Workforce Cabinet Approves Five-Year Plan For Federal Submission

The Governor’s Workforce Cabinet has finished a months-long process to create a comprehensive federally-funded workforce plan for the state. The cabinet formally voted via teleconference to approve the plan’s submission to the U.S. Department of Labor.

The plan is titled “A Better Future for Every Hoosier” and impacts education from early learning programs to K-12 schools to colleges. It stresses that education and workforce agencies will do more to share data and co-locate more state services. Major outcomes of the plan are to raise median household income and ensure that 60 percent of Hoosiers have some form of post-secondary education.

Theresa Lubbers is the chair of the Governor’s Workforce Cabinet and the Commissioner for Higher Education. She says a clear workforce blueprint is especially important during the economic turmoil of the COVID-19 crisis. 

“This will be an opportunity in which some employers and some sectors will be re-envisioning how they provide their goods and services,” she says. “That may even accelerate the change in the work that people are going to be required to know how to do."

Workforce cabinet staff must submit the plan by April 1 to receive federal funding under the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA). 

Contact Justin at jhicks@wvpe.org or follow him on Twitter at @Hicks_JustinM.