Sponsors (2)
The bill aims to expand and target training and workforce capacity for substance-use prevention and treatment—helping unemployed workers and high-need communities and strengthening health services—but it does so with limited guaranteed funding, potential federal cost increases, administrative burdens, and risks of uneven access and displaced funding for other worker programs.
State and local governments receive annually updated, evidence-based guidance and application help to design workforce responses to local substance use disorder (SUD) hotspots and to apply for related federal funding.
Unemployed, long-term unemployed, and dislocated workers gain access to training and job placements in substance-use prevention, treatment, and related reemployment services, improving their chances of reentry into the workforce and reducing employer disruptions.
Healthcare and behavioral-health workers benefit from funded training that expands capacity for addiction, mental health, and pain management care, potentially improving access and quality of treatment.
States and localities may face implementation costs because the guidance and reporting requirements do not include new dedicated funding, shifting expense burdens to subnational governments and local taxpayers.
Establishing new grant programs for SUD workforce activities increases federal spending and could raise taxpayer costs without guaranteed offsetting savings.
Annual reporting and evaluation duties add administrative workload at the Department of Labor, which could divert staff time and attention from other programs unless additional federal resources are allocated.
Based on analysis of 3 sections of legislative text.
Requires DOL to publish SUD workforce practices and allows national dislocated worker grants to fund prevention/treatment workforce activities and services to defined eligible groups.
Requires the Department of Labor to collect, evaluate, and share annually updated evidence-based and promising practices that help states and local areas address workforce and economic impacts of high rates of substance use disorders. It also expands the national dislocated worker grant program to allow grants that build and support the workforce for prevention and treatment of substance use disorders and defines who may receive services funded by those grants. The bill adds new eligible grant purposes and specific beneficiary categories — including dislocated workers, the long-term unemployed, people unemployed or underemployed because of local substance-use problems, and health care workers or jobseekers in treatment-related professions — but does not itself appropriate new funds.
Official title: To amend the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act to provide to States and local areas information on the best practices for addressing the effects that substance use disorder has on the workforce, and to provide local areas with grants to provide training activities related to the treatment and prevention of substance use disorder.
Introduced April 6, 2026 by Ryan Mackenzie · Last progress April 6, 2026