Advancing Skills-Based Talent Strategies in the Next Administration
By Gina Rosen and Chase Sackett
Note: this blog post was originally published by OpportunityatWork.
The labor market is broken: millions of Americans are overlooked simply because they don’t have a bachelor’s degree. Opportunity@Work and America Forward are addressing this challenge with a new set of joint recommendations for the Trump-Vance Administration to advance skills-based talent strategies — hiring workers based on their skills and experience, not whether they hold a four-year degree — across the federal government. We call on the administration to act on these priorities within the first 100 days, building on the foundational efforts of the first Trump Administration on skills-based hiring.
UNLOCKING POTENTIAL WITHIN THE PUBLIC SECTOR
The federal government is the largest single employer in the U.S. workforce., employing nearly 3 million people nationwide, partnering with nearly 4 million federal contractors through over 200,000 contracting firms, and impacting working conditions for millions of others.
As such, the next administration holds significant power to not only set an example for public and private employers across the nation, but also to shape employment opportunities for workers across the labor market — including the over 70 million workers who are skilled through alternative routes (STARs), rather than a traditional bachelor’s degree.
These workers are undiscovered assets who possess high-demand skills through community college, the military, partial college, training programs, and, most commonly, on-the-job learning. Yet, despite their skills, they have experienced a dramatic decrease in economic mobility over the past three decades, in large part due to unnecessary hiring barriers based on outdated professional development models.
A BIPARTISAN SOLUTION FOR SHARED SUCCESS
To date, 25 red and blue states have advanced skills-based hiring by “tearing the paper ceiling” — removing public sector degree requirements — through executive orders or legislation. We commend these efforts and deeply appreciate the partnership of organizations like the Cicero Institute and the National Governors Association who have worked tirelessly to support these efforts as changes to hiring practices are implemented in the public sector. It is also important to note that over the past few years, the private sector has also been making this shift to successfully fill their own talent needs. Now, the federal government must embrace this practice and build on this monumental progress.
TWO STEPS TO TRANSFORM THE AMERICAN WORKFORCE IN THE FIRST 100 DAYS
The Trump-Vance Administration has a critical opportunity to fulfill the promise of the previous Trump Administration’s groundbreaking skills-based hiring executive order by championing and investing in the implementation of skills-based hiring across sectors and levels of government.
We recommend two initial actions to transform the American workforce within the first 100 days:
1) Launch the Office of Skills-Based Hiring
The Administration should introduce an Office of Skills-Based Hiring within the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), tasked with developing and implementing innovative strategies to advance skills-based hiring and transform workforce development nationwide. By investing in implementation and convening stakeholders on the implementation of skills-based talent strategies, we can accelerate lessons learned and the scaling of implementation efforts.
2) Implement an Executive Order to remove unnecessary degree requirements from the federal procurement process
We urge the Trump-Vance Administration to issue an Executive Order removing unnecessary degree requirements from the federal procurement process, incentivizing contractors to adopt skills-based talent strategies and eliminating agency-imposed barriers. This crucial step will allow Federal contractors to align with organizations already embracing skills-based hiring, expand the talent pool to include millions of STAR employees, and create essential pathways to economic opportunity for underrepresented candidates.
The federal government has a unique opportunity to leverage STARs’ skills for today’s and future jobs to fix our labor market. Swift and decisive action can inspire similar efforts across sectors, unlocking talent in communities nationwide and creating a more inclusive labor market that values skills over traditional credentials.
Gina Rosen is Senior Manager of Policy at Opportunity@Work, a nonprofit whose mission is to rewire the labor market so that all individuals Skilled Through Alternative Routes (STARs) can work, learn, and earn to their full potential.
Chase Sackett is Policy Director of America Forward, which partners with more than 100 social innovation organizations nationwide to champion innovative solutions to our country’s most pressing issues in education and economic mobility.