New research from the Project on Workforce and the National Governors Association highlights how governors are leveraging new industrial policy opportunities to strengthen workforce development and meet labor market needs.

As the federal government allocates trillions of dollars toward new industrial policies, states face a significant challenge: they will only succeed in realizing the economic potential of new investments in infrastructure, clean energy, and manufacturing if they have the skilled workforce to meet growing industry demands.

Governors are in a unique position to identify, prioritize, and align workforce development investments across agencies and ensure that the new wave of industrial policies are implemented successfully. Through interviews with Governors’ workforce development policy advisors in sixteen states, we explored how Governors are embracing this charge. We investigated how they are supporting workforce development related to new industrial policies and the challenges they are facing.

We identified four common obstacles that Governors face to building the infrastructure, energy, and semiconductor workforce under IIJA, CHIPS, and IRA. Those obstacles include the lack of clarity around the role of the public workforce system, the complexity of coordinating funds across stakeholders, a lack of public sector capacity to support workforce development, and the difficulties of planning workforce development programs under uncertain timelines.