New Talent Strategy Targets Industry Role in Federal AI Workforce

A new multi-agency strategy aims to tackle America’s growing needs for a technical workforce in artificial intelligence amid White House directives to prioritize industry leadership and speed up innovation.  

The strategy released in early August from the Labor Department focuses on five pillars: industry-driven strategies, worker mobility, integrated systems, accountability, and flexibility and innovation.  

The strategy’s first pillar notably emphasizes industry’s role in building AI talent pipelines where federal funds would go toward employer-led upskilling initiatives to fill shortages. 

Experts say a centralized resource to guide adoption in AI and technology overall has long been needed.  

“The challenge for workers, educators and for industry in other job-training initiatives is it’s hard to build job-training curricula in a centralized fashion,” said American Enterprise Institute (AEI) senior workforce development fellow and former Labor Department Acting Assistant Secretary Brent Orrell. “Programs serve individual workers, but the particular needs of any given business are different.” 

Orrell told GovCIO Media & Research that a centralized resource could help bridge the skills gap in the current workforce as AI touches more parts of the economy and everyday life. 

“AI tools are incredibly helpful, but what’s needed are people who are able to interact effectively with the AI, and that takes a different set of skills than a technical set of skills,” said Orrell.  

A common sentiment among the American workforce is that AI use is still an untapped skill. A 2024 study from training organization National Skills Coalition (NSC) said 68% of voters saw AI as a serious problem for the workforce because of this limitation. 

NSC Senior Government Affairs Manager Caroline Treschitta noted the need to better align public-private partners that collaborate to ensure a skilled workforce.  

“Addressing the workforce is critical for many of the reasons that the president laid out in his agenda, but it also ensures that businesses have the talent and workers and students can see a life-sustaining wage and have good careers,” Treschitta told GovCIO Media & Research.   

The strategy calls for expanding registered apprenticeship programs, where Labor will require states applying for funding to set targets for the number of participants placed into apprenticeships. Federal funds would “prioritize results, rewarding programs that place workers directly into apprenticeships or other work-based learning opportunities that lead to in-demand jobs,” the plan states. 

The National Science Foundation (NSF) will also work on deepening relationships between industry, government and academia as part of the plan. One of its main responsibilities will be to create a national AI core competency and best practices framework that aligns more closely with industry demand. 

The National Applied Artificial Intelligence Consortium (NAAIC), led out of Miami Dade College, is one of these efforts. The training was developed in partnership with industry leaders Intel, Google, Microsoft, AWS and OpenAI. 

In less than a year, NAAIC has offered 7,000 hours of AI training to over 450 community college faculty across 180 colleges and 40 states, an NSF spokesperson told GovCIO Media & Research. 

“A successful industry partnership between a business and a training provider, whether that’s a community college or training provider are key to a successful workforce,” added Treschitta. “[This strategy] is all about getting it right with the implementation and making sure that small and mid-sized businesses and large businesses have a seat at the table.”