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 45 members of the Ohio Manufacturers’ Association built a shared competency model for the roles they hire, and Ohio’s Department of Education and Workforce adopted it – putting industry voices at the table so that students develop the real-world skills employers need. It shows that employers can define the skills their jobs require in a form a public system will adopt as a statewide standard.
▾
Ohio · ManufacturingActive

For years, the Ohio Manufacturers’ Association (OMA) heard the same answer whenever it asked its members about their biggest challenge: workforce. Knowing its members had limited capacity to navigate public workforce programs themselves, the association decided to take the problem on for them – work that has now spanned about a decade.

Backed by member dues, OMA started by building relationships and a regional infrastructure, replicating an industry sector partnership model it had seen work elsewhere in the state and helping manufacturers, educators, and community partners stand up partnerships of their own. The state began funding those partnerships early on through Industry Sector Partnership grants OMA advocated for. Over time, OMA began formally endorsing the industry sector partnerships: each partnership applies for endorsement every two years, showing that its work is driven by manufacturer demand and aligned with OMA’s statewide strategy, and gains access in return to OMA’s technical assistance, resources, and funding opportunities. Roughly twenty partnerships now make up the network.

As the network grew, OMA took on the sector’s shared needs directly. Responding to shortages in operator and technician roles, it brought more than 45 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 Department of Education and Workforce adopted OMA’s Competency Model framework – developed by more than 45 Ohio manufacturers. By putting industry voices at the table, the framework ensures students are developing the real-world skills employers need to build Ohio’s manufacturing workforce. Where the state cannot direct programs – at the college level, where faculty control their own curriculum – OMA offers a curriculum assessment that a program can run against the model and bring to its own employer advisory committee, producing alignment without a mandate. One industry now maintains a single, current statement of its skill needs that classrooms across the state teach to. OMA also sponsors registered apprenticeship programs on behalf of its members, and in 2025 it published Ohio’s Manufacturing Workforce Blueprint, a statewide strategy with five priorities, developed with the governor’s office and the state’s workforce and education agencies, that the partnerships align their work to.

The result

The model proved successful enough to win a $23.5 million federal Good Jobs Challenge award in 2022, which let OMA fund the industry sector partnerships’ training programs and build its own capacity as the network’s statewide backbone. The network exceeded every goal in the award, including its goal of 3,600 Ohioans placed in good-paying jobs, and its partnerships now support more than 1,400 manufacturers. Since the award ended in June 2026, the work has continued on the strength of that track record: state partners have found ways to continue it, from matching funds to joint applications, and OMA now convenes the state’s workforce and economic development agencies on a regular basis to track progress against the strategy. It is a measure of what an employer association can produce with sustained resourcing.

Learn more: Ohio Manufacturers’ Association – workforce services →

Public systems involvedK-12 and Career and Technical Education (Ohio Department of Education and Workforce) · 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 shows that philanthropy can build this infrastructure sector by sector.
▾
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.

Learn more: Richard M. Fairbanks Foundation – iLab Indiana and INCAP →

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 fullest example of formal recognition among these cases – a state funding the role, defining it in law, and getting real sector strategies back.
▾
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.

Learn more: Career Connect Washington – Sector Leaders →

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 fourteen 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 are true partners to public systems, with a real role in recommending 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 state-level 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. Today’s employer engagement model gathers employer input on plans that are already made, one committee, one survey, and one program at a time. An industry-led system combines that input into a representative sector voice, brings it to the state through a defined channel, and designs programs around the roles employers are trying to fill. 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 state level is to build the capacity of statewide, employer-led sector intermediaries – industry associations, employer coalitions, chambers of commerce – and to recognize and fund them as core workforce infrastructure, as the field already funds program intermediaries and career navigators on the learner side.

Employers hold two things no dataset or program can supply. They know which jobs are opening and which skills matter in hiring, and they hold the workplace itself – the only place paid on-the-job training happens. One company’s needs are not a sector’s needs, though. Turning what individual companies know into one representative voice is the work of employer-led organizations, and that is the capacity we need to build. Without them, the system hears scattered input from individual employers instead of a clear picture of what the sector needs.

Partnership runs both ways. In return for a real role in what the system trains for, employers commit where only they can: hiring from the programs they help shape, training people on the job, and co-investing in new pathways. That is what separates a true partner from an advisor.

Students pay the cost when the sector’s voice is missing. Without it, programs are designed around the faculty, equipment, and courses an institution already has and around outdated labor market data, and students take on debt for credentials employers do not hire for. AI will widen that gap, because the skills a job requires are changing faster than public data and programs can keep up, and differently in every industry. Giving employers a real role in what the system trains for is therefore also the most direct way to improve outcomes for students.

What statewide sector intermediaries can do – four main roles

When a state recognizes and funds statewide sector intermediaries as core workforce infrastructure, they can take on a range of roles that no single body at the state level is equipped to fill today. 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.

Open the detail →
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.

Open the detail →
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.

Open the detail →

Working through regions. In many states, regional sector partnerships and employer coalitions already organize employers around shared, local talent needs, and states should keep investing in them. Most states are missing a statewide voice for each sector that turns those regional perspectives into a clear set of priorities to bring to the state agencies that set policy and make investments. A statewide sector intermediary can work through regional partnerships, so that regional partners inform its demand picture and the sector’s recommended priorities – and so that the strategies the state funds are implemented in partnership with regional coalitions. In Ohio, the statewide manufacturers’ association endorses roughly twenty regional sector partnerships, sets statewide strategy in partnership with them, and passes funding through to them.

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

Some of the world’s strongest workforce systems are industry-led

The case for industry-led talent systems is not a theory – the systems other countries study, in Switzerland, Singapore, Germany, and Austria, give employer organizations a formal role in career-focused education – 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.

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 students and workers

Learners reach the good jobs public investment promised

  • Programs train for jobs that actually exist – anchored to the occupations employers are actively hiring for.
  • What students learn keeps pace as AI changes the work – employers update what their sector needs, and programs follow.
  • Students earn credentials employers hire for – and stop paying for ones that do not 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, alongside the employer relationships institutions hold.
  • 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.
  • The system responds as AI changes a sector’s skills – programs adapt as the intermediary communicates how the work is changing.
  • 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 get there →

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