After providing an all-time high of $24 billion in the late 1970s (in constant 2017 dollars), Congress has significantly reduced our nation’s investment in workforce training and employment services at the U.S. Department of Labor to about $5 billion a year today. These services can play a vital role in helping unemployed and low-income people move out of poverty and into better jobs with family sustaining wages. Yet these programs are currently not being funded even at the authorized levels specified in the 2014 Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA) that Congress passed in a nearly unanimous bipartisan vote.

To learn more, read this fact sheet by Anna Cielinski.