Biden-Harris administration awards $71M in grants to improve job quality, prepare workers, expand access to good jobs in critical sectors

WASHINGTON – The Biden-Harris administration announced the award of approximately $71 million in grants to improve job quality, expand access to good jobs in critical sectors and prepare workers for good-paying jobs being created by the administration’s Investing in America agenda. 

Funding from the U.S. Department of Labor’s Building Pathways to Infrastructure Jobs Grant Program, Critical Sectors Job Quality Grants Program and Workforce Pathways for Youth program will support 27 organizations serving 14 states and the District of Columbia. 

“The funding we’re announcing today advances the Biden-Harris administration’s goal of promoting worker-focused training programs that incorporate industry and worker voices,” said Acting Labor Secretary Julie Su. “The grants will help enhance access to quality jobs for care workers and people in other critical sectors, broaden high-quality job training and career opportunities for youth and strengthen public-private partnerships that prepare workers for high-quality infrastructure jobs.”

The department awarded nearly $38 million through the second round of the Building Pathways to Infrastructure Jobs Grant Program to enable 13 public-private partnerships across nine states to prepare workers for the good-paying infrastructure jobs the Biden-Harris administration is creating. The funding announced today – with the $94 million the department announced in September 2023 – is a combined investment of more than $130 million to support the growing demand for a skilled infrastructure workforce. 

Through the Critical Sectors Job Quality grants, totaling $13 million, eight organizations will design and deploy programs in 10 states to improve job quality and increase the availability of good jobs in the care, climate resilience and hospitality industries. The round of funding announced today aligns with the Good Jobs Principles developed by the departments of Labor and Commerce and emphasizes improving job quality within the care sector. Three recipients, representing half the total funding, will specifically focus on care occupations, including childcare and direct care workers.

The department also awarded nearly $20 million in Workforce Pathways for Youth demonstration grants to six national organizations that provide workforce development and training programs to youth after school and over the summer. The grants will help the organizations partner with state and local organizations that serve marginalized and underserved youth, ages 14 to 21, including Native American youth. Through the partnerships, these out-of-school-time organizations will provide workforce readiness programming to expand job training and workforce pathways for youth, including soft skill development, career exploration, job readiness, work-based learning opportunities and work experiences.

As the Investing in America agenda continues to create good-paying jobs nationwide, recipients of the Workforce Pathways for Youth, Building Pathways to Infrastructure and Critical Sectors grants will help build an “opportunity infrastructure” in which workers understand what skills they need, have access to the training to develop those skills – without roadblocks or barriers – and are connected to those jobs early. 

The recipients of Building Pathways to Infrastructure Jobs grants are as follows:

The recipients of the Critical Sectors Job Quality grants are as follows:

The recipients of the Workforce Pathways for Youth grants are as follows: