Six Critical Actions for a New Congress in a New Year

On the heels of the November elections, where the economy was the top priority among voters, the newly sworn-in 119th U.S. Congress must get to work helping more American learners and workers not only get good jobs, but also get ahead in today’s rapidly changing economy.

Despite introducing a bevy of commonsense bills for investing in the skills and career futures of U.S. workers and learners, the 118th Congress didn’t pass any significant education or workforce development policy in 2023 or 2024. Lawmakers tabled legislative measures that would have reformed the nation’s workforce development system, made financial aid available for short-term workforce credential programs, created incentives to increase the number of apprenticeships, helped more Americans bridge the digital divide, and strengthened pathways to careers and college for young people. Each of these policy proposals enjoys broad bipartisan support among registered voters that JFF polled in the leadup to the November elections. And strong majorities of these voters also indicated that it is important to them that the next president take policy action within the first 100 days of their administration.

Jobs for the Future (JFF) is calling for policy action that ushers in a new era in which workers and learners experience “no dead ends” at school and in their jobs—no limits on aspirations, no artificial endpoints on career pathways, no impossible choices between pursuing opportunities to advance one’s career and taking care of family responsibilities, and no harmful risks when making decisions to change directions in one’s work and learning journey. Our policy agenda envisions a modern learn-and-work system that:

• • Provides all Americans with actionable information and guidance on careers, as well as the resources they need to prepare for and pursue those careers, so that they may effectively navigate economic change
  • Recognizes the skills, knowledge, and expertise of all Americans, regardless of when and where their learning and development experiences occur
  • Blurs the lines between learning and work and fosters common purpose among educators and employers
  • Normalizes opportunities for access to good jobs, education, and wraparound supports for people with records of arrest, conviction, or incarceration
  • Helps all Americans get ahead during times of economic uncertainty and personal adversity

Here are six actions Congress should prioritize in 2025 to invest in the U.S. workforce and make meaningful progress toward eliminating dead ends.

1. Reauthorize WIOA to shore up and modernize the nation’s infrastructure for tackling employment needs.

In 2024, Congress was on the brink of reauthorizing the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA) through the bipartisan A Stronger Workforce for America Act. Although we had some reservations about the act, JFF encouraged passage because it would make much-needed reforms to the nation’s workforce development system. We applauded the bill’s emphasis on the skill development of workers, its introduction of virtual service delivery and other much-needed flexibilities and efficiencies, and its provisions strengthening connections between employers and workforce system providers. Congress should resurrect the bill now. And this time, Congress should increase funding levels to cover new programs and ensure that jobseekers with employment barriers have access to these opportunities. JFF has produced a comprehensive reform agenda to guide Congressional action.

Read more about JFF’s policy agenda to transform the workforce development system.

2. Enact a trio of skills bills to prepare people for in-demand careers and promote affordable alternatives to traditional higher education.

As tuition costs and student loan burdens have grown and schools fail to produce positive economic returns on students’ investments, the American people are facing tough choices and significant opportunity costs when deciding whether to pursue a new skill or career field. Congress can eliminate some of the risk involved in these decisions and encourage investment in skills development by enacting a trio of skills bills:

• Pass the JOBS Act to broaden federal financial aid eligibility to cover high-quality short-term job training programs. Reintroduced in 2025 with bipartisan and bicameral cosponsors, the Jumpstarting Our Businesses by Supporting Students (JOBS) Act allows students and workers from low-income backgrounds to use Pell Grants to help pay for high-quality short-term programs that lead to industry-recognized credentials and prepare participants for in-demand jobs.

• Pass legislation authorizing lifelong learning accounts to ensure that Americans can keep pace with rapid economic transitions throughout their working years. These accounts would be owned by individuals and funded via contributions from individuals, their employers, and from the federal government, and they would be used to pay for just-in-time skills development. JFF encourages lawmakers to approve the accounts through tax reform efforts or a standalone bill and to target government contributions to the accounts to individuals facing heightened risk of job displacement or barriers to employment.

• Pass legislation to fix the regulatory treatment of innovative financing approaches, such as outcomes-based loans and income share agreements. Under these approaches, learners only pay for their education and training if it leads to a well-paid job, ensuring that learners can afford the cost of an education and that institutions and programs are held accountable for the outcomes of their programs. But the existing regulatory and tax treatments were designed for traditional loans and are a poor fit for outcomes-based financing, stifling innovation and leaving learners at risk. Congress should clarify and update the regulatory treatment through legislation, which could be modeled after this bipartisan bill.

Read more about JFF’s policy agenda for a skills-first economy.

3. Focus on worker needs when legislating AI.

Just as lawmakers must walk a fine line to balance the competing goals of encouraging greater adoption of generative artificial intelligence (AI) and protecting consumers from its inherent risks, Congress should carefully craft a set of workforce provisions that equip the American people with the skills and abilities to take advantage of AI-augmented jobs and educational experiences while also coming to the aid of workers whose jobs and skills become obsolete as AI adoption advances.

Any legislative action on AI taken up in 2025 must address workforce needs. Here are policies and provisions JFF recommends:

• Establish an AI center of excellence to conduct research that informs future federal policies and investments. With so much yet unknown about the economic impacts and opportunities of generative AI, Congress would be wise to establish a center of excellence that brings together interdisciplinary experts with the aim of predicting evolving labor market impacts and skills gaps, as well as researching and developing best-bet approaches for integrating generative AI into school curricula, workplaces, and job training programs.
• Enhance career navigation support through a digital transformation fund. Learners and workers often lack the objective information and personalized guidance they need to help them wade through the myriad education, training, and career options available to them. Generative AI could do the legwork, but most publicly accessible online career navigation tools lack these capabilities. Congress could unleash innovation in the career navigation space—and help more people discover jobs in the new economy—by creating a technology and data innovation fund that states and regional authorities could tap to develop or procure AI-enabled career navigation tools and platforms.
• Enact the Digital Skills for Today’s Workforce Act to invest in digital skills training programs. The bipartisan bill would create a new competitive grant program to expand training programs that equip people with in-demand digital skills. The bill should be amended to explicitly reference generative AI training.

Read more about JFF’s research for developing an AI-ready workforce.

4. Invest in apprenticeships and career pathways programs to connect young people to work.

In a 2023 survey of young people not enrolled in college commissioned by JFF and American Student Assistance, 32% of the respondents reported a lack of confidence in knowing the steps they need to take to transition into post-high-school careers and education programs. Congress can help more young people explore their career options, acquire transferrable and marketable skills, and build their professional social capital by expanding federal investments in work-based learning and other models that engage young people in career pathways. JFF advises action on three fronts:

• Codify and expand the Youth Apprenticeship Readiness Grants program to strengthen on-ramps to apprenticeship and careers for in-school and out-of-school young people. With bipartisan support for apprenticeship programs and clear signals of support for apprenticeship among key Trump appointees, including secretary of education nominee Linda McMahon and secretary of labor nominee Lori Chavez-DeRemer, 2025 marks a key opportunity for Congress to step up and enact meaningful improvements and investments to expand apprenticeship opportunities. Codifying the Youth Apprenticeship Readiness Grants program would go a long way toward engaging more young people in apprenticeship experiences. Additionally, Congress should add language that encourages grant recipients to use existing career and technical education course sequences to fulfill the requirement for related technical instruction and encourages these courses to be offered in a dual enrollment format to enable young participants to more easily earn college credit toward postsecondary credentials of value.
• Pass the LEAP Act with enhanced job retention incentives to encourage more employers to offer apprenticeships. Modeled after South Carolina’s apprenticeship tax credit, the Leveraging and Energizing America’s Apprenticeship Programs (LEAP) Act proposes to offer employers a $1,500 federal tax credit for each of their employees who participates in qualified apprenticeship programs. JFF encourages Congress to pass this bipartisan bill with two critical updates: First, provide an additional tax credit of $1,500 for employers who retain apprentices until they complete their programs and second, further encourage inclusion of youth in apprenticeship programs by explicitly making the hiring and retention tax credits available to employers who sponsor youth-focused apprenticeship opportunities.
• Resurrect P3-type grants to expand career pathway programs in areas with high concentrations of youth and young adults at risk of disconnection from education and employment. Styled after the now defunct Performance Partnership Pilots (P3) program, this competitive grant program would help to build strong community partnerships to help re-engage out-of-school youth through a focus on career pathways models that help young people attain needed skills, credentials, and family-supporting careers.

Read more about JFF’s policy recommendations for apprenticeship and for programs that serve young people.

5. Clear policy barriers to good jobs for people with records.

About one-third of the adults living in the United States have criminal records, including almost half of men in their 30s who are looking for work. People with records face a complex web of rules and regulations throughout their lives, limiting their access to housing, quality job opportunities, credit to start a small business, and more—and potentially elevating the risk of recidivism. Congress should curb the multitude of counterproductive restrictions placed on people with records. Each of the following actions enjoys broad bipartisan support, helps people with records successfully re-enter the labor market and provide for their families, addresses workforce needs of employers, and would continue to keep the public safe:

• Pass the Clean Slate Act, which would build on the success of initiatives in states like Oklahoma and Utah in automating the sealing of records of low-level offenses for people who are eligible to have their records cleared. This would remove a major barrier to economic advancement while maintaining law enforcement’s access to records.
• Pass the Driving for Opportunity Act, which would create incentives for states to follow the lead of states like Mississippi to end the practice of debt-based driver’s license suspensions, which disproportionately harms people with fees for court services.
• Pass the RESTORE Act to reinstate eligibility for Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits for people with past felony drug convictions, and the Training and Nutrition Stability Act to ensure that individuals in workforce development programs don’t lose access to SNAP benefits.
• Codify the Reentry Employment Opportunities (REO) grant program and significantly increase available funds. Administered by the U.S. Department of Labor, the REO program provides funding for a range of activities intended to improve labor market outcomes for youth and young adults whose lives have been impacted by interactions with the justice system, but currently the program must be implicitly reauthorized every year through the annual appropriations process.

Read more about JFF’s Agenda for Normalizing Opportunity for people with records.

6. Lay the groundwork for reimagining learning and work with no dead ends.

While Congress takes action in 2025 to address critical skill needs and expand economic opportunities for the American people, lawmakers should also set the stage for modernizing the nation’s education and workforce development systems, which have languished for years without meaningful or comprehensive reform. This includes reforming the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (last reauthorized in 2015), the Carl D. Perkins Career and Technical Education Act (last reauthorized in 2018), the Higher Education Act (last reauthorized in 2008), and the National Apprenticeship Act (passed in 1937, never reauthorized).

Congress should establish a clear vision for how each of these major laws help foster an agile, lifelong learning system that provides permeable on-ramps and off-ramps to education, skills development, and career paths. This would fulfill JFF’s vision for a learn-and-work system with no dead ends.

As Congress considers each of these bills, through hearings and table-setting conversations, JFF encourages lawmakers to focus on policy solutions to drive advances in the following areas:

• Skills-first education, training, and talent management practices, by scaling access to competency-based approaches to education and apprenticeships and by promoting skills-based hiring and the use of prior learning assessments
• Pathways models, such as college in high school programs and stackable credentials, which save people time and money in their efforts to achieve their education and career goals
• Employer partnerships, through work-based learning programs and industry sector strategies that connect people to careers in fields offering opportunities for economic advancement
• Cross-system alignment, through shared performance measures and unified state plans and braided and blended funding, to bring greater efficiency and effectiveness to public systems
• Innovations that disrupt the status quo and unleash new models, through accreditation reform, pay-for-performance models, and more robust investments in research and development

Taking action across each of these priorities would send a clear signal to constituents that Congress is helping workers access good jobs and helping employers find talented workers.

For more on JFF’s recommendations for federal policy action in 2025, read our blueprint for the Trump administration.