Working draft for discussion

A vision for industry-led talent systems

What changes when employers, organized by sector, hold a meaningful role in what public systems fund, approve, and build — and where it’s already working.

01 — The bright spots

Employers are getting better at speaking with one voice

There is good news. Over the past decade, employers have been getting better at organizing themselves and speaking with one voice to the workforce development ecosystem about the talent their industries need – and where they have, public systems have started to respond. Three examples show what that looks like in practice.

Ohio: manufacturers built the skills standard the state adopted

More than 40 members of the Ohio Manufacturers’ Association built a shared competency model for the roles they hire, and Ohio’s CTE office adopted it as the standard for what schools teach – with no law or funding condition requiring it. Institutions use it because it is the clearest picture of the skills manufacturers hire for. It is the strongest proof that employers can produce work the public system chooses to adopt.
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Ohio · ManufacturingActive

Manufacturers across Ohio face persistent shortages in operator and technician roles – and for years, every institution defined the skills for those jobs on its own. Employers repeated themselves at advisory table after advisory table, and no shared statement existed of what the sector’s jobs actually require.

The Ohio Manufacturers’ Association (OMA) brought more than 40 manufacturers together to build a shared competency model – more than 400 rated knowledge, skill, and ability statements for operator and technician roles, tiered from sector-wide to industry-specific. Ohio’s career and technical education office adopted it as the standard for what the state’s schools teach, and several of Ohio’s post-secondary institutions have adopted it as well. Where the state cannot direct programs – at the college level, where faculty control their own curriculum – OMA offers an assessment a program can run against the model and bring to its own employer advisory committee, producing alignment without a mandate. OMA also publishes a statewide manufacturing workforce strategy, sponsors registered apprenticeship on behalf of its members, and endorses about fourteen regional industry sector partnerships – each endorsement runs two years, renewed only if the partnership can show its employers are still actively engaged.

The result

No law or funding condition required Ohio’s schools and colleges to use the model; they adopted it because it was better than what they had. One industry now maintains a single, current statement of its skill needs that classrooms across the state teach to. Getting there took roughly fifteen years and a six-person team, backed by a federal Good Jobs Challenge grant and member dues – a measure of what an employer association can produce with sustained resourcing, and of how much work the road takes without formal state support.

Public systems involvedK-12 and Career and Technical Education (Ohio CTE office) · Community & Technical Colleges · Apprenticeship

Indiana: philanthropy is standing up one employer voice per industry

The Richard M. Fairbanks Foundation has committed nearly $13 million to stand up Industry Talent Associations – one per industry, each giving its sector a single voice in INCAP, the state’s career apprenticeship initiative. Six industries have taken on the role since 2024, led by existing industry groups. It is the clearest demonstration that philanthropy can build this infrastructure sector by sector.
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Indiana · Multi-sectorActive

Indiana is building a statewide career apprenticeship system – INCAP, the Indiana Career Apprenticeship Pathway – and faced the question every such effort faces: who speaks for each industry about which occupations to build programs for, and what those programs should teach?

The answer is a network of Industry Talent Associations (ITAs) – statewide employer groups, one per industry, that serve as INCAP’s employer engagement body. Each ITA engages its industry’s employers to choose the occupations INCAP builds programs for, define the knowledge and skills those programs teach, and work with educators on the training materials. Existing industry-led groups lead the role, the effort is coordinated by CEMETS iLab Indiana – a coalition of more than 300 leaders from industry, education, government, and philanthropy – and the Richard M. Fairbanks Foundation has committed nearly $13 million. Six industries have taken the role on since 2024: advanced manufacturing and logistics, banking, healthcare, life sciences, construction, and IT.

The result

A clear, fundable model for standing up sector-level employer voice one industry at a time – and evidence that a funder can build this infrastructure and that existing industry groups will step into the role. The open questions are the ones this body of work addresses: the associations exist to build INCAP programs rather than to state each industry’s full demand picture, and no state designation yet commits Indiana’s public systems to act on what they produce.

Public systems involvedK-12 and Career and Technical Education · Apprenticeship

Washington: sector intermediaries funded and written into statute

Career Connect Washington selected and funded ten sector leaders through a formal selection process, defined the role in statute, and aligned career-connected learning grants to the workforce priorities those intermediaries identified. It is the furthest any state has gone toward formal recognition – a state funding the role, defining it in law, and getting real sector strategies back.
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Washington · Statewide infrastructureActive

As Washington expanded its investment in career-connected learning, employer participation didn’t keep pace — and funding decisions were largely disconnected from what employers actually needed. The result was predictable: lower employer uptake and a weaker return on public dollars.

Rather than ask employers to engage more with the existing system, Washington rebuilt part of the system around them. Through Career Connect Washington, a public-private partnership, the state selected and funded ten trusted sector intermediaries — “Sector Leaders” — to convene employers, translate their hiring needs into concrete strategies, and coordinate employer-aligned growth across K-12, higher education, and registered apprenticeship. The state provided the connective tissue — funding, agency access, and technical assistance — while the intermediaries did the work of organizing employers and turning demand into system-ready strategy. The Sector Leader role was written into state statute, giving it legitimacy and staying power, and intermediaries were chosen through a formal selection process.

The defining feature is that employer input wasn’t advisory — it shaped where public money went. Washington’s Employment Security Department revised its grant-making criteria and processes to align with Sector Leader strategies, so the demand employers defined carried through to the state’s funding decisions.

The result

Employers, working through their sector intermediaries, drove concrete statewide change: the Washington Bankers Association removed unnecessary degree requirements and embedded employer-aligned banking curriculum into high school career and technical education statewide; Life Science Washington replicated a proven biomanufacturing training program across regions; the Center for Strengthening the Teaching Profession helped districts scale “grow your own” teacher pathways in rural and high-turnover schools; and sector leaders across three industries co-developed a shared welding standard.

Public systems involvedK-12 and Career and Technical Education · Community & Technical Colleges · Four-Year Colleges & Universities · Apprenticeship Agency · Legislature · Washington Employment Security Department · Career Connect Washington (public-private partnership)
Read all 13 case studies →
02 — The opportunity

Turning this early progress into system-wide change

Each of these examples was built largely on its own – a coalition, a network, a state program assembling the pieces itself. The opportunity now is to take what they have proven and build it into how states run their workforce development systems. If employers are getting better at speaking with one voice, how does the broader workforce system need to adapt to listen to that voice and act on it?

The opportunity: Build industry-led talent systems in which representative groups of employers share real, defined recommendation-making power with public partners to shape the strategies, investments, and pathways that help learners reach good jobs.

Building those systems takes two moves – one on the employer side, one on the system side.

Move 01

Build the capacity of employer-led organizations to lead on talent

Strengthen the employer-led organizations that let a sector speak with one voice – industry associations, employer coalitions, chambers of commerce – so they have the staffing, data, and skills to represent their industry’s talent needs and bring them into public systems.

Move 02

Adapt workforce ecosystems to listen to that voice and act on it

Adjust how public systems receive employer voice – where it enters, which decisions it shapes, and what employers can expect in response – so programs, funding, and approvals align with the workforce outcomes students and employers need.

This is what makes a talent system industry-led – and it is a different model from employer engagement as most systems practice it today. Our current employer engagement model gathers employer input on plans that are already made – one committee, one survey, one program at a time – and leaves each institution to decide what, if anything, changes. An industry-led system aggregates that input into one sector voice, brings it to the state through a defined channel, and builds backwards from it – programs are designed around the roles employers are trying to fill, instead of designed first and marketed to employers afterward – so students train for openings that exist and graduate into good jobs.

03 — Move one

Build the capacity of employer-led organizations to speak with one voice

The primary way to achieve a unified sector voice at the scale the system needs is to build the capacity of employer-led sector intermediaries — industry associations, employer coalitions, chambers of commerce — and recognize and fund them as core workforce infrastructure.

This is a case for sector intermediaries to be embedded as core workforce infrastructure — not treated as another program delivery mechanism or support service. The field already invests heavily in learner-focused intermediaries and connective tissue — program intermediaries, career navigators, wraparound supports — and increasingly treats that work as core infrastructure rather than as overhead. These learner-focused intermediaries make sense of the education and workforce landscape on each student's behalf, translate a confusing set of credential and career options into a clear path forward, and broker the connections — to programs, supports, and employers — that help learners complete their credentials and land in good jobs.

The system has not extended the same logic to the employer side. Sector intermediaries do for employers what navigators do for learners — they navigate the workforce landscape on the employer's behalf, distill hiring needs into a clear signal the system can act on, and build the partnerships that help employers connect to the talent they need. Without them, employers are left to navigate the system on their own, and the system hears scattered input from individual employers rather than a clear picture of what the sector actually needs. Businesses, after all, are busy being businesses — a manufacturer is organized to make products, a hospital to deliver care. Employing people comes with that work; navigating public talent systems does not.

The field treats learner-centered intermediaries as core workforce infrastructure, but we don't have the sector intermediary equivalent. And learners ultimately bear the cost. Without sector intermediaries shaping what the system trains for, programs prepare students for credentials that don't pay off and occupations that aren't in demand — students accumulate debt and graduate into fields where the jobs they expected don't exist. The fix to employer engagement is the same fix to student outcomes — they are two ends of the same problem.

What sector intermediaries can do – four main roles

When a state recognizes and funds sector intermediaries as core workforce infrastructure, they can take on a range of roles the current system has no single body equipped to fill. Click any role below to see what it looks like in practice.

01

Create and communicate a clear demand picture

One picture of the sector’s in-demand occupations, competencies, and credentials – built once, used everywhere.

Open the detail →
02

Identify strategies to address the sector’s workforce needs

Define the sector’s biggest workforce problems and proposed solutions – and bring them to the state and the institutions that can act on them.

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03

Help employers navigate the system

One front door into the workforce ecosystem for the sector’s employers – and for the programs trying to reach them.

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04

Mobilize employers to participate

Turn the sector’s stated priorities into employer action – above all, hiring from aligned programs and training people on the job.

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How states can select sector intermediaries → What makes an effective sector intermediary →
05 — Global precedents

The world’s highest-performing workforce systems are industry-led

The case for industry-led talent systems is not a theory – the strongest systems in the world give employer organizations a formal role in what gets taught, approved, and funded.

Switzerland

Sector-organized employers set occupational standards

Employers, organized by sector, determine occupational standards and training content — including the standardized on-the-job training plans that companies across each sector deliver against. Apprenticeship is the primary pathway into the workforce.

~70% of youth enter the workforce through employer-led apprenticeship pathways.
Singapore

Industry Skills Councils co-determine credentials

SkillsFuture — Singapore's national upskilling system — gives Industry Skills Councils formal authority to co-determine credential frameworks, approve courses, and govern public training investments. The result is one of the most adaptive workforce development systems in the world.

Employer-aligned training reaches nearly every working-age citizen.
Germany & Austria

Chambers and guilds hold formal authority

Employers organize through chambers, guilds, and sector associations that hold formal decision-making power over curriculum, assessment, occupational standards, and program quality. The design varies — but the principle is constant: employers help lead the system, not just advise it.

Youth unemployment is among the lowest in Europe.

Each of these systems makes different design choices. What they share is the structural commitment that makes a talent system industry-led: employers, organized by sector, hold a formal role in the decisions that determine what the system funds, approves, and prioritizes.

06 — The impact

What gets better when states build industry-led talent systems

The case for industry-led talent systems is the case for public investment in workforce development finally delivering — for the learners and employers it's meant to serve.

For learners

Learners reach the good jobs public investment promised

  • Programs train for jobs that actually exist — anchored to the occupations employers are actively hiring for.
  • Credentials carry real labor market value — students aren't paying for credentials that don't pay off.
  • Pathways are clearer and more visible — including to the populations the current system serves worst: working adults, first-generation students, rural residents.
  • Work-based learning opportunities grow — built around sector demand, not whichever employer-program relationships exist.
  • The promise of public investment in education becomes real — a meaningful return on the time, debt, and trust learners put in.
For employers

Employers gain access to the reliable talent pipeline they need to grow

  • The talent pipeline is more reliable — open roles fill faster and specialized skills are there when the sector needs to scale.
  • Employers have the talent they need to grow — training capacity scales with sector demand instead of lagging behind it.
  • Employers turn to the public system to hire and train their workforce — programs produce results they can plan against.
  • Employers become more willing to co-invest — through funding, work-based learning slots, and hiring pipelines.
  • Employers see a return on their participation — input translates into what the system builds and funds.
Sector-based employer coalitions across the country are providing the proof that employers will lead when public systems let them. The task is to stop making employers work around those systems — and start building systems that work with them. Get this right, and the country finally builds an abundance of what it has been short of: skilled workers in the jobs that matter, and good jobs for the people we train.
NextHow we make it happen →

What states, sector intermediaries, and funders can each do — and the practical tools to start with.