The new Industry-Led Talent Initiative charts a path for changing how employers and public systems work together. Also, an essay from the project’s co-leaders on how governors should think differently about the role of employers in career education, and the National Accreditation Commission models its approach to quality assurance for noncredit and nondegree programs. (Subscribe here.)

Workforce Development That Delivers

Employers need to play more of a lead role if we’re going to see real progress in closing gaps between education and work. That’s the general expert consensus, at least. But the details get fuzzy in how to make that happen.

The new Industry-Led Talent Initiative offers a concrete vision for making employers true partners in the public systems that build talent.

Businesses know which jobs are opening, what skills those jobs require, which credentials matter in hiring, and what real on-the-job learning looks like, argues the project, which went live this week. And industry representatives participate in tens of thousands of advisory committees, surveys, and sign-off requests each year.

“Employers are asked for input on education and training all the time, but they rarely have a meaningful role in shaping what gets taught or built,” says Ashley Carter, a veteran workforce consultant.

To make the case for change, Carter teamed up with Kelly Vedi, a senior director of policy at the College Board, who has worked in education and government. They brought together 14 workforce leaders from sector intermediaries, employer coalitions, state systems, policy organizations, philanthropy, and research.

The group met during the first half of this year to discuss what it would take for employers to have a more engaged, clearly defined role in the public systems that train people for work, and for those systems to act on what employers recommend.

They settled on four system changes states can make:

  • Recognize and fund employer-led sector intermediaries—industry associations, employer coalitions, chambers of commerce—as core workforce infrastructure.
  • Create a formal, coordinated channel for employers to bring priorities to the state.
  • Fund the workforce strategies the sector identifies, and align program funding to its demand picture.
  • Report the hiring and wage outcomes of every program across the workforce development ecosystem.

“There is a real opportunity to invest in the capacity of employer-led intermediaries,” Carter says. “And it’s not all that expensive.”

Some states already have built pieces of an industry-led talent system. Among case studies from the group’s members, the project in particular pointed to:

  • Ohio, where manufacturers built a skills standard the state adopted.
  • How philanthropy in Indiana is standing up one employer voice per industry.
  • Washington’s move to select and fund 10 sector leaders and to define the role in statute.

“We’ve drawn elements from all of these models,” Carter says.

The initiative includes a focus on ensuring that public workforce systems deliver good jobs for the people they train. That means using performance-based systems to make investments in job training and education programs that lead to family-sustaining wages and careers with room for growth. 

“We want the workforce system to work better for the workers,” says Vedi.

Carter and Vedi started the project on their own time. They chose to make it an ongoing conversation and collaboration rather than a report, citing interest from practitioners and funders. After the group began meeting, a private foundation stepped in to fund the work. Carter says the foundation wants to learn from the initiative as it develops its own workforce strategy, and it asked not to be named until that strategy launches.

The launch follows an election last week where 36 states elected governors. The project’s goal is to help state leaders who want their workforce agendas to deliver real results for employers, students, and workers.

To hear more about that vision, click over to Work Shift to read an essay by Carter and Vedi. You can reach out to the initiative here.

Accreditation and Workforce Pell

The U.S. Department of Education says one of the key goals of its new regulations for accrediting agencies is to encourage competition through new entrants, including by eliminating the requirement that agencies must accredit an institution or program for at least two years before applying for recognition.

That means an accreditor could now get up and running much quicker. The rules also say agencies can’t “categorically prohibit or unreasonably restrict the accreditation of short-term programs designed to prepare students for employment in recognized occupations eligible for federal student aid.”

The new regs could give a lift to the National Accreditation Commission, which is seeking recognition to become a programmatic accreditor specializing in short-term, noncredit offerings. Those are the sort of training programs that could be covered by new Workforce Pell Grants, reporter Matthew Arrojas writes this week in Work Shift.

Four years since its founding, the upstart agency has a notable list of partners including the Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities and Idaho State University, which is piloting its accreditation model.

Idaho State tapped NAC as it began wrestling with how its programs might fit into Workforce Pell. University leaders told Arrojas that the fledgling accreditor is helping the university to evaluate and scale its workforce training programs efficiently and responsibly.

“It’s a signal to students and the marketplace that these are quality programs,” says Matt Freeman, associate officer for Idaho State’s Albion Institute, which manages the development and delivery of career-focused nondegree programs.

Read the full article by Arrojas.

Open Tabs

New Philanthropy
Tandem Foundation is a new philanthropy that seeks to address gaps in education, training, and employment systems. With a launch planned for spring 2027, the foundation has an endowment of more than $500M. It was created with the sale of ACT and is led by Rachel Korberg, the former executive director and co-founder of the Families and Workers Fund. Tandem’s site mentions apprenticeships, employer-connected training, and community colleges.

AI and Jobs
Gartner forecasts that AI will drive a net increase of 1.7M jobs globally by 2030. The research firm estimates that the technology will generate 10.6M new jobs over that time period while eliminating 8.9M roles. Impacts will be distributed unevenly across geographies, job functions, and industries. But job losses will impact only up to 1.8% of workers globally, while more than one in five workers will have to adapt to the new shape of work in their jobs.

Infrastructure Buildout
Data centers in Texas appear to require remarkably little operational labor, according to a peer-reviewed study of 64 facilities and county job data from 2000 to 2024. The researchers found a short-term bump in construction jobs, but no lasting growth in total or tech-related employment. They caution that it’s early days for data center construction and use, and that massive new facilities could produce different results.

AI and Learning
Compass Collaborative is a new initiative of the Harvard Graduate School of Education that brings decades of cross-disciplinary research on learning and development to shape AI that reaches learners. It will convene developmental scientists, researchers, educators, and the people who are building the technology, with a goal of providing practical guidance for wisely using AI across different ages and stages of life.

Work-Based Learning
Degree apprenticeship is a promising way to promote economic mobility, but it needs policy infrastructure to support its growth, write New America’s Braden Goetz and Ivy Love. They recommend 14 ways policymakers in Congress, federal agencies, and states can expand degree apprenticeship from scattered locations to one available nationwide. For example, they call for governments to identify available funding streams to support the model.

Impact Accelerator
IBM announced a new education and workforce development cohort of the IBM Impact Accelerator, which provides technology and expertise to help nonprofits develop tech-enabled solutions. The cohort includes InnovateEDU, the Colorado Office of Economic Development and International Trade, Ramona Technologies, and Udhyam Learning Foundation. The accelerator has provided $7M in funds and in-kind donations since its launch in 2022.

Opportunity Index
Strada Education Foundation released the 2026 edition of its State Opportunity Index, which measures how well each state uses education after high school to build workforce competitiveness and create pathways to economic opportunity. It finds that 60% of community college graduates with an associate degree are estimated to experience a positive ROI within 10 years of graduation—with that share topping 70% in Alaska, Maine, and Vermont.

Job Moves
David Weisshaar has been appointed a career deputy assistant secretary within the Labor Department’s Employment and Training Administration (ETA). Weisshaar previously led workforce development policymaking and budgeting for the White House Office of Management and Budget.

Taylor Stockton has been appointed by the White House as a senior policy advisor on the Super Intelligence Force, a federal coordinating body tasked with ensuring that America remains the global leader in AI while improving the lives of Americans. Stockton is on temporary full-time detail away from his role as chief innovation officer at the U.S. Department of Labor.

Matt Zieger has been hired as a U.S. workforce and economic opportunity lead on OpenAI’s global affairs team. Zieger previously was chief programs and partnerships officer at the GitLab Foundation.

Steven Rietzke has been appointed an associate administrator in the Office of Workforce Investment within the Labor Department’s ETA. Rietzke is a veteran of ETA, most recently as division chief for national programs, tools, and technical assistance.

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