State and Federal policy update - September 9, 2025

State policy update

Hochul commits over $40 million to year-round youth employment

Last month, Governor Hochul announced that New York would allocate $40.6 million to support the Youth Employment Program (YEP), which provides year-round work experience and training opportunity to at-risk young adults in communities outside New York City that have been heavily impacted by gun violence. YEP is part of the state’s Gun Involved Violence Elimination (GIVE) initiative, operating in 21 counties across the state. 

This program is projected to serve at least 2,500 low-income youth through June 2026. Eligible participants must be age 14 to 20 with a household income less than 200 percent of the federal poverty level. Last year, when YEP was first offered, it served more than 4,000 youth who worked in schools, libraries, food service establishments, camps and childcare settings, and with community-based organizations. 

YEP’s program cycle and funding run from September through June, giving way to the annual Summer Youth Employment Program (SYEP). Indeed, YEP leverages the service infrastructure of SYEP, though public information is not available regarding whether the programs are truly integrated in terms of continuity of service. NYATEP heartily applauds the state’s investment in young adults, and urges policymakers to consider how to more closely connect these programs in creating an integrated and scaffolded sequence of work-based learning experiences.

Federal policy update 

House Republicans release budget plan with deep cuts to workforce programs

Following a Senate budget markup for labor, education, and health and human services programs that passed in July with strong bipartisan support and held funding largely steady from the previous year, last week the House of Representatives advanced their own budget markup that included a massive budget cut to workforce programs. Reflecting a measure that called for renaming the AmeriCorps program as “America First Corps” and the newly passed Workforce Pell awards as “Trump Grants,” this vote fell along strict partisan lines. A full committee markup of the bill is scheduled for Tuesday, Sept. 9 at 11am. 

If passed, the House measure would end funding for Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA) Youth and Adult programs. (Technically, the bill calls for a one-year elimination of WIOA Adult funds, which the workforce analyst Nick Beadle jokingly calls a “gap year” before pointing out that the erosion of service infrastructure from a one-year cut would render it difficult to restore funding in the future.) It also zeroes out funding Women in Apprenticeship and Nontraditional Occupations, the Senior Community Service, Employment Program, and grants to provide job training and employment support for justice-involved individuals, and cuts Job Corps funding in half. 

In total, the House cuts would remove more money from workforce programs than the Trump administration’s proposal from earlier this year to eliminate 13 DOL programs and consolidate them into a $2.9 billion block grant. If enacted in full, these cuts would leave roughly $2.5 billion for programs, with the large majority of funds restricted to support for dislocated workers. Interestingly, the measure calls to preserve and even expand funding for a handful of programs that the administration had proposed to eliminate, including YouthBuild and apprenticeship funding.  

To be clear, analysts consider it extremely unlikely that this budget will be passed as written. Democrats have mocked the proposal as political theater and called attention to provisions they characterized as extreme, including cuts to K-12 education, medical research, and public health in addition to workforce programs.  It is unclear whether the bill could even pass the full House, let alone overcome a Senate filibuster. Figure 1 below offers a side-by-side comparison of spending between the two measures, along with the Fiscal Year 2024 final Conference allocations as a point of comparison. 

Even if the bill does not pass, however, it sets out a more extreme position on the House side as negotiations proceed toward a likely Continuing Resolution later this year. While WIOA formula funds seem more likely that not to survive, the final measure could well include cuts to or elimination of other programs in the crosshairs. As always, NYATEP will continue to share information as we get it, including advocacy to resist funding reductions that would impede the efforts of workforce professionals. 

Figure 1: Proposed Senate and House FY26 funding levels for workforce programs

Labor, Education Departments continue to develop workforce partnership

On Sept. 8, the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) and U.S. Department of Education announced new steps toward the integration of federal workforce programs agreed upon earlier this year. The departments will utilize a new “integrated state plan portal”—a content management system through which states submit their regularly required WIOA plans—to administer a number of WIOA programs including adult education and family literacy. The Department of Education will transfer staff and funds to DOL to manage this work. The result will be to “position the Labor Department as the centralized hub for federal workforce programs.” 

As background, the two agencies concluded an Interagency Agreement under which DOL would help administer the Carl D. Perkins Career and Technical Education Act and WIOA Title II programs. The goal of the partnership is to “facilitate streamlined services for states and grantees.” 

NYATEP will continue to monitor events as they unfold and share details to our members as soon as possible. If you have an immediate questions or concerns, please contact David Fischer, Interim Executive Director, at [email protected]. 

Past policy updates are available on our LASTEST NEWS blog! View them HERE!