How Infrastructure Dollars Can Build Inclusive Workforce
Date Posted: January 24, 2023
Posted In: News, Workforce,
From Brookings: The U.S. currently faces a once-in-a-generation window to invest in infrastructure and expand economic opportunity. With the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) of 2021, the federal government directed unprecedented levels of funding to improve the country’s transportation, water, energy, and broadband systems, in addition to addressing a variety of climate needs. Now, attention shifts to state and local leaders, who hold the most control over how infrastructure projects will ultimately be planned, designed, and implemented.
Whether they realize it or not, a key task for these leaders is to ensure that when infrastructure jobs open up, there will be workers ready to fill them. The infrastructure field has long faced challenges in finding and retaining workers, and it does not have a strong track record of inclusion and diversity. If state and local leaders act strategically, they can harness IIJA funding to make both short- and long-term investments in the next generation of infrastructure talent. But if leaders and employers continue to treat recruitment, hiring, and training practices as an afterthought, the country will likely miss out on this legislation’s transformative potential to drive inclusive growth, make a just climate transition, and spur innovation and global competitiveness.
The Brookings Federal Infrastructure Hub estimates that the IIJA will fund $864 billion in spending over five years. The law authorizes 400-plus programs across multiple federal agencies that channel funds to various state and local entities, and these programs have varying guidelines, timelines, and eligibility requirements. Congress did not directly channel any IIJA funding into the public workforce development system, nor does the legislation provide much explicit funding dedicated to workforce activities. Rather, workforce activities are allowable or embedded within a subset of the IIJA’s multitude of programs. In practical terms, this makes it more difficult for state and local leaders to clearly identify which federal infrastructure funding is available to support workforce investments—which in turn could make it less likely they will prioritize workforce development and integrate it into infrastructure plans and projects.
The IIJA’s sheer size and complexity pose real challenges around implementation. The state and local leaders making decisions about infrastructure projects and investments are often not familiar with existing education and workforce assets that can support more strategic recruitment, training, and retention activities, while local and state workforce programs may not know how to focus their outreach and partnership efforts. This report attempts to fill these knowledge gaps by equipping state and local leaders with more information and guidance on how to use expanded federal infrastructure funding to invest strategically in workforce development activities. We conducted an extensive analysis of the law and found that: