Trump Labor Department’s Jobs Vision Stymied Again by Lawmakers

Lawmakers keep rejecting the White House’s substantial proposal to rework more than $3 billion in Labor Department grants for its Make America Skilled Again agenda, leaving the Trump administration tied to legacy programs it wants to erase.

Congress appears poised for the second year in a row to spurn the largest proposed reforms to worker development grants in favor of preserving Job Corps, which serves low-income youth.

Workforce stakeholders say this rejection of the MASA framework represents a crucial disconnect between the Trump administration and Congress that could jeopardize DOL leadership’s goal of getting more people into the labor market.

“They don’t understand what Job Corps means to the constituents that a lot of these senators answer to,” Nicholas Beadle, a former DOL official who spent more than a decade at the agency in workforce policy roles, said about the stalemate. “It’s very much a key part of these communities and there’s a certain type of Republican think tank person that doesn’t get that.”

An appropriations package passed by a House committee last week largely followed the administration’s requested alterations to the DOL’s budget, with the measure calling for over $3 billion in cuts and closures of the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs, Women’s Bureau, and International Labor Affairs Bureau.

But it turned away the $3.4 billion MASA framework, which would eliminate Job Corps and restructure the DOL’s workforce grants to give states more flexibility in using federal dollars.

“Worst of All Worlds”

Job Corps is a $1.8 billion program that trains and educates about 25,000 low-income minors and young adults at centers across the nation to help them get higher-paying jobs. The centers also provide housing, meals, and space for community gatherings and other local programs.

The DOL announced last year it was shuttering all 99 Job Corps locations nationwide, citing low success rates and high costs as well as safety incidents at centers. According to the DOL, an internal review revealed that the average cost to taxpayers to put a student through the program was over $80,000 per year and graduates went on to jobs that paid just $16,695 annually on average.

There were also almost 15,000 serious incident reports in the program in 2023, including drug use and violence, the DOL said.

John Colborn, executive director at Apprenticeships for America, , said the administration should be looking at how it can use workforce dollars most efficiently and that it makes sense to scrutinize Job Corps over its pricetag.

The National Job Corps Association argued the earnings statistics were skewed by graduates who went on to college or the military and that the serious incident reports largely consist of minor infractions like being late to class or swearing.

The center closures were ruled unlawful by federal judges in Washington and New York. The DOL is still litigating those cases.

That might be made moot by the support these centers have among appropriators in Congress, who have significant sway over how federal agencies are funded.

Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), head of the Senate Appropriations Committee, discussed Job Corps at length with acting Labor Secretary Keith Sonderling during a hearing last month, saying its performance metrics have been skewed by the administration attempting to shutter the centers.

“Job Corps provides people with life-changing opportunities,” she said. “None of us wants to fund ineffective, wasteful programs but I know that is not an accurate description of Job Corps.”

Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) said she worked for more than a decade to bring a Job Corps center to her state. In a statement to Bloomberg Law she said it “has become integral to our communities,” and that she would fight to preserve it.

Beadle said many Job Corp centers could be more successful with more money. The standoff between the Trump administration and Congress means the program is in the “worst of all worlds.”

“Job Corps is not going to go away in this administration but it’s not going to get a dollar more and it needs many dollars more to functionally operate,” he said. “So it’s kind of in purgatory right now.”

Make America Skilled Again

Labor Department officials are publicly making the case against Job Corps. Sonderling, appearing at the Senate appropriations hearing in May, pushed back when Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) asked whether cutting the DOL’s budget would result in fewer job training opportunities.

“We are asking you to put the money in more-effective programs,” Sonderling said. “We’re eliminating some of the programs and then allowing the states to design their own programs as opposed to shoveling the money into one silo.”

DOL spokesman David O’Brien told Bloomberg Law that MASA would consolidate 12 workforce programs into a single, flexible grant aimed at lowering administrative burdens and giving more flexibility to states and localities.

“We’re also aligning more than $700 million in education grants to America’s Talent Strategy, with a focus on skills‑based learning, learning and employment records, and Registered Apprenticeships,” he said.

Wider Implications

Workforce funding remains largely unchanged, frustrating stakeholders who were hopeful about the administration’s goals around registered apprenticeships.

Trump has pushed the DOL to expand apprenticeship programs and reach over 1 million active apprentices by the end of his term. Active apprentice figures declined slightly over the past year, however, putting that milestone in doubt.

The House appropriations bill would cut Job Corps’ budget by almost $1 billion but only put $5 million into registered apprenticeships.

Two reports from the AFA published in April and May concluded that unless the administration invests millions more into the registered apprenticeship program, it may not be able to make meaningful changes.

“In general there’s just an aversion to spending money on workforce development by the administration and by Republicans in Congress, and that is not helpful if you have big ambitions for how you’re going to grow apprenticeships,” Colborn said.