can bolster the equitable and efficient use of resources, leading to more successful outcomes for individuals, more viability for businesses, and more regional economic growth.
Working together affords businesses, government agencies, nonprofits, and philanthropic organizations a more efficient way to rethink policy and investments, attract new resources, and improve economic mobility for workers. In addition to revealing new funding sources, partnering can leverage existing investments for even greater impact.
A stronger workforce supports a stronger economy. Investing in America's Workforce, a two-and-a-half-year initiative, aims to further that goal through:
-
A series of listening sessions and subsequent report and special topic briefs aimed at gathering and analyzing information and ideas from people working at the intersection of training, recruiting, and finance
-
A national conference where over 300 attendees discussed promising approaches to workforce development
-
A three-volume book offering research, best practices, and resources from a wide range of respected sources on workforce development
-
A training curriculum for Community Reinvestment Act bank examiners regarding qualifying workforce investments under new Interagency Q&A clarifications for the regulation.
Collectively, this work creates a foundation from which a new era of investment in America's workforce can grow.
Questions about the initiative? Please contact the Investing in America’s Workforce team:
investinwork@atl.frb.org