Skills & Careers
The U.S. Department of Labor has awarded $95.5 million to 20 projects in 17 states to move workers who lost jobs in layoffs into new jobs or paid training within six months, the department announced Monday, Oct. 19. No Georgia organization is among the recipients.
The money comes through a new program called Rapid Reskill Dislocated Worker Grants, run by the department’s Employment and Training Administration. When the department opened the competition in June, it said approximately $50 million would be available, with individual awards of $2 million to $8 million. The final total is nearly double that figure.
Who received awards
The largest awards, $6,593,407 each, went to Florida’s Department of Commerce, Michigan’s Department of Labor and Economic Opportunity, New Hampshire’s Department of Business and Economic Affairs, the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services and Washington’s Employment Security Department. Adaptive Construction Solutions in Texas received $6,593,357 and The Boot in Louisiana $6,585,696.
Other recipients are the Capital Area Workforce Development Board in North Carolina ($5,797,825), the Maine Department of Labor ($5,576,341), the Rhode Island Department of Labor and Training ($4,945,009), Pursuit Transformation Company in New York ($4,697,749), California’s Employment Development Department ($4,326,860), the Nebraska Department of Labor ($4,120,810), the New York Department of Labor ($3,708,710), the Oklahoma Employment Security Commission ($3,296,611), SER-Jobs for Progress of the Texas Gulf Coast ($2,884,511), Per Scholas in New York ($2,719,671), the Kentucky Department of Workforce Development ($2,554,831), the Alaska Department of Labor and Workforce Development ($2,472,413) and Workforce Alliance in Connecticut ($2,290,839).
New York has three recipients and Texas two. Thirteen of the 20 awards went to state labor or workforce agencies; the other seven went to workforce boards and training organizations.
What the grants require
According to the department’s guidance letter for the program, issued June 25, projects must quickly assess what laid-off workers already know, chart a path to an in-demand occupation and aim to place participants in employment or paid work-based training, such as a Registered Apprenticeship or on-the-job training, within six months of enrollment. Training is meant to be short-term and lead to industry-recognized credentials.
The department named target sectors including domestic manufacturing, aerospace, energy production and construction. The guidance letter adds that states choose target occupations using labor market data and lists skills such as AI-augmented manufacturing and robotics, mechatronics, supply chain analytics and precision machining.
Unusually for dislocated worker grants, applicants did not have to point to a specific plant closing or mass layoff. The guidance letter defines the qualifying event as “the broad and accelerating economic transformation driven by AI” and the country’s reindustrialization. Participants still have to meet the federal definition of a dislocated worker, and grantees have 36 months from the award start to run their projects.
The grants are National Dislocated Worker Grants, discretionary awards made under Section 170 of the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act. Applications were due Aug. 3. Grantees are required to document and share what works so that effective models can be used elsewhere in the workforce system.
Labor Secretary Keith Sonderling said the grants support the department’s “commitment to ensuring displaced workers have the skills they need” and will “empower workers to stay rooted in their hometown.”
What the awards do not show
The release gives no enrollment targets or projected placements, and the six-month placement goal is an objective, not a reported result. Outcomes will only be known as the projects run over the next three years.
For laid-off workers, access depends on where they live. Services will run through the recipients listed above, typically via state and local workforce systems, and workers in states without an award, including Georgia, will not see new services from this round. Those workers can still use the regular dislocated worker programs offered through local American Job Centers.
Sources
- U.S. Department of Labor, “US Department of Labor awards $95.5M in grants to support innovative programs for reskilling, reemploying dislocated workers,” October 19, 2026. https://www.dol.gov/newsroom/releases/eta/eta20261019
- U.S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration, “Reskill DWGs,” accessed October 22, 2026. https://www.dol.gov/agencies/eta/dislocated-workers/grants/reskill-dwgs
- U.S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration, “Training and Employment Guidance Letter No. 15-25: Rapid Reskill Employment Recovery National Dislocated Worker Grants (Reskill DWGs),” June 25, 2026. https://www.dol.gov/agencies/eta/advisories/tegl-15-25
Featured photo: The visitor entrance plaza of the U.S. Department of Labor's Frances Perkins Building at 200 Constitution Avenue NW in Washington, photographed Feb. 4, 2025. Photo: G. Edward Johnson, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 4.0). Cropped from the original.
