Part 1: What Other Countries—and Some of Our Neighbors—Can Teach Us
We talk constantly about the skills gap. Employers tell us they cannot find workers with the right skills, workers need opportunities to gain new skills, colleges build programs, Workforce Development Boards develop partnerships, and states announce new initiatives. Federal grants arrive, programs are created, people are trained, and sometimes very good systems are built. Then, eventually, the grant ends, and many of us go back to asking the same question: where are we going to find the money to continue doing this?
That has always bothered me. If workforce development is truly essential to economic development, why do we finance so much of it as though it were temporary? We do not consider roads, bridges, utilities, broadband, or transportation temporary simply because they require continuous investment. We understand that infrastructure has to be maintained. I increasingly think we should look at workforce development the same way.
A recent conversation with a friend brought me back to a model that I have always found interesting: INFOTEP in the Dominican Republic. That conversation made me wonder how many other countries or states have developed similar approaches, where workforce training is supported through some type of permanent employer contribution or shared financing system. Once I started looking, I realized that the idea is much more common than I had thought.
The Dominican Republic: INFOTEP
The Dominican Republic operates the Instituto Nacional de Formación Técnico Profesional, better known as INFOTEP. The institution is financed substantially through mandatory employment-related contributions. Employers contribute 1% of the salaries paid through their payroll, and an additional contribution of 0.5% applies to certain bonuses distributed to workers. INFOTEP also operates within a broader tripartite structure that brings government, employers, and workers into the vocational-training system.
What interests me most about INFOTEP is not necessarily the 1%. I am not suggesting that Connecticut suddenly impose a 1% payroll contribution. What I find interesting is the philosophy underneath the model. Employers need skilled workers, workers need opportunities to build skills, and government needs an economy with a strong labor force. Instead of treating training as solely government’s responsibility, or expecting individual businesses to solve workforce shortages on their own, the system creates shared responsibility for developing talent.
It also provides something that many workforce systems struggle to achieve: continuity. Training does not have to exist only because a particular grant became available that year. There is an established structure behind it.
Reference: INFOTEP – Financing and INFOTEP – Employer Contributions
Germany: Shared Responsibility for Apprenticeships
Germany is often mentioned when we talk about apprenticeships, but its financing model is just as interesting as the apprenticeship model itself. Germany does not use exactly the same structure as INFOTEP. Instead, the responsibility for vocational education is divided among employers and different levels of government.
Companies generally finance the company-based portion of apprenticeship, including apprentice compensation, trainers, and other workplace training costs. German states finance the vocational schools, while local governments contribute to infrastructure and equipment. The federal government also supports vocational education, research, training-promotion programs, and parts of the broader apprenticeship infrastructure.
I think there is an important lesson here that goes beyond Germany’s apprenticeship success. Employers are not simply waiting for colleges or training organizations to produce workers for them. They are participants in developing those workers. At the same time, government does not expect an individual employer to build an entire education system. Each side owns part of the talent pipeline.
That is something we spend enormous amounts of time trying to create through partnerships in the United States. Germany has essentially built that partnership into the structure of the system itself.
Reference: Federal Institute for Vocational Education and Training – BIBB
Singapore: A Permanent Investment in Skills
Singapore provides another interesting example through its Skills Development Levy. Employers pay a compulsory levy equal to 0.25% of employees’ monthly wages, with minimum and maximum amounts established for individual employees. The money helps support Singapore’s larger skills-development infrastructure.
What I especially like about Singapore’s approach is the larger philosophy surrounding lifelong skill development. We sometimes build workforce systems that respond after something goes wrong. Someone loses a job, an occupation disappears, or an employer announces layoffs, and then we mobilize resources to help workers retrain.
But technology does not wait for someone to become unemployed. Artificial intelligence certainly will not. Industries evolve while people are still working in them. A workforce system should therefore create opportunities for people to reskill before their jobs disappear, not only after displacement occurs.
That idea becomes increasingly important as we think about what AI and automation will mean for workers over the next decade.
Reference: Singapore Central Provident Fund – Skills Development Levy
France: Employers Contribute to Vocational Training
France has another variation of the same broader concept. Employers contribute toward vocational and professional training through mandatory financing mechanisms, including contributions connected with professional training and apprenticeship. Apprenticeships combine practical training in the workplace with theoretical education, and employers have responsibilities for the practical development of apprentices.
The exact structure is different from INFOTEP, Germany, or Singapore, but once again the principle is recognizable. Businesses benefit from skilled workers, workers benefit from training, and the economy benefits from both. Workforce development becomes a shared investment rather than something funded entirely by one institution.
The more I looked at these models, the more I realized this was not simply a Dominican Republic or European idea. We can find similar thinking much closer to home.
Reference: France – Professional Training Contribution and France – Apprenticeship Tax
Massachusetts: We Can Literally Drive Across the Border
Massachusetts has operated a Workforce Training Fund Program for years. The program provides funding to Massachusetts businesses for training current and newly hired employees, including larger customized-training projects and a more streamlined Express Program. Importantly, employers that participate in the fund are generally businesses that contribute to Massachusetts’ Workforce Training Fund.
The Massachusetts model became even more interesting to me when I looked at some of its current guardrails. The General Program requires employer investment, limits allowable training costs, and establishes an average cost-per-participant ceiling. The program currently limits the average training cost to $3,000 per participant and generally requires a dollar-for-dollar employer match, which can include wages paid while employees participate in training.
That tells me something important. A workforce training fund does not have to mean writing blank checks to training providers or employers. You can create a permanent funding source while still putting strong controls around what constitutes a reasonable investment.
And this isn’t happening in another country. It is happening next door.
Reference: Massachusetts Workforce Training Fund Program and Massachusetts General Program Guidelines
Rhode Island: Another Neighbor With a Dedicated Assessment
Rhode Island also uses a dedicated employer assessment connected to workforce development. For 2026, its Job Development Assessment is 0.21%, and that assessment is credited to the state’s Job Development Fund.
Again, the details are different from Massachusetts and certainly different from INFOTEP, but the underlying concept is familiar. A small contribution across a large employment base can generate an ongoing source of money connected specifically to workforce and economic development.
That is much different from building an entire workforce strategy around whether we win the next competitive grant.
Reference: Rhode Island Department of Labor & Training – Job Development Assessment
New Jersey: A Workforce Development Partnership Fund
New Jersey has its own Workforce Development Partnership Fund. The state has used dedicated workforce assessments to support job training and workforce-development activities, and the fund has also supported apprenticeship and other training initiatives.
New Jersey is another example showing that dedicated workforce financing is not some unusual international concept that could never work in the United States. Different states have already experimented with versions of it, and the approaches differ enough that Connecticut would not have to copy any one model.
We could look at all of them and ask what actually makes sense for us.
Reference: New Jersey Department of Labor & Workforce Development and New Jersey Workforce Development Partnership Fund information
So What About Connecticut?
Connecticut certainly invests in workforce development. We have five regional Workforce Development Boards, CTDOL, the Office of Workforce Strategy, community colleges, technical high schools, adult education, apprenticeship programs, nonprofits, unions, employers, and many successful workforce initiatives. Our Workforce Development Boards already work regionally to increase employment, retention, earnings, and industry credentials.
The issue is not that Connecticut is doing nothing. We are doing a lot. The issue is that many of our most innovative workforce initiatives still depend upon grants, special appropriations, or programs with defined beginning and ending dates.
Those of us who work in workforce development know what that looks like. You build the program, recruit employers, create partnerships, develop the curriculum, establish eligibility procedures, train staff, recruit participants, solve the problems that always appear during implementation, and finally get the program working well. Then someone asks when the grant ends.
Sometimes we spend almost as much energy trying to sustain good programs as we spent creating them.
That makes me wonder whether we are looking at workforce development the wrong way.
Maybe Workforce Development Is Infrastructure
When we talk about infrastructure, we usually think about highways, bridges, utilities, transportation, or broadband. But imagine a company deciding whether to locate or expand in Connecticut. Eventually someone is going to ask a very practical question: where will we find the workers?
At that point, talent becomes infrastructure.
The difference is that workforce infrastructure never stays finished. People retire, companies expand, industries contract, technology changes, credentials evolve, and entirely new occupations appear. Artificial intelligence will accelerate many of those changes. The workforce system therefore has to continuously rebuild itself.
If the need is permanent, maybe the funding should be more permanent too.
I am not suggesting that Connecticut copy INFOTEP’s 1% contribution. I am also not suggesting that we copy Germany, Singapore, France, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, or New Jersey exactly. Connecticut has its own economy, tax structure, institutions, and workforce system.
But there are pieces worth borrowing.
What if employers contributed a very small amount into a protected workforce fund? What if government participated as well? What if workers could access training before they became unemployed? What if employers helped identify demand, while qualified training providers competed to provide the training? What if the money followed the worker instead of becoming another funding stream for institutions?
And, perhaps most importantly, what if we built rules from the beginning to keep administrative costs low and prevent training providers from treating public workforce money like an opportunity to increase their prices?
That is where I think this gets really interesting.
Next week, in Part 2, I am going to build the model: the Connecticut Skills & Workforce Trust. I will look at how much employers might contribute, how much we should spend per worker, how the Workforce Development Boards could administer it without creating another bureaucracy, how customized employer training should be competitively bid, and the guardrails I believe would be necessary to make sure the money actually reaches the people it was created to help.
