Sponsors (34)
Introduced April 14, 2025 by Josh Harder · Last progress April 14, 2025
The bill expands and coordinates federal support for youth workforce development—increasing access, employer alignment, and multi-year funding—while raising federal costs, adding administrative and reporting burdens, and risking concentration of funds and narrowing of educational priorities.
Children, teens, and young adults (students and out-of-school youth) gain substantially expanded access to structured workforce-readiness programs, internships/apprenticeships, mentoring, and credential pathways tied to local labor-market needs.
Employers and local economies benefit from stronger alignment between training and employer needs, creating clearer credential pathways and a more job-ready workforce that can strengthen local labor pipelines.
The bill provides predictable multi-year funding support (including a $100M/year authorization for FY2026–FY2030 and 3–5 year grants), giving grant recipients and program operators planning and hiring certainty.
Taxpayers face higher federal spending—about $100 million/year authorized FY2026–2030 (roughly $500M total over five years)—which increases budgetary costs and could affect deficits or crowd out other priorities.
Local boards, schools, and nonprofit providers will face substantial new administrative and reporting burdens to form councils, assemble competitive applications, meet grant requirements, and collect performance data, disadvantaging smaller organizations.
Funding and competitive-grant rules favor national and well-resourced organizations, concentrating resources in larger providers and better-off localities while squeezing out small, grassroots, and regional groups.
Based on analysis of 10 sections of legislative text.
Requires local youth councils, defines youth workforce readiness programs, and funds competitive national grants for out-of-school workforce programs for youth with $100M/year authorized.
Requires local workforce development boards to create youth councils made up of board members and community partners to represent youth interests and advise local workforce planning. Establishes definitions and a new competitive grant program to fund national youth-serving organizations to plan, develop, and run out-of-school workforce readiness programs for youth, with detailed program, application, evaluation, and reporting requirements and $100 million authorized per year for five years.