Skills-Based Hiring and Workforce Development: A Facade of Reform That Conceals a Hollowing Out of Public Workforce Programs
Project 2025 proposes to extend skills-based hiring from the federal civil service to contractors—already partially advanced via OPM's 2025 Merit Hiring Plan—and to ban BA requirements in private job descriptions via new legislation. While some outcome-based metrics for workforce development are laudable (and WIOA reauthorization is partially underway), the broader package strips worker protections, dismantles evidence-based equity programs, and risks turning workforce development into a tool for punishing grantees rather than improving training. Notably, the source text itself includes an 'Alternative View' that would phase down BA subsidies while investing in high-quality apprenticeship and community college programs — a more targeted approach that the draft does not fully acknowledge. The net effect is to deprioritize transit and infrastructure workforce needs in favor of a narrow, punitive accountability framework.
Project 2025's workforce proposals sound like common-sense reform: use skills, not degrees, to hire federal contractors, and demand that workforce training programs prove they work. But beneath that veneer is a coordinated effort to gut worker protections, defund equity-focused programs, and weaponize outcome metrics to justify slashing funds. Take the push to extend skills-based hiring to federal contractors. Executive Order 13932 (2020) already directed the federal civil service to reduce degree-based hiring; the OPM's 2025 Merit Hiring Plan partially advanced this. But the proposal to ban BA requirements for private employers—even with an exemption for truly needed degrees—treads heavily on employer autonomy and could be ruled an unconstitutional federal power grab. Worse, it sidesteps the real issue: the federal government's own massive student aid programs have inflated the value of degrees. A smarter approach, noted as an 'alternative view' in the source text, would be to phase down BA subsidies while investing in high-quality apprenticeship and community college programs that feed directly into transit and infrastructure jobs. Meanwhile, the push for outcome-based metrics in workforce development (through DOL-administered grant programs and performance reviews) is both overdue and dangerous. Done right, it channels funding toward proven programs. Done as Project 2025 envisions, it becomes a cudgel to defund programs that serve vulnerable populations—programs that often produce long-term outcomes but are penalized for low short-term placement numbers. The real-world cost: transit agencies losing access to a pipeline of trained mechanics, electricians, and customer service workers, while workforce boards spend scarce resources chasing compliance rather than serving job seekers. Congress and advocates must insist that outcome metrics include equity and retention, and that funding is maintained for proven programs even after a performance review.
Rollback path — how this gets undone
This action has already been implemented. These are the concrete levers that could reverse it.
- Evaluate and streamline workforce development programs with outcome-based metrics (including WIOA reauthorization) Congressional action to maintain/strengthen outcome reporting; DOL rescinds any regressive guidance
Original source — excerpted
project2025 Project 2025 ch. 19: Department of Transportation (pp 629-631)"— 596 — Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise on-the-job training, defined as some share of paid time spent in a formal training program. To qualify, a program—whether run by the employer, an industry consortium, a community college, or a union—would need to define program length, curriculum, career path, and credential and to report regularly on outcomes for participants. Programs that fail to deliver promised results would be disqualified from continued funding. Funding for employer grants should come from existing higher education subsidies that are currently disadvantaging alternative education options. Federal “BA Box.” The American labor market continues to experience a glut of college degrees. The country produces more college graduates than suitable jobs for them to fill. Meanwhile, employers exacerbate the problem, fueling demand for college by needlessly requiring degrees for many jobs. In 2020, the Trump Administration took an important step toward pro-worker, skills-based hiring practices. Executive Order 13932, Modernizing and Reforming the Assessment and Hiring of Federal Job Candidates,13 directed the Office of Personnel Management to reduc…"