Dive Brief:
- Atlanta has returned $1.3 million in federal workforce training grants to the state, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports. WorkSource Atlanta, the city’s training agency, was unable to spend the grant money before a June deadline. The funds were supposed to help unemployed and underemployed residents get training for jobs and could have been used for college certificates and work-based training programs, among other things.
- The newspaper said it's impossible to know how many people could have benefited from the money, but a new contract with Atlanta Technical College to ensure the current workforce development grant is spent calls for 400 residents to be served by the end of June 2019.
- Following a 2016 scandal in which the city had to pay almost $2 million to federal agencies for allocating grants to businesses with no workers or that conducted minimal or no training, a new acting executive director was appointed in July, and she promised to get the organization back on track. The city has requested a second chance to spend some of the money it had to return, and the state is reviewing that request for $715,367.
Dive Insight:
The federal government has prioritized training and apprenticeship programs, hoping to shift employers' thinking about the skills gap. As the government simultaneously tightens immigration policy, employers already coping with low unemployment are being forced to consider candidates who can be upskilled, rather than those who are already qualified for the job at hand.
To that end, training funds are being made available for almost every category of job, from food service to skilled trades. It's all part of the Trump administration’s push to buy American, hire American, an initiative that also led to the creation of the American Workforce Policy Advisory Board and the President's National Council for the American Worker.
The administration has asked businesses to sign a Pledge to America's Workers to keep training and reskilling top of mind. Representatives from FedEx, IBM, Walmart, the Society for Human Resource Management and others took the pledge at a White House event in July.
