This report, commissioned of the Urban Institute, systematically examines public and private investments in occupational training to present a general picture of the total spending on occupational training (i.e., job training) from both public and private sources in the United States. The authors focus specifically on occupational training, using a definition that allowed comparability across programs, and defined literally as vocational and/or occupational skills training provided in a classroom, on-line, at the workplace, or through internships or apprenticeships. The results, therefore, should be viewed as approximations and as conservative lower bound estimates of total federal spending on training. The estimates are based on the authors’ computation methods and assumptions that are explicitly presented in the chapters, developed to provide a general overview of the scale of spending on occupational training in the United States. Further analysis and data collection would be needed to provide more precise and detailed estimates.

Retraining and upgrading the skills of incumbent workers and providing training to new labor force entrants, dislocated workers, and unemployed persons can help close the skills gap and expand employment and advancement opportunities for individuals. Occupational training also helps build America’s future by ensuring that the United States has the skills and talents necessary to meet the needs of employers. This report was developed to provide a general overview of the scale of funding for occupational training that come from many sources— the federal government, state and local government, private employers, philanthropic foundations, and individual workers themselves.