Key strategies

• Creating financial incentives, like tax credits, for businesses’ costs associated with investing in new training activities for existing workers. Incentives would mirror those for research and development, which are effective and popular at the state and federal levels

• Designing policy to focus on lower income workers (to save money and advance equity) by providing incentives for training workers under a certain salary cap

  • Note: A European Union study found that these policies encouraged job training and required less administrative overhead than government training programs

• Encouraging skills-based hiring in public and private sectors

  • Set example in the public sector by implementing skill-based hiring practices in government

  • Establish business intermediaries that can create competency models to help companies identify skills needed for various jobs