Bijal Shah |
This is the first in a series on America’s Talent Strategy: Equipping American Workers for the Golden Age, a new federal report laying out a coordinated approach to workforce development.
Earlier this month, the U.S. Departments of Labor, Commerce, and Education released a 27-page report titled “America’s Talent Strategy: Equipping American Workers for the Golden Age.” At its core, the report outlines a coordinated federal blueprint for modernizing the nation’s workforce development system, emphasizing alignment between education, labor, and economic priorities to better prepare American workers for rapid technological, demographic, and industry change.
As I pored over the report, what stood out most was this: The workforce systems that served past generations of workers no longer work. And preparing people for today’s economy — and tomorrow’s — will require a wholesale redesign in how education, employment, and advancement intersect and create value.
That redesign will not (and cannot) be driven from Washington alone. Much of the implementation power sits with those closest to the economic realities of their communities.
That is: state and local governments.
For these stakeholders, this new federal strategy presents both an economic opportunity and a design challenge.
Drawing on more than a decade of experience partnering with leading employers across sectors, Guild has developed a set of guiding principles that shape how we approach workforce development. These principles have helped employers design scalable, repeatable, and outcomes-driven systems — and we believe they offer useful direction as states and local leaders reimagine their own workforce strategies.
We see these principles as a resource, not a prescription. At their core, they are proven approaches that can be adapted across agencies, industries, and communities to drive greater economic mobility at scale.
1. Co-design with employers.
Guild’s experience shows that workforce partnerships deliver the greatest value when they move beyond validation and participation toward something deeper: co-design.
In these partnerships, companies help define talent needs, co-create career pathways, and open up opportunities like externships and apprenticeships. Critically, this level of collaboration makes the model scalable.
While state and local workforce agencies, for their part, engage employers as partners in talent development, the opportunity now is to take those relationships further — from consultation to true co-design.
Case in point
Walgreens’ PharmStart offers a helpful guide.
Take Walgreens’ PharmStart, a learning initiative designed to help pharmacy technicians meet the academic requirements for entry into PharmD programs. The program launched earlier this year and has already expanded to 25 states. It was intentionally built to connect frontline workers to long-term clinical careers.
What sets this program apart is the depth and scale of the employer’s engagement. Walgreens was involved throughout the entire lifecycle of the learning strategy, from defining real-world competencies to iterating on program design to ensuring alignment with real roles across the business.
State and local governments can apply similar principles by convening sector-based collaboratives, co-designing curricula with employers, and ensuring programs are tied to actual job opportunities. The remit is both local and regional: building solutions that meet the needs of employers in their state while also aligning to industry-wide standards that sustain long-term economic opportunity.
The new federal strategy highlights this point explicitly: “The needs of employers must drive how the workforce system educates, trains, and prepares the American workforce. For this to occur, federal programs must be designed so that employers play a leading role in shaping and delivering training programs that help new and incumbent workers build the skills they need to succeed.”
Key takeaways:
Engage employers as co-designers, not just consultants.
Convene sector collaboratives to build pathways tied directly to job opportunities.
Ensure employer input shapes both program design and delivery.
2. Make every dollar count.
One of the biggest obstacles to state and local innovation in workforce development is fragmented funding. Today, public resources like Pell Grants, The Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA), the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program, and Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program Employment and Training (SNAP E&T) operate in silos, each with separate eligibility rules, reporting requirements, and administrative systems. Add in employer-funded tuition assistance, federal training grants, state innovation grants, and philanthropic contributions, and the result is a fractured landscape that’s difficult to navigate for both learners and providers.
To achieve meaningful outcomes at scale, states should rethink not only how funding is “braided” (i.e., combining multiple sources of public, private, and philanthropic funding toward a shared goal), but how it’s targeted and deployed. In Guild’s experience, braided funding is most effective when aligned to two priorities:
Directing dollars toward high-value, career-aligned programs that lead to measurable economic mobility; and
Using the right type of capital for the right part of the journey (for instance, deploying employer dollars for internal upskilling while using public funds to expand access and onramps).
Case in point
Tyson Foods
This is a model we have seen work well with employer partners. Tyson Foods, a leading food manufacturer, redirected education funds toward a more targeted set of credentials aligned to its hardest-to-fill roles. They have a particular focus on training that moves production workers into higher-paid automation technician roles. Like all of Guild's employer partners, by combining employer investment with Section 127 and Pell dollars, the company unlocked broader access while ensuring return on investment through performance-based metrics like retention and internal promotion. Tyson has seen 82% of new hires engaged with learning in their first month, and early-tenure retention rose by 86%.
Looking ahead, we see an opportunity to extend this approach across a wider range of public-funding streams — including WIOA, Workforce Pell (starting in 2026), state and federal grants, and philanthropy — to serve more learners and support more pathways. For state and local governments, this means becoming capital allocators, a role that requires investing in back-end infrastructure, streamlining eligibility across programs, and building the reporting capacity to track outcomes across funding streams.
The goal here is to use every dollar — public or private — to its highest possible impact. When braided thoughtfully, funding models can reduce friction for learners, reward quality programs, and create a more cohesive engine for economic mobility.
Key takeaways:
Braid funding across public, private, and philanthropic sources to maximize ROI.
Direct resources to high-value, career-aligned programs that deliver measurable mobility.
Build back-end infrastructure that streamlines eligibility and tracks outcomes.
3. Simplify the experience.
The new federal strategy underscores a long-standing challenge: Today’s workforce systems are often too complex to navigate, particularly for working adults, those without degrees, and residents in rural communities. As the report notes, “To serve workers and employers, digital tools must be simple, effective, and built for adoption and scale. Success depends not on technical sophistication, but on whether these systems help people move into better jobs and help businesses hire more efficiently.”
Guild’s experience confirms this. Streamlining the learner journey increases program utilization, reduces drop-off, and improves outcomes for both workers and employers. In our model, this takes the form of a single, easy-to-navigate interface that connects individuals to education and career pathways while also providing administrators with real-time visibility into talent development. Learners can browse career-aligned programs, understand their benefits eligibility, and receive one-on-one coaching — all within a centralized system.
On the back end, Guild absorbs the complexity: checking eligibility, partnering with employers and learning providers to braid funding from different funding sources, managing employer tuition budgets, and processing payments to providers. Meanwhile, employers and workforce leaders can monitor talent pipelines, identify emerging skill sets, and assess ROI from the same system. This design keeps the learner at the center while also giving employers visibility into where their people are in the journey — and when they may be ready for their next role. In other words, simplification isn’t only for the worker; it’s also for the employer who needs actionable insight into talent readiness.
State and local leaders can apply the same principle.
By unifying enrollment, career exploration, and coaching into a seamless system, governments can lower barriers to access, improve completion rates, and help learners make informed choices that support long-term mobility. Just as importantly, simplifying the employer experience can deepen engagement and ensure businesses remain invested in the system. The goal should not be access alone, but access with clarity, confidence, and advancement — for learners and for employers alike.
Key takeaways:
Design unified “front doors” that connect learners to enrollment, career exploration, and coaching.
Remove complexity from funding and program access to raise participation.
Streamline the employer experience so businesses can engage without friction.
4. Prove impact through long-term outcome measurement.
Traditional workforce metrics like enrollment and completion tell only part of the story. As states develop new workforce strategies, measurement systems must evolve to reflect what truly matters: employability, mobility, and advancement. While the Department of Labor’s WIOA Local Workforce Development Board Performance outcomes framework includes credential attainment, measurable skills gained, employment rate, and median earnings, deeper transformation will require even more timely, longitudinal, and actionable data.
That means tracking outcomes beyond initial hire — and well beyond two or four quarters. States can take cues from employer-led approaches. In Guild’s model, this means HRIS integrations, partnerships with talent acquisition teams, and ROI models enable a full-picture view of what skilling actually drives: retention, promotion, wage growth, and workforce agility. We have seen that these are the outcomes that matter most to learners, employers, and long-term economic resilience of local and regional economies.
The new federal talent strategy here is clear: “Credentials will be judged based on their real value in the labor market, and ineffective training providers will be removed from public funding lists. New funding models will tie resources to outcomes, including through the expanded use of pay-for-performance contracts and stronger recapture authority to redirect dollars from programs that fail to deliver.”
Linking learning outcomes to ROI
Guild’s employer partners are increasingly focused on business impact, tracking KPIs like retention, productivity, and promotion rates directly tied to upskilling investments. To meet that standard, Guild has developed reporting tools and impact frameworks that link learning outcomes to ROI with precision.
Learners who complete career-aligned programs turn over at 77% lower rates than non-learners, and 76% remain with their employer at least 12 months after completion. For those who achieve career mobility, retention rises to 98%.
The gains extend to earnings as well. Over the past decade, Guild learners have realized more than $487 million in collective wage growth. On average, learners experience a 2.4x wage increase after their first year of training alone.
The ‘Guild Effect’
Guild refers to this increase in training and mobility outcomes as the “Guild Effect.” It reflects two layers of impact:
Our curated learning marketplace ensures high-quality programs are actively managed, benchmarked, and designed to open career pathways for learners.
Our learner-support model — which includes coaching, credit for prior learning, and behavioral nudges — helps more working adults start, persist, and succeed.
This marketplace structure creates a built-in feedback loop where providers that fail to deliver outcomes are removed from the platform. This accountability ensures sustained quality and continuous improvement, boosting outcomes for learners and giving employers confidence that investments will translate into real workforce gains.
For states, the implication is clear: move beyond “Did they complete?” to “Can they continue contributing in the workforce?” and “Did this improve economic resilience?” That means collecting data not only at enrollment and exit, but across the full learner lifecycle—from job entry to long-term wage progression and mobility. States can borrow from employer best practices to build new data and accountability systems that reward programs delivering real upward mobility.
Key takeaways:
Measure employability, mobility, and long-term resilience — not just enrollment and completion.
Track outcomes across the learner lifecycle, from entry to wage progression.
Tie funding to outcomes and reward programs that deliver measurable workforce gains.
5. Drive scalable models through rapid iteration and innovation.
Learning programs designed around one job, one credential, or one employer cannot keep pace with today’s economy. Yet as the new federal strategy notes, rigid, compliance-heavy funding structures often limit states’ ability to support more adaptive, demand-responsive models.
Guild’s experience suggests a path forward in a more agile approach. Many of our fastest-growing pathways start with pilot cohorts — think short-form, modular offerings co-developed with employers to meet emerging talent needs. These programs are built for rapid-cycle testing and iteration based on learner feedback, business priorities, and changing labor market signals instead of fixed credentialing timelines.
Case in point
AI skilling
As generative AI transformed job functions across industries, new skilling pathways were rapidly launched — spanning frontline, technical, and leadership roles — in a matter of weeks. Adoption has surged, with a 400% increase in learners served per AI program, equipping workers with critical skills before employer demand outpaced supply.
These pathways blend learning with real-world outcomes. For example, one large financial services employer accelerated its investment in machine learning coursework and is already seeing employees graduate and apply new skills on the job — evidence of how agile, modular pathways can build capacity quickly and help organizations stay competitive.
Advanced manufacturing skilling
A similar approach is reshaping advanced manufacturing pathways. Employer partners in fields such as battery systems, additive manufacturing, and smart-factory operations pressed for rapid solutions to fill critical roles. To meet that demand, Guild worked to identify, launch, and scale programs with innovative institutions in just over six months.
For example, Purdue University’s modular “unbundled” engineering degree and Indiana Tech’s simulation-based technician training illustrate how higher education can respond with speed to employer needs. These programs create onramps into high-demand fields like industrial electronics, fluid mechanics, and engineering. For states, these examples highlight how flexible delivery models — when surfaced and scaled in partnership with a coalition of employers — can enable faster hiring for employers and more accessible advancement opportunities for working learners.
To be sure, though these examples are from the private sector, states can build this responsiveness into their systems as well.
Making apprenticeships faster, simpler, and more flexible
One promising strategy is funding innovation labs focused explicitly on training talent into in-demand roles. These labs can support rapid-cycle testing of short-form, employer-aligned models that yield measurable outcomes like retention, internal advancement, and wage growth. They should be designed as applied, real-world testing grounds for workforce programs that directly connect learners to job outcomes.
The newly released America’s Talent Strategy affirms this more agile direction, stating:
“To strengthen the employer value proposition for Registered Apprenticeships [RA], the Department of Labor will simplify registration for new apprenticeship programs, reducing the time it takes to develop new program standards or gain approval for expanding apprenticeships to a new occupation. Central to this effort will be supporting the development of high-quality, industry-approved standards that employers and sponsors can seamlessly choose to adopt off-the-shelf or adapt to the specific needs of their workplace.”
This shift to simplifying and scaling the formal RA system is an important step to building resilient talent pipelines. Yet, Guild has seen firsthand how administrative complexity can slow employer participation in traditional RA models. Many of our partners have also turned to apprenticeship-like onramps that allow them to move faster and train higher volumes of incumbent workers. These models often deliver quicker adoption, tighter alignment with business needs, and stronger outcomes for working adults — evidence that investments in a full range of on-the-job training models (from RA to apprenticeship-like onramps) can drive the greatest impact.
Our belief is that states that enable this kind of flexibility — mind you, without sacrificing accountability — can most effectively serve as conveners and co-designers. When public systems are structured to allow for iteration, speed, and co-creation with employers, innovation becomes not only possible but scalable.
Key takeaways:
Pilot modular programs that can be rapidly tested, adapted, and scaled.
Fund innovation labs and apprenticeship-like onramps that connect learners directly to jobs.
Build flexibility into systems while maintaining accountability.
Build the infrastructure, not just one-time programs.
The new federal strategy offers a clear mandate. But implementation will require more than just innovative programs or one-time grants. It will require that systems function more like modern talent systems and cross-sector partnerships — with integrated services, shared data, and employer-aligned design supported by operational alignment across agencies.
Guild’s experience over the past decade shows that when these conditions are in place — even within large, complex organizations — learning becomes more accessible, advancement becomes more likely, and workforce investments begin to deliver measurable returns.
State and local governments now have the opportunity to lead the next wave of workforce innovation. But they are not starting from scratch. Proven models exist. The challenge is to adapt what works and build systems where economic mobility, business growth, and public investment move in sync.
States are uniquely positioned to carry that banner. The strategy is clear. Now it’s time to act.
