People are trying to adapt to a labor market that no longer moves in a straight line. Artificial intelligence could reshape more than half of U.S. jobs in just the next two years, entry-level jobs are becoming harder to find, and workers are navigating careers that increasingly require them to learn, retrain, and change direction more often than past generations. At the same time, young adults are pursuing a wider range of training options beyond traditional higher education.
But federal workforce policy has not kept pace. It still assumes workers progress through their careers on a slow, linear path. Now, lawmakers have an opportunity to fix that. After more than a decade of inertia, Congress is finally moving to reauthorize the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act. And it’s about time.
But lawmakers should not treat WIOA reauthorization as another routine update to federal training programs. It is Congress’s best chance to begin building an AI-ready workforce system that helps people move more quickly between benefits and work, transition more seamlessly from training to employment, and start contributing once again to their communities and the economy.
Enacted in 2014, the WIOA was built for a labor market that has since ceased to exist. The law replaced the Workforce Investment Act of 1998 and sought to bring greater coordination to a patchwork of federal job-training, adult education, and employment programs. It also created a network of “one-stop” career centers, pushed states toward unified planning, emphasized measurable outcomes, and aimed to connect workers more directly to employer needs.
At the time, those changes fit the economy lawmakers saw in front of them. The country was still recovering from the Great Recession, remote work was an anomaly, and AI had not entered the mainstream. The WIOA was written for a world unshaken by a global pandemic that reshaped where and how people work, before the Great Resignation, before the rapid rise of AI, and before the Great Stay froze the labor market in place. That’s four labor-market earthquakes in roughly half a decade. And yet, the law hasn’t changed at all.
The WIOA was due for reauthorization in 2020, but Congress allowed it to sit unchanged for years while the economy absorbed one disruption after another. The result is a slow-moving system that is poorly aligned with how people actually build skills and find work today. Funding streams remain siloed, and programs that should operate together too often function independently of one another. Workers who need childcare support, short-term training, transportation assistance, or help transitioning off public benefits must navigate a maze of separate bureaucracies. A parent should not be forced to navigate five separate offices and eligibility systems just to move from benefits to a short-term credential to a job.
Meanwhile, many states have moved ahead on their own. A growing number of states, including Arkansas, Louisiana, and West Virginia, are taking steps to integrate workforce and safety-net programs so workers can move more smoothly from benefits to training to employment. States are experimenting with consolidating services, aligning funding streams, and mitigating the benefit cliffs that penalize workers at the very points they start to make progress. They are also building employer-connected pathways to nondegree credentials and reducing administrative barriers that slow people down when they are trying to reenter the workforce.
Congress should use WIOA reauthorization to give states more flexibility to integrate workforce, education, and safety-net programs — while strengthening accountability so public dollars help workers move faster into real jobs. The reauthorization bill’s Make America Skilled Again provision represents a promising move in this direction. The measure would allow states to consolidate multiple federal workforce funding streams into a single, more flexible grant so they can tailor services to local labor markets.
After years of delay, members of Congress are again pushing to reauthorize and modernize the WIOA. Republicans on the House Education and the Workforce Committee have proposed changes to steer more funding toward skills training and employer-led workforce development, expand access to short-term credential programs, strengthen accountability standards for state and local workforce boards, and give states greater flexibility. Those proposals reflect a growing recognition that a workforce law written in 2014 cannot effectively govern a labor market being transformed right under our feet.
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The choice facing lawmakers is not between protecting workers and modernizing the nation’s workforce systems. It is between a system that traps people in fragmented programs and one that lets them move with dignity from benefits to work, from one job or industry to the next, and from old credentials to new skills. A modern workforce law should make adaptation easier and economic mobility more achievable, not pit workers against bureaucracy at every turn.
WIOA reauthorization has finally regained momentum. Lawmakers now have an opportunity to finish the job. The overdue reauthorization presents a critical chance to rethink how workforce, education, and safety-net programs fit together in a modern economy. If Congress fails to act, the gap between how people learn and work and how federal policy supports them will continue to widen.
Steve Taylor is the policy director and senior fellow for economic mobility at Stand Together Trust.