Introduction
In the U.S., an estimated $30.2 trillion in transportation, water, and real estate assets could be reconfigured and repurposed to power a sustainable green economy – a daunting but necessary transition if we are to reach national climate goals, including the Biden Administration’s aim of a 50% or greater reduction in economy-wide net greenhouse gas pollution by 2030.[1]
However, America’s existing workforce development apparatus is fragmented, underfunded, siloed, and not designed to meet the demand for workers to fill the jobs that will power this transition – or ensure that these new jobs are good jobs.
A recent and unprecedented investment commitment from the federal government has given the U.S. the capital to not only renew our infrastructure but also launch a national workforce agenda focused on overcoming silos and expanding opportunity in climate-critical sectors. Smartly structured capital can help realign incentives and encourage collaboration across sectors to achieve outcomes by shifting the focus to outcomes, rather than fragmented outputs – creating new paths to invest in upskilling current workers to transition into in-demand, quality jobs for the green economy, and in apprenticeship programs for the next generation. The required scale is significant: recent Brookings Institution research estimates that the U.S. economy will need 32 million new workers over the next decade in infrastructure occupations alone.[2]
The definition of a “green” job[3] remains somewhat elastic, and not every green job is a good job; without new steps to ensure job quality nationwide, there are indicators that some occupations will be “deskilled,” and wages kept low, in the green transition. Clearly, we must do better.[4]
Many of the most in-demand jobs being created by major national investments have a clear green component and are relatively well-paid, especially when compared to other jobs accessible to workers without a college degree.[5] Welding jobs are a telling example, requiring specialized skills and offering an average annual wage of $52,640.[6] As more of our infrastructure requires buildout or retrofitting for climate adaptation or mitigation, many similar occupations are poised for growth: electricians, line installers, pipe fitters, and more. Such jobs require training beyond a high school diploma – often called “middle skills” – but not a bachelor’s degree. In this paper, we focus on this broad category of jobs, many in the skilled trades, rather than other kinds of good, green jobs – such as in science and engineering occupations – that require a bachelor’s or more advanced degrees.
Given troubling long-run trends that point to stagnant economic mobility[7] in the U.S. – particularly among workers who do not have a college degree[8] – there is a growing imperative to invest in new pathways to the prosperity that comes with stable, quality, and well-paid work.
Transforming the American workforce system requires multiple solutions and additional funding, but who invests and under what terms matters enormously. Funding not only fuels activity but also structures relationships among actors, especially when they co-invest – rethinking who pays, who benefits, and who takes on risk.
The approach we will outline, of public-private “talent finance” partnerships, can and should be part of how we train and deploy a green workforce, given our ambitions and status quo gaps and inequities. This approach can scale up in ways that promote more equitable, accountable, and effective delivery of results for workers, employers, training providers, and supportive service providers alike.
A Critical Problem: Misaligned Incentives
Much of the estimated $1.25 trillion appropriated through the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act is for climate-related work in the built environment, such as developing a large number of renewable energy and energy storage facilities and making transportation and water infrastructure more resilient.[9] A recent Brookings analysis identified $75 billion across 54 programs[10] funded by the two acts that either target green workforce development directly or are flexible enough to include it. The authorization of such significant public funding does not mean it will all be spent on workforce training. But this historic availability of public capital exposes a growing problem with the status quo: the U.S. currently does not have enough workers in these roles, nor does it have enough accessible pathways for workers to pursue these jobs.
For decades, the U.S. has underinvested in a more balanced and market-responsive mix of postsecondary programs – including applied skills training, sometimes called career and technical education (CTE).[11] Unlike the widely available earn-while-you-learn applied skills opportunities in other advanced economies, only 519,000 Americans are enrolled in a registered apprenticeship program at any given time.[12] To put this in perspective, the U.S. spends about 50 times more on college degrees than applied skills training,[13] and has the lowest per capita job training expenditures[14] of any industrialized nation.
Where the U.S. offers high quality applied skills training, there are typically barriers to entry that disproportionately affect historically disadvantaged and underserved groups, especially women and people of color. For example, many of the highly selective apprenticeship programs for skilled trades associated with the clean energy transition have entrance exams, require pre-existing industry knowledge, do not assist prospective trainees with living expenses during pre-apprenticeship preparation, and do not offer supportive services during the program.[15]
The $3 billion federal Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA) illustrates these challenges: despite being the main source of goals, operating rules, and funding for the U.S. public workforce system, its training programs reach just a fraction of 1 percent of the U.S. worker population each year, and 75% of said programs reported incomplete data to evaluators.[16]
Meanwhile, organized labor plays a key role that is relevant to middle-skill green jobs: building trades unions collectively invest about $2 billion per year in training. But in many parts of the country, union density and participation are low, and the traditional funding model for union-led training was not designed to anticipate and scale to meet dramatic growth in demand – a classic, timing-of-money financing problem now in stark relief as we figure out how to grow our green workforce.[17] We need complements and supplements to these traditional sources and arrangements.
Finally, systems that aim for effectiveness and equity should be smart, promoting continuous learning based on meaningful evidence. But our system’s current assumptions and incentives provide far less information than we should have about effectively placing workers[18] in quality jobs with economic mobility.[19] Successfully scaling apprenticeships, CTE programs, and other types of “middle skill” pathways in the U.S. requires addressing long-entrenched norms and expectations, especially the comparatively high fragmentation of the U.S. system – and the scarcity of interdependent relationships among employers, employees, and jobseekers – than in many other industrialized nations.
Capital projects in the built environment represent perhaps the biggest opportunity for middle-skill green jobs, but the U.S. does not offer supportive, accessible, and affordable training at anywhere near the scale needed. There are many reasons for this supply and demand misalignment.
First, accountability – holding employers and training providers responsible for achieving meaningful results – is often elusive because workforce development funding is rarely provided by employers or linked to the most important and strategic worker outcomes, even though our public workforce system requires extensive performance measurement and onerous formal reporting.
Second – and relatedly – there are few incentives for employers to engage and co-invest to help meet their industry’s skill needs, an absence made more conspicuous by the lack of adequate targeted public sector funding. As a result, training providers struggle to evolve their programs to meet current or future labor market demands, and the heavy reliance on public funding makes effective programs vulnerable to the ups and downs of annual budget cycles.
Third, and more specific to infrastructure, the institutions responsible for planning and producing capital projects – such as infrastructure agencies or privately-owned utility companies – have rarely been expected to invest in the workforce needed for that production. Capital planning for projects proceeds with the assumption that the right skilled workforce will materialize[20] to complete them – without a comparable investment in making sure that such a workforce exists. This is another crucial disconnect between those charged with pursuing a broadly supported national goal and those charged with preparing the workers essential to achieving that goal.
In other words, the actors in the U.S. workforce development ecosystem do not have the sort of coordination and interdependencies that exist in other advanced economies: employers passively rely on the talent produced by education and training programs, for which workers are generally expected to pay on their own with minimal government assistance.
Too many workers therefore shoulder the risks of paying for a training program and taking time away from a current job to complete it. Though there is little systematic data available[21] on how learner-workers cover costs of training and living expenses for noncredit programs, available data on liquid assets for low to middle-income Americans,[22] together with analyses of subgroups of students and trainees, suggests it is highly likely that they use credit cards and high-interest loans to fill the funding gap. One estimate found that making federal loans available for CTE would cost as much as $500 million annually.[23]
More than cost, however, it is factors largely outside of the worker’s control – such as a lack of access to affordable childcare, transportation, or credit to cover tuition – that appear to be the biggest impediments to program enrollment or completion.[24] Women and people of color are disproportionately impacted by these barriers, exacerbating the economic mobility challenge for historically marginalized groups. A recent study found that quality jobs in energy efficiency in particular “are the most challenging for women and people of color to access.”[25]
A more successful workforce development system would share responsibility and accountability across all stakeholders, building relationships among actors by meeting the needs of employers, workers, and government alike. Having “skin in the game” from multiple stakeholders, whose investments (monetary and non-monetary) are organized around clear outcomes, would create a more robust, fiscally sustainable, resilient, and high performing system.
Leveraging existing public, private, and philanthropic dollars – and responding to the unique opportunity catalyzed by historic levels of federal investment in infrastructure to address the climate crisis – could help rebalance the equation among stakeholders and create on-ramps to opportunity for millions of workers.
A New Configuration: Talent Finance
Talent finance refers broadly to the use of public and private capital to address barriers to workforce development amid ballooning student loan debt, competing demands for limited public funding, and the impact of rapid technological innovation on the workforce.[26] Based on demonstrated early results from innovative projects across the U.S., this model can also be a rich source of lessons and systems change, shifting incentives, rewiring institutional relationships and – with them – improving accountability. If adopted at scale, talent finance could play an important role in solving critical labor market shortages as well as expanding economic opportunities for millions of Americans.
Talent finance powers workforce training through partnerships among government, philanthropy, employers, training partners, and supportive service providers. Together, these stakeholders create outcomes-focused, self-sustaining programs that prepare workers for the specific jobs that employers need to fill, all while sharing risk on transparent terms.
Social Finance, a nonprofit organization founded and led by one of us, has helped implement talent finance in a range of places, industries, and occupations. Though each talent finance example is unique, there are four defining, shared elements (see Figure 1):
- Changing Payment Timing: In the U.S., employers and governments are unlikely to provide sufficient up-front financing of job training for prospective employees or incumbent workers. When such direct grants are not available, talent finance models use capital from other sources to pay for training in advance, which employees and/or employers repay through an affordable plan based on successful job placement and/or substantial earnings gains. Realigning the timing of costs and benefits reduces risks for employers and workers.
- Tying Payment to Outcomes: In many talent finance programs, employers commit to repayment on behalf of the trained workers they hire, so employers only pay for skills upgrades for workers who ultimately join and contribute to the success of their organization. These outcomes-based provisions offer robust protections for workers and address major drawbacks associated with traditional student loans.
- Holistic Support for the Learner-Worker: Talent finance models offer access to supportive services to address living expenses and other challenges. A 2021 Department of Labor study[27] found that nearly half (48%) of those who drop out of community college do so because of a lack of funds to cover living expenses. Talent finance models that include living stipends and flexible emergency grants build agency, as workers help determine the supports they need most.
- Align, Blend, and “Recycle" Capital from Co-Investors: Capital raised from both public and private sources is deployed via a variety of structures that tie repayments to outcomes. In the most robust models, these loan repayments are then recycled to serve additional workers over time.
Figure 1
Beyond funding new training programs, talent finance can help scale existing earn-while-you-learn opportunities by providing a funding mechanism for critical services to pre-apprenticeship program participants. Currently, such services are not adequately funded. Although many pre-apprenticeships cover the direct cost of participants’ tuition, they generally do not provide wages or living stipends during training, nor do they pay for other important wraparound supports. Through talent finance, the ultimate employers of apprentices can help repay the funding advanced for supportive services that are vital to preparing workers to enter and succeed in the apprenticeship. Pre-apprenticeship programs can thereby create accessible apprenticeship entry points for under-represented populations, including low-income trainees, women, and people of color, by offering career exploration and skills development services while helping workers prepare to enter apprenticeships.
As of early 2024, there are active talent finance initiatives in the states of Colorado, Hawaii, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Ohio, South Carolina, Texas, and nationwide through the Google Career Certificates Fund. Efforts at scale are still nascent, but the examples below clearly demonstrate how this model can be effective.
Example: Leverage Private Sector/Employer Repayments:
ADTC Career Impact Bond[28]
In 2020, Social Finance partnered with American Diesel Training Centers (ADTC), a diesel technician training program based in Ohio, to launch a nearly $9 million Career Impact Bond funded through two investments from Social Finance’s UP Fund, a $50 million pool of catalytic capital from family offices, philanthropies, and other sources.
From 2020-2022, the ADTC Career Impact Bond served more than 1,100 people through a five-week hands-on training course at two ADTC locations in Ohio. The short timeline makes this program significantly more practical and accessible for both learner-workers and employers.
The UP Fund covered all upfront enrollment fees along with the costs of a medical, physical, and diesel mechanic toolset. Some participating corporate employers covered additional supports, like room and board. Participants also received career coaching, financial literacy training, and other services. Repayment by the learner-workers was contingent on finding a job paying above a minimum income level and only applied to the program fees, not the supportive services.
Top employers – including Penske Truck Leasing, Aim Transportation Solutions, and National Fleet Management – took over monthly payments for program graduates they hired. As a result, more than 50% of graduates had their training costs covered fully by employers and were able to exit the program with a better job and no repayment obligations. On average, program participants achieved a 60% median wage increase. At least one of the participating employers has now integrated the model into their overall workforce development strategy.
Example: Better Use of Public Funds: New Jersey Pay It Forward[29]
Social Finance partnered with the state government and eight large businesses in New Jersey to launch New Jersey Pay It Forward, a $24 million endeavor targeting in-demand industries like nursing, cybersecurity, welding, and HVAC (heating, ventilation, and air conditioning) technology. The program is designed to be additive: enhancing opportunity for disadvantaged workers without crowding out or substituting for other funding that already helps some workers to afford training.
New Jersey Pay It Forward provides zero-interest, no-fee loans for participants to enroll in high-quality job training, with a focus on people who may not have the credit history for a traditional loan. Participants also receive grants – which do not need to be repaid – for living stipends and supportive services as part of their enrollment, including access to emergency aid funds and mental health counseling. As of October 2023, more than 80% of participants were people of color, 65% did not have a four-year degree, and 45% identified as women.
The New Jersey program’s outcomes-based design seeks to shift risk away from workers by only requiring repayment if they are hired for a job in which they earn more than a defined minimum salary based on household size (e.g., $50,730 for workers from a three-person household). Even then, monthly payments are capped at no more than 10% of their discretionary income[30] for up to five years, and workers never repay more than the cost of training itself because the loans carry zero interest. Also, the grants for living stipends and supportive services are not subject to repayment.
Graduation rates for enrolled participants are as high as 90% for the nursing program, where the average annual salary is $75,000.
Example: Talent Finance for Jobs of the Green Transition: Massachusetts Climate Careers Fund[31]
In most states, public officials have shown strong interest in mobilizing the talent needed for the green economy – but rarely at a level, and with an operable delivery model, that is commensurate with projected employer demand.[32] That is now changing. At the Vatican Climate Summit in May 2024, Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey announced a first-of-its-kind fund focused exclusively on finding and training the nearly 30,000 additional full-time equivalent workers needed to meet the state’s 2030 greenhouse gas emissions reduction mandates.[33]
Social Finance and the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center, with coordination and support from Governor Healey’s administration, designed the initial $10 million pilot to help participating learner-workers prepare for well-paid, in-demand careers in clean energy and climate technology by filling “last-dollar” financing gaps (e.g., unmet tuition costs) and addressing barriers to enrolling in and completing training. All funds recouped through participant loan repayments will be recycled back into the fund to finance future training, amplifying the impact of the capital seeding the fund.
Crucially, the Massachusetts model is enabled by a whole-of-government approach: a Cabinet-level climate action lead coordinates across a range of state agencies, including economic development, education, energy, and labor.
Examples like New Jersey and Massachusetts show how governments can blend and braid federal funding with their own investments[34] to help reach their own workforce goals. As these jobs grow, it is essential to build on these models to achieve long-term sustainability, both in funding and/or financing and in maintaining shared accountability across all stakeholders.
Conclusion
With an historic influx of public investment, the U.S. can make shared stakes in outcomes part of the fabric of the workforce development system needed to green the economy and our built environment. The key is breaking down silos, prioritizing effectiveness, and putting stakeholders in durable and accountable relationships with each other, aligned around clear outcomes.
The U.S. has a big talent pipeline to build, and there are no panaceas or quick fixes. New and innovatively structured funding is necessary, but certainly not sufficient. Still, the results from talent finance models, some delivered with remarkable speed once the right elements were put in place, demonstrate that a more inclusive and sustainable future is possible.
A better workforce development system can strengthen the productive foundations of the American economy, expand economic mobility for millions of workers and their families, and mitigate the worst effects of a warming world. We now have the know-how, as well as a tangible and unprecedented opportunity, to move rapidly in that direction.
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank Meg Massey of the Social Finance Institute for her editorial support, and would like to extend a special thanks to Annelies Goger (Brookings Institution), Betony Jones (U.S. Department of Energy), Martha Ross (Brookings Institution), Mary Alice McCarthy (New America), Molly Scott (Urban Institute), Paige Shevlin (U.S. Department of Transportation), as well as Karen Anderson and David Socolow (the Social Finance Institute), for their thoughtful comments. The feedback provided was based on the expertise of these individuals and does not necessarily reflect the views of their respective organizations.
The views expressed are those of the authors and should not be attributed to Social Finance or the Brookings Institution, their trustees, or their funders.
About the Authors
Tracy Palandjian is CEO and Co-Founder of Social Finance, a national nonprofit and registered investment advisor that builds innovative partnerships and investments to measurably improve lives. Since 2011, the firm has pioneered impact-first investments, including the Social Impact Bond and the Career Impact Bond, to mobilize capital at scale and deliver sustainable impact for people and communities across the United States. Tracy has worked for over two decades to reimagine social and economic systems to enable all people to thrive.
Xavier (Xav) de Souza Briggs is a senior fellow at Brookings Metro. He is also a senior advisor and co-founder of What Works Plus, a collaborative of philanthropic donors promoting equity and resilience through America’s generational investments in infrastructure and climate action, and senior advisor to Freedman Consulting, LLC, a mission-driven consulting firm focused on public-interest projects, including What Works Plus. An award-winning educator and researcher, he is also an experienced leader in philanthropy and government.
[1] The White House. President Biden Sets 2030 Greenhouse Gas Pollution Reduction Target Aimed at Creating Good-Paying Union Jobs and Securing U.S. Leadership on Clean Energy Technologies (The White House, 2021, April 22). https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2021/04/22/fact-sheet-president-biden-sets-2030-greenhouse-gas-pollution-reduction-target-aimed-at-creating-good-paying-union-jobs-and-securing-u-s-leadership-on-clean-energy-technologies/
[2] Kane, Joseph. The Incredible Shrinking Infrastructure Workforce – and What to Do About It (Brookings Institution 2023, May).
[3] Jobs for the Future Growing Quality Green Jobs. n.d. Info.jff.org. https://info.jff.org/growing-quality-green-jobs
[4] Silkin, Lewis. Deskilling: What Is It? – Future of Work Hub (Future of Work Hub, 2021, April 28). https://www.futureofworkhub.info/explainers/2021/4/28/deskilling-what-are-the-historical-societal-and-legal-implications
[5] Bureau of Labor Statistics. Green growth: Employment projections in environmentally focused occupations: Career Outlook: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2021, April 28). www.bls.gov https://www.bls.gov/careeroutlook/2022/data-on-display/green-growth.htm
[6] Bureau of Labor Statistics, Welders, Cutters, Solderers, and Brazers (Bureau of Labor Statistics, May 2023). Bls.gov. https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes514121.htm
[7] Smith, E., Shiro A., Pulliam C., and Reeves, R. Stuck on the Ladder: Wealth Mobility Is Low and Decreases with Age (Brookings, June 29, 2022). https://www.brookings.edu/articles/stuck-on-the-ladder-wealth-mobility-is-low-and-decreases-with-age/
[8] Cooper, D., Scott, R. Almost Two-Thirds of People in the Labor Force Do Not Have a College Degree n.d. (Economic Policy Institute, 2017, March 30). https://www.epi.org/publication/almost-two-thirds-of-people-in-the-labor-force-do-not-have-a-college-degree
[9] Here, we refer both to newly built infrastructure assets constructed to more demanding standards and to repaired or retrofits that enhance resilience to climate-related and other shocks.
[10] Tomer, A., Singer, A., & Kane, J.W. Unlocking new federal infrastructure funding to drive green workforce development (Brookings, 2023 October 12). https://www.brookings.edu/articles/unlocking-new-federal-infrastructure-funding-to-drive-green-workforce-development/
<[11] Porcari, J.D., Kane, J.W., Korberg, R., & De Souza Briggs, X. We haven’t yet decided that climate and infrastructure jobs are for everyone, or even that we’ll have enough workers (Brookings, 2023 September 1). https://www.brookings.edu/articles/we-havent-yet-decided-that-climate-and-infrastructure-jobs-are-for-everyone-or-even-that-well-have-enough-workers/
[12] Apprenticeship, O.O. Apprentice Population Dashboard (Apprenticeship.gov, 2024, April 19). https://www.apprenticeship.gov/data-and-statistics/apprentice-population-dashboard
[13] Lerman, Robert I. Scaling Apprenticeship to Increase Human Capital (The Aspen Institute, 2019, February 4). https://www.aspeninstitute.org/longform/expanding-economic-opportunity-for-more-americans/scaling-apprenticeship-to-increase-human-capital/
[14] Holzer, H.J. Should the federal government spend more on workforce development? (Brookings, 2023, May 23). https://www.brookings.edu/articles/should-the-federal-government-spend-more-on-workforce-development/
[15] Lerman, R., Loprest, P., & Kuehn, D. Training for Jobs of the Future (Urban Institute, 2019). https://www.urban.org/sites/default/files/publication/101123/training_for_jobs_of_the_future_1.pdf
[16] Team, P.O.W. Navigating Public Job Training (The Project on Workforce, 2024, April 9). https://www.pw.hks.harvard.edu/post/publicjobtraining
[17] Franklin Apprenticeships. The Role of Trade Unions in the U.S. Apprenticeship Arena: An interview with Dr. John Gaal, Director of Training and Workforce Development, STL-KC Carpenters Regional Council (Franklin Apprenticeships, n.d.). https://www.franklinapprenticeships.com/role-trade-unions-us-apprenticeship-arena/
[18] Contreras, C.D., Seyal, I., & Escobari, M. Moving up: Promoting workers’ upward mobility using network analysis (Brookings, 2021, June 14). https://www.brookings.edu/articles/moving-up-promoting-workers-upward-mobility-in-a-time-of-change/
[19] Forston, K., Rotz, D., & Burkander, P. Providing Public Workforce Services to Job Seekers: 30-Month Impact Findings on the WIA Adult and Dislocated Worker Programs (Mathematica, 2017, May 30). https://mathematica.org/publications/providing-public-workforce-services-to-job-seekers-30-month-impact-findings-on-the-wia-adult
[20] Porcari et al. (2023).
[21] Castleman, B., Xu, D., Bird, K., Cooper, M., & Solanki, S. Noncredit workforce training programs are very popular. We know next to nothing about them (Brookings, 2023, May 23). https://www.brookings.edu/articles/noncredit-workforce-training-programs-are-very-popular-we-know-next-to-nothing-about-them/
[22] Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Emergency Savings and Financial Security: Insights from the Making Ends Meet Survey and Consumer Credit Panel (Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, 2022, March 23). https://www.consumerfinance.gov/data-research/research-reports/emergency-savings-financial-security-insights-from-making-ends-meet-survey-and-consumer-credit-panel/
[23] Thomas, J., Gonzalez, N., Wiegand, A., Paxton N., & Hebbar, L. The Effects of Expanding Pell Grant Eligibility for Short Occupational Training Programs: Results from the Experimental Sites Initiative (NCEE 2021-001). (U.S. Department of Education, Institute of Education Sciences, National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance, 2021). Ies.ed.gov/ncee/pubs/2021001/pdf/2021001.pdf
[24] Hess, C., Mayayeva, Y., Reichlin Cruse, L., & Thakur, M. (2020, August 21). Supportive Services in Job Training and Education: A Research Review (IWPR – Institute for Women’s Policy Research, 2020, August 21). https://iwpr.org/supportive-services-in-job-training-and-education-a-research-review/
[25] Axelrod, J., Bajak, A., Dallman, A., D’Elia, H., Ferrante, D., Scott, M. Who Has Access to Good Clean-Energy Jobs? (Urban Institute, 2024, May 1). https://www.urban.org/projects/clean-energy-job-access-race-gender.
[26] U.S. Chamber of Commerce. U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation Launches ‘Talent Finance’ Initiative to Develop New Models for Investment in the Workforce of the Future (U.S. Chamber of Commerce, 2024, March 7). https://www.uschamber.com/workforce/education/us-chamber-of-commerce-foundation-launches-talent-finance-initiative-develop-new
[27] Ortagus, J.C., Skinner, B.T., & Tanner, M.J. Investigating Why Academically Successful Community College Students Leave College Without a Degree (AERA Open, 2021, December 16). https://doi.org/10.1177/23328584211065724
[28] Social Finance. American Diesel Training Center Career Impact Bond. https://socialfinance.org/work/adtc/
[29] Social Finance. New Jersey Pay It Forward Program. https://socialfinance.org/work/new-jersey/
[30] NJ Pay It Forward defines “discretionary income” as the worker’s income after subtracting 150% of the Federal Poverty Level amount for their household size.
[31] Social Finance. Massachusetts Climate Career Fund. https://socialfinance.org/work/massachusetts-climate-careers-fund/
[32] To be sure, planners in all sectors are also grappling with the challenges of projecting when and in what specific occupations that demand will present. Many estimates, such as the decade-forward estimates cited above, are at the national level for large occupations, not specific to states or regional labor markets, let alone the near- to medium-term time horizons most useful to training providers and other critical actors. Another plus of the talent finance model is its flexibility to adapt, and “dial” investments, to respond to changing market conditions over time.
[33] Hoffer, Melissa. Recommendations of the Climate Chief. Pursuant to Section 3(b) of Executive Order No. 604. October 25, 2023. mass.gov/files/documents/2023/10/24/CLIMATE REPORT.pdf
[34] Tomer, A., & Kane, J.W. Why green jobs plans matter and where US cities stand in implementing them (Brookings, 2023, July 25). https://www.brookings.edu/articles/why-green-jobs-plans-matter-and-where-u-s-cities-stand-in-implementing-them/