Targeting infrastructure investments to build career opportunities for Los Angeles’ left-behind workers

Executive summary

The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) and Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), enacted in 2021 and 2022, respectively, supported thousands of projects across the country to improve transportation, energy, and water systems. The laws generated intense interest in leveraging these investments to expand career opportunities for people often left behind in the labor market. But infrastructure dollars flow from so many federal departments, support such a wide range of activities, and go to such a wide variety of organizations that it is difficult to see the full picture. Moreover, the laws largely sidelined the federal, state, and local entities that are most knowledgeable about education, training, and job placement.

This paper aims to demystify the infrastructure landscape for state and local leaders so they can narrow the task of “infrastructure workforce development” into more manageable pieces. What are the subsectors within the infrastructure field? Who are key actors, and how do they relate to each other? What federal, state, and local policies and funding patterns shape the incentives for different actors in a given subsector? This analysis reviews federal awards to entities in the public, private, and nonprofit sectors in the Los Angeles area to support local and state leaders in developing strategies to connect workers to jobs associated with those investments.

Accordingly, this paper describes the infrastructure field; outlines which entities received federal funding and for what purpose; and lays out how federal, state, and local policy and funding all interact with each other. Armed with this information, state and local leaders can better identify infrastructure subsectors of interest, connect with relevant employers, assess associated labor market needs, and strategize with employers, education and workforce entities, unions, and others to more effectively recruit and prepare people for jobs in that sector.

Toward that end, this paper analyzes federal awards to entities in the public, private, and nonprofit sectors in the Los Angeles area, and recommends particular infrastructure subsectors for workforce development efforts.

In our analysis of federal grants awarded between 2022 and 2024, we made the following conclusions:

• Local and regional organizations in the Los Angeles area received $5.9 billion in awards via 274 grants. Grants came from multiple federal departments, including the departments of Transportation, Energy, Interior, and Agriculture as well as the Environmental Protection Agency and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
• Awards supported a wide range of infrastructure projects, including public transit, water and air quality, zero-emission transportation, urban forestry, road and pedestrian safety, a host of capital improvements, and more. The largest share of funding went to public transit.
• Awards went to a wide variety of organizations in the public, private, and nonprofit sectors, with the largest share of funding going to special purpose governments (such as LA Metro and air quality or water districts) and municipal proprietary agencies (such as the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power and the Port of Los Angeles) that directly manage transportation, energy, water, and air quality systems.
• A small share of awards (7%) incorporated workforce development elements such as skills training, apprenticeships, and job placement programs.

When he took office in January 2025, President Donald Trump upended established priorities and spending across the federal government. While there is no authoritative source of all the funding cuts and cancellations, we identified 12 awards to regional organizations totaling $151 million that have been cancelled.

The federal government’s infrastructure priorities and funding are less predictable now than they were before the 2024 election, and the upcoming re-authorization of the IIJA also raises questions. Nonetheless, the federal government will continue to support transportation, energy, and water infrastructure systems in some fashion. The uncertainty is real, though. Funding priorities and amounts may change, awards may be less predictable, new conditions may be attached to funding.

But federal funding is not the only game in town. Most infrastructure spending comes from state and local sources, and it is state and local leaders who have the most control over planning, designing, and implementing infrastructure projects. Relatedly, the state of California has made substantial policy and financial commitments to address climate change, which necessarily involves infrastructure.

Whatever the federal role, state and local leaders have to work together to ensure that critical energy, water, and transportation systems all function—and that requires paying attention to the workers who build, maintain, and operate those systems. Ensuring that there are enough workers with the right skills to carry out infrastructure projects should be a standard consideration in project development and implementation. Problems related to quality control, delays, and cost over-runs are much more likely to occur if leaders and employers treat recruitment, training, and hiring as an afterthought.

The infrastructure field has long faced challenges with recruiting and retaining workers. If local actors such as employers, policymakers, workforce development organizations, educational institutions, nonprofits, unions, and others work together, they can create more robust talent pipelines to help employers meet their hiring needs while also providing career opportunities to a broad, diverse pool of workers. Since most infrastructure jobs do not require a college degree—though many incorporate apprenticeships or other on-the-job training—they are accessible to a wide swathe of the workforce. Moreover, infrastructure jobs offer above-average median wages and a higher floor for workers at the lower end of the wage distribution.

This paper makes two key recommendations.

• Invest in workforce sector partnerships in targeted infrastructure fields, starting with zero-emission transportation as well as water quality and availability. Sector partnerships focus on recruitment, training, and job placement for employers who produce similar goods and services or that otherwise have similar skill and occupational needs. These partnerships are standard practice in workforce development—nationally, statewide, and in the Los Angeles area—although existing sector programs have varying levels of maturity and capacity. Zero-emission transportation and water are good bets for sector partnerships: they are supported not only by federal investments but by state and local investments and policy goals, which will likely continue to generate activities and projects that require skilled workers.
• Recruit and train a diverse range of workers, including young adults. Local leaders and programs can and should emphasize different geographic areas or groups of job seekers and incumbent workers, but they should also prioritize reaching young adults. Nationally and in Los Angeles, the systems supporting the transition from school to a good job are foundering for many young people. Nearly 125,000 young people ages 16 to 24 in Los Angeles County were disconnected from school and work as of 2023—11% of that age group—and they face increased chances of unemployment and low-wage work.

Carrying out these recommendations will require mapping out existing efforts to build on; identifying gaps; and holding important and difficult discussions about which organizations should be involved, what roles they should play, who should be in leadership positions, and (not least of all) funding. The workforce, education, and infrastructure sectors in the Los Angeles region all have considerable resources and strengths, but they need to work together more effectively to develop better talent pipelines for in-demand infrastructure- and climate-related jobs. This includes attention to recruitment, occupational skills training, apprenticeships, career navigation, job placement, and job retention.

There is not a unitary template for success, but collaboration is essential. Coalition governance and structure vary by place, and so do the idiosyncrasies of organizational capacity and relationships. But success will depend on leveraging and strengthening the “invisible” civic infrastructure that enables multiple organizations to work together toward shared goals.

Introduction

Federal infrastructure and climate-related spending dramatically increased in recent years thanks to two signature pieces of legislature signed by President Joe Biden: 2021’s Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) and 2022’s Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). The laws invested in tens of thousands of projects across the country designed to improve transportation, energy, water, and broadband systems, support wildfire and land management, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and more. All these projects require skilled workers, but it has been challenging to connect the investments to robust workforce development strategies and to bring more people into infrastructure-related careers. The laws mostly allow—but do not require—workforce development activities such as outreach and recruitment for training programs and employment, occupational skills training, apprenticeships, and job placement. They provide few automatic mechanisms to link education and workforce leaders with those planning or carrying out infrastructure projects. Nor do the laws fund apprenticeships, community colleges, the public workforce development system, or the nonprofit organizations that do so much to recruit and prepare workers.

Moreover, federal funds flow from so many departments, cover such a wide range of activities and projects, and go to such a wide range of recipients that it is difficult to assess the full spectrum of infrastructure spending.

Another issue is that the infrastructure sector itself is fragmented and decentralized. It is better understood as a “supersector” that spans multiple industries that all relate in some way to physical assets in the built and natural environments. This supersector includes energy, water, and transportation systems; broadband networks, public works, and land management—all of which encompass different actors, activities, and purposes. The infrastructure supersector is fragmented in terms of governance as well. It includes a variety of state and municipal agencies, energy utilities that may be publicly or privately owned, water utilities and districts that may be governed and funded separately from a municipal or county government, transit agencies, port authorities, and more. It can be a confusing landscape for education and workforce actors to navigate, just as the education and workforce development landscape can be confusing for infrastructure entities to navigate.

This paper seeks to help actors in the workforce and educator sectors in the Los Angeles area—or anyone interested in helping to recruit, train, and place people into infrastructure jobs—better understand the infrastructure sector. Toward that end, the paper assesses flows of federal infrastructure spending into regional and local organizations in the Los Angeles area between roughly 2022 and 2024, lays out the kinds of projects that were funded and the types of organizations receiving funding, and assesses the extent to which workforce development activities were incorporated into these infrastructure awards.

Of course, the political environment changed dramatically when President Donald Trump took office in January 2025. He moved quickly to counter many of the IIJA’s and the IRA’s goals. His administration paused or cancelled funds that did not align with his administration’s priorities, and he championed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which modified or cancelled IRA tax credits supporting clean energy and rescinded the unobligated funds of many IIJA and IRA programs.

Another factor in any analysis of infrastructure spending is that federal funds, while notable and often catalytic, are not the only sources of support. In fact, state and local dollars account for the majority of infrastructure spending. For example, the Los Angeles region is in the middle of multiple massive infrastructure projects and capital plans, which are funded partially but by no means entirely with federal funds. To name a few examples, Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) is carrying out a $30 billion capital improvement program, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power is in the middle of a $7 billion plan to upgrade its water system, and LA Metro is carrying out its Twenty-Eight by ’28 Initiative to prepare for the 2028 Olympics.

Nonetheless, a review of federal infrastructure awards provides critical insights for workforce development actors, since the awards also signal the priorities of the state and local entities that access federal dollars and that manage transportation, water, energy, and clean air projects.

The findings are based on an analysis of the Investing in America spreadsheet downloaded from the invest.gov website on January 14, 2025, before it was dismantled by the Trump administration. The spreadsheet includes awards from 2021–2025, but it primarily includes awards in the 2022–2024 time period. Our goal was to identify IIJA and IRA awards that were granted or allocated to local or regional entities in the Los Angeles region, focusing on projects in the City and County of Los Angeles, but also including projects and organizations whose geographic scope spans surrounding counties. We included grants awarded to organizations in the public, private, and nonprofit sectors. We did not search for projects managed or controlled by state entities. For more information on the spreadsheet and our analysis, please see the Methodology.

Findings

Through the IIJA and the IRA, the federal government made 274 awards totaling $5.9 billion to local and regional organizations in the Los Angeles area

The awards we identified were made between 2022 and 2024. For simplicity’s sake, we combined funding from different years into one figure, rather than reporting on awards made in a specific year.

Public transportation awards received the most funding ($2.7 billion)—nearly half of the region’s total (see Figure 1). The second-largest category of funding went to “environmental remediation” ($1.1 billion), a broad category covering air quality, the built environment, brownfields, and more. Awards also went to projects focused on airports, roads, water systems, road and railroad safety, ports, electric vehicles (EVs), clean energy, and more.

Awards went to a wide variety of organizations, but most funds went to special purpose districts or municipal proprietary agencies that directly manage transportation, energy, water, and air quality projects

Public sector entities were the most common awardees, and many received more than one award. Grant recipients also included nonprofit organizations, businesses, school districts, community colleges, and universities (see Figure 2). 

Awards were heavily concentrated in two types of public sector entities: special purpose governments and municipal proprietary agencies. Together, entities in these two categories received nearly 90% of all funds, which makes sense given that these entities directly manage and govern transportation, energy, water, and air quality systems.

• Special purpose governments, also called special districts, are independent government units created for a limited, specific purpose. In the words of the National Special Districts Association, they “deliver specialized services essential to [the community’s] health, safety, economy and well-being.” Such services include public transit, water treatment and delivery, energy generation and transmission, fire protection, and more.
• Municipal proprietary agencies are part of local governments, but they are governed by their own commissioners and are generally self-funded by their own fees and revenues. The types of services that they provide overlap a great deal with those offered by special purpose governments.

In the Los Angeles region, special purpose districts received 64% of the funds. The districts that got the largest amounts of funding are listed below.

• LA Metro operates public transportation and related infrastructure in Los Angeles County. It received the largest amount among all the special districts—indeed, among all awardees in the region—at $2.8 billion through nearly 40 awards. Its funds came from formula and competitive grants, representing more than 10 programs with a variety of goals and purposes. The largest share of its funding—nearly two-thirds—came from two long-standing formula programs from the U.S. Department of Transportation: the Urbanized Area Formula Grants Program ($1.2 billion) and the State of Good Repair Formula Grants Program ($511 million), both primarily focused on capital purchases and investments. LA Metro also won competitive grants, including funding for the Purple Line Extension, for the East San Fernando Valley Transit Corridor, and for purchases of zero-emission buses and charging equipment.
• The South Coast Air Quality Management District monitors air quality and funds air quality improvement efforts in Los Angeles, Orange, San Bernardino, and Riverside Counties. It received $560 million, almost all of it from an Environmental Protection Agency grant to decarbonize transportation and goods movement in Los Angeles and Long Beach by supporting the use of zero-emission technology in vehicles and equipment.   
• The Metropolitan Water District of Southern California provides water directly or through member public agencies to Los Angeles County and five surrounding counties. It received $132 million from the Department of the Interior primarily to purify and reuse cleaned wastewater as part of the Pure Water Southern California project.

Other special purpose districts that received funds included metropolitan planning organizations, other water and sanitation districts, and airport authorities.

As a group, Los Angeles and Long Beach municipal proprietary agencies received 24% of all funds in the region. The awardees are listed below.

• Los Angeles World Airports received 12 awards from the Department of Transportation’s Federal Aviation Administration totaling $449 million, almost all of which went to LAX for capital improvements.
• The Port of Los Angeles received three awards totaling $437 million, with most of it ($412 million) from an Environmental Protection Agency grant to purchase zero- emission tractors, forklifts, and other equipment.
• The Port of Long Beach received 3 awards totaling $336 million, all from the Department of Transportation. The largest award, for $283 million, was to reconfigure and expand the railyard to move more cargo by train rather than trucks, thus improving efficiency and reducing pollution.
• The Los Angeles Department of Power and Water received five awards totaling $116 million, including $60 million from the Department of the Interior to purify water and $48 million from the Department of Energy to enhance the electrical grid.  (The $48 million award was subsequently cancelled, as listed below, bringing the department’s total funding to $68 million.)

An introduction to the infrastructure field and to infrastructure- and climate-related jobs

We identified 19 awards that incorporated workforce development activities, accounting for 7% of all awards

Based on publicly available project descriptions, we identified 19 awards that incorporated workforce development activities such as outreach and recruitment for training programs and job openings, occupational skills training, apprenticeships, and job placement. All of them were competitive grants. While this list may be incomplete—given that publicly available project descriptions may not reflect all project components—it is a useful benchmark.

For five of these awards (about one-quarter of them), the stated purpose of the grant was to provide education, training, and work-based learning opportunities. Awardees included nonprofits, community colleges, and universities. Proposed activities included providing training in fields such as hybrid vehicle and EV maintenance, water treatment, and solar installation; offering internships, professional development, and research opportunities for undergraduate and master’s students; and providing on-the-job training.

The remainder of the awards had other stated purposes—such as reducing greenhouse gas emissions or promoting urban and community forestry—but they also incorporated apprenticeships and training programs to help them carry out those stated purposes.

Awards with workforce development elements went to a variety of organizations, including typical workforce development organizations such as nonprofits and colleges (see Table 1). But the largest number of awards went to entities directly responsible for managing transportation systems, charging infrastructure, ports, and air quality projects, including LA Metro, the Ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles, and the South Coast Air Quality Management District.

Nearly half of the awards (nine of the 19) focused on reducing greenhouse gas emissions by moving to zero-emission vehicles. Such awards also had the highest dollar amount, although that refers to total project budgets, not to the amounts allocated to workforce development (which is unknown). Nonetheless, this trend points to zero-emission vehicles as a promising focus for future workforce development efforts. Several of these awards focused on the Ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles; others focused on transit buses, school buses, and charging infrastructure.

We identified 12 awards that were reportedly cancelled by the Trump administration.

The federal funding and policy landscape has been chaotic and confusing since President Trump took office. There has been a flurry of executive orders, departmental memos, and contract and grant cancellations from the Department of Government Efficiency and other federal departments. There is no consolidated source on which grants or funding programs have been cancelled.

Nonetheless, it is possible to piece information together from various sources to provisionally identify awards in the Los Angeles region that have been cancelled. We identified 12 awards that appear to have been cancelled, including one from the Department of Transportation, three from the Department of Energy, and eight from the Environmental Protection Agency (see Table 2). Together, they totaled $151 million, a small share of the region’s total funding, but these cancellations were likely very disruptive to the budgets and plans of the individual awardees that were affected.

Among the cancelled awards, four included workforce development components. These included awards to the Coalition for Responsible Community Development ($20 million), the U.S. Green Building Council California ($3.8 million), the University of Southern California ($3 million), and Social and Environmental Entrepreneurs ($3 million).

Don’t forget about state and local policy

As noted previously, state and local entities provide most infrastructure funding, whether through ratepayer revenue, general funds, or debt instruments like bonds, and they also own and operate most infrastructure assets. As discussed in the recommendation section below, state and local governments are actively supporting transportation electrification and water quality and availability. More generally, California is making sizeable infrastructure and climate investments likely to continue to generate labor market demand, such as the three programs listed below:

• California voters passed the Climate Bond (or Proposition 4) in 2024, directing $10 billion to climate-resilience purposes, including water, wildfire, energy, biodiversity, access to nature, and more. The California Natural Resources Agency administers the bond overall, and a variety of state departments, boards, conservancies, and commissions administer specific programs.
• Proceeds from the state’s Cap-and-Invest Program (until recently known as Cap-and-Trade) fund the California Climate Investments (CCI), which address climate change while providing environmental, economic, and public health benefits. The California Air Resources Board oversees CCI as a whole, which consists of more than 100 programs administered by multiple state agencies. Funding categories include agriculture, energy, nature-based solutions, transportation, transit-oriented development, water, and more.
• SB 1, the Road Repair and Accountability Act, was enacted in 2017 and directs an estimated $5 billion annually to state highways, local streets and roads, public transit, and pedestrian and cycle routes.

Both the Climate Bond and Cap-and-Invest allow and in some cases prioritize workforce development activities, although much will depend on implementation.

Recommendations

Going forward, federal, state, and local infrastructure- and climate-related investments will continue to support projects that need skilled workers. Aging and vulnerable water infrastructure, inefficient and outmoded energy facilities, and outdated residential and commercial buildings all need upgrades and maintenance. The state needs to continue to build out its charging infrastructure given its emphasis on zero-emission transportation. Floods, droughts, fires, and other acute and chronic impacts add to the urgency of these challenges, with the recent Eaton and Palisades fires providing vivid examples.

The influx of federal funds supported additional workforce development activities in the region that would not have taken place otherwise: a total of 11 out of the 19 awards that incorporated workforce development stemmed from new IIJA and IRA programs. Many of the awards included partnerships between organizations, thus leveraging the strengths of different groups throughout the region. Among grants with a workforce component, the highest-dollar awards were led by infrastructure entities such as LA Metro, the Port of Long Beach, the Port of Los Angeles, and the South Coast Air Quality Management District.

But the fact that fewer than 10% of awards included activities related to workforce development activities such as recruitment and outreach, training, and job placement signaled a missed opportunity. And the partnerships did not appear to draw on pre-existing sector initiatives—a best practice in workforce development—or other organized cross-sector consortia. Rather, they mostly appeared to be bespoke partnerships for particular grants or seemed to reflect one-on-one or more limited partnerships.

Workforce, education, and business leaders in the Los Angeles region need to knit their considerable resources together more effectively to develop talent pipelines for in-demand infrastructure- and climate-related occupations. Below are some recommendations about how to do so.

1. Invest in workforce sector partnerships in targeted infrastructure fields, starting with zero-emission transportation and water quality and availability

At this point, sector strategies are a core workforce development approach both nationally and in California. Sometimes called sector partnerships, industry partnerships, or industry sector partnerships, sector strategies focus on job training and placement in particular industries or occupations, rather than trying to meet employer needs across the whole span of the labor market. The California Workforce Development Board’s High Road Training Partnership is based on a sector model, and both LA City and LA County incorporate sector approaches.

But existing state and local sector initiatives are at varying levels of maturity and have some structural weaknesses. Rather than operating as standing statewide or local sector structures, they are bound to specific time-limited funding streams. Without sturdy scaffolding, programs will not scale and may not last. And crucially, a critical mass of employers within a given sector need to work together to identify and communicate their current and future skill needs. Absent such intelligence (which cannot be gleaned from publicly available data or sporadic convenings), education and workforce entities will not have the information they need to target business needs. This kind of employer involvement is a perennial challenge for sector initiatives.

Based on a review of investments at the federal, state, and local levels, along with information on local actions and priorities, we recommend initiatives focused on zero-emission vehicles and water infrastructure. In addition to local workforce initiatives related to zero-emission vehicles described below, these two subsectors are aligned with other regional workforce plans and priorities, such as the Los Angeles Regional Consortium representing 19 community colleges, the City of Los Angeles Workforce Development Board, Los Angeles County, and a consortium of workforce boards in the Los Angeles Basin.

Zero-emission vehicles and related infrastructure for light-, medium-, and heavy-duty vehicles and in the goods-moving sector : The transition to zero-emission vehicles in the Los Angeles region is supported not only by the federal investments listed above, but even more so by state and local policies designed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from the transportation sector. Together, these investments point to a continued focus on vehicle electrification that will reliably generate demand for workers in zero emission–related occupations in the Los Angeles area.

The region received more than 30 awards from multiple federal programs totaling $1.4 billion focused on reducing emissions from vehicles of various types. Entities such as school districts, bus companies, independent cities, LA Metro, and the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach all received grants to install charging infrastructure and/or to purchase zero- or low-emission transit buses, school buses, trucks, and port vehicles and equipment.

At the state level, legislation signed in 2022 requires California to achieve net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2045. Governor Gavin Newsom issued an executive order in 2020 mandating that all new passenger trucks and vehicles sold in the state must be zero emission by 2035, with a target of 2045 for medium- and heavy-duty vehicles. Governor Newsom followed that up with a 2025 executive order reaffirming the state’s commitment to zero-emission vehicles after President Trump signed legislation revoking waivers from the Environmental Protection Agency that allowed the state to set state emissions standards that were more stringent than federal standards. Multiple state agencies, including the California Air Resources Board, the California Energy Commission, and the California Governor’s Office of Business and Economic Development are all moving aggressively to support the deployment and use of zero-emission vehicles, and they are including workforce development in their efforts.

At the regional level, the LA Cleantech Incubator has organized two cross-sector collaborations: the Transportation Electrification Partnership (TEP) and the Green Jobs Regional Partnership (GJRP). In its Zero Emissions Roadmap 3.0, the TEP set out specific goals to increase the use of different categories of zero-emission vehicles and to increase the number of chargers.

The GJRP’s Green Jobs Roadmap for Transportation Electrification focused on occupations related to transportation electrification, specifically aligning with the TEP’s goals to increase the usage of electric light-duty private vehicles and school buses in the region. It outlined three high-priority EV-related occupations that will need more workers to meet the TEP’s goals by 2028: electricians, technicians to maintain and repair charging stations and other supply equipment, and technicians to maintain and repair light-duty EV private vehicles and school buses. It also identified two occupations that may warrant attention after 2028: electric vehicle fleet managers and production line workers for manufacturing EVs and EV supply equipment. In the accompanying workforce needs assessment, the GJRP identified relevant skills for the three high-priority occupations, relevant training programs and apprenticeships in the region, and training gaps and challenges. The document concluded, “LA County will need a significant training and re-training push to ensure the workforce has the specialized knowledge and certifications to meet the EV and EVSE [EV supply equipment] maintenance and installation need.”

The GJRP developed a collaborative structure and a solid analysis to inform future workforce development efforts. The next steps are to bring in additional partners and to develop and implement strategies to meet the partnership’s goals and to address the identified challenges.

For example, creating a workforce that is more diverse by race and gender will involve multiple approaches, such as creating more awareness about EV careers, deliberately recruiting from new communities, and addressing workplace cultures that may be unwelcoming to women and people of color. To prepare some candidates, it may be necessary to build their digital literacy, help them get drivers’ licenses, or offer supportive services. The analysis also identified a need to develop more EVSE programs, develop shared baseline skill standards among employers and education programs, train existing vehicle mechanics in EV technology, and offer more hands-on training for EV technicians.

Given that the green jobs analysis focused on transportation electrification regarding light-duty private vehicles and school buses, a future step may involve assessing the workforce needs related to medium- and heavy-duty vehicles, especially those involved with the ports and the goods-moving industries. There is clear momentum. The Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach developed the San Pedro Bay Ports Clean Air Action Plan to move toward zero emissions and provide regular updates and progress reports. The South Coast Air Quality Management District and the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach recently entered into a cooperative agreement that requires the ports to develop and implement charging and fueling infrastructure plans. And many of the federal awards to the region to reduce emissions at the ports and by medium- and heavy-duty vehicles incorporate workforce development components, signaling demand for related education and training.

Water systems including water treatment, distribution, and conservation and stormwater management: Water infrastructure includes a range of built and natural systems that supply, treat, and conserve water and also manage stormwater runoff to prevent pollution, flooding, and erosion. It includes “gray infrastructure” such as pipes, pumps, tunnels, and treatment plants as well as “green infrastructure” such as raingardens and bioswales that use plants, soils, and other media to capture and treat stormwater. Such systems are badly in need of investment: as Brookings colleague Joseph W. Kane wrote, “Whether it’s fixing pipes, modernizing treatment plans, or conserving and protecting natural resources, the list of water needs keeps growing, as does the price tag.”

The water sector has identified workforce development as a priority: a 2023 review of the industry summarized it thusly: “aging infrastructure remains the top concern in the sector, compounded by the pitfalls of an aging workforce and the pursuit of hiring qualified staff.” The U.S. Water Alliance, an industry association of water utilities and other stakeholders, noted, “many utilities face a current workforce quantity and quality crisis.” The California Workforce Development Board has sponsored a High Road Training Partnership program in the water sector, and the Centers of Excellence for Labor Market Research within the community college system have identified eight mission-critical water sector occupations requiring more than a high school diploma but less than a bachelor’s degree that are difficult to fill, including positions for a variety of technicians, mechanics and maintenance workers, and operating engineers.

A series of federal, state, and local investments focus on improving water infrastructure statewide and in the Los Angeles region, suggesting that continued projects and activities will require water workers. The largest federal water investments went to the state (more than $2 billion), specifically to the State Water Resources Control Board to capitalize state revolving (loan) funds (SRFs), with one focused on clean water and the other on drinking water. Through SRFs, states play a crucial role in planning, selecting, and investing in water projects that are often administered by local utilities and other local actors. Funded projects can include wastewater facilities, water treatment plants, pollution control, and pipe installation and repair. As noted above, the federal government also directly awarded more than $250 million in water-related grants to regional entities such as the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, and Long Beach Utilities.

Modernizing water infrastructure and management is clearly a state priority. The state’s 2022 Water Supply Strategy laid out priorities including developing new water through wastewater recycling and desalination and expanding water storage capacity to capture and save more stormwater. Such projects are capital intensive, expensive, and require ongoing operations and maintenance. California has directed billions of dollars to water and climate projects in recent years, even after state budget cuts. The 2024 Climate Bond will direct nearly $4 billion to water-related purposes, including safe drinking water, flood planning, stormwater management, and more—on top of similar projects already supported by general fund dollars.

There are several regional water initiatives as well:

• The Metropolitan Water District of Southern California and the Los Angeles County Sanitation Districts are partnering to carry out the Pure Water Southern California project, a massive water recycling program to purify and reuse cleaned wastewater, thereby creating a new water source. It will include building a water purification facility, modifying another plant, and carrying out other activities to convey and treat water. In its construction phase, the project’s forecasted job creation impacts are heavily concentrated in construction occupations, but it is also projected to create jobs in management, business, and architecture and engineering. Once Pure Water Southern California is operational, associated jobs will primarily be in the utilities sector.
• The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power and the Los Angeles Department of Sanitation and the Environment are moving forward on a Pure Water Los Angeles project, which is also focused on recycling water. They recently finalized a planning framework to design, build, and operate a water purification system.
• The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power is carrying out a multi-year $7 billion water-system capital plan to maintain and replace existing pipes, valves, tanks, treatment facilities, and other system components.
• Measure W, a tax initiative passed by Los Angeles County voters in 2018, created the Safe Clean Water Program, which supports projects to capture stormwater runoff, improve water quality, and provide green spaces and parks.

2. Ensure that infrastructure workforce initiatives recruit from a broad, diverse group of people, particularly focusing on young adults

The infrastructure workforce skews older, with above-average shares of workers over age 45 and below-average shares under age 24. On average, an estimated 1.7 million infrastructure workers will need to be replaced each year over the next decade due to retirements and workers transitioning out of these jobs. Infrastructure projects like the ones mentioned above require a continuous flow of workers.

Meanwhile, the systems supporting the transition from school to a good job are foundering for many young people, especially for those from low-income backgrounds or whose parents do not have college degrees. In a concise distillation of the problems with current youth, education, and employment policies, Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce referenced “the triple deficits of inadequate access to postsecondary education, limited exposure to high-quality work experience and work-based learning, and insufficient counseling to support career navigation.” Another article memorably described the United States as having “arguably one of the least effective systems for preparing non-college bound youth for the workforce in the Western World.” These systemic barriers disproportionately affect young people of color and those from marginalized communities.

In Los Angeles County, an estimated 123,000 young people between the ages of 16 and 24 are disconnected from school and work. The problem is particularly acute among young people past high-school age: 107,000 young people between 19 and 24 years are disconnected, accounting for one out of every six people (16%) of that age group in Los Angeles County. A total of 18% of this group lacks a high school diploma, and almost two-thirds (66%) have a high school diploma but no post-secondary degree. They have less work experience than their age group as a whole and higher poverty rates, and they are disproportionately Black, Native American, and Hispanic or Latino.

Young people in these circumstances—with lower educational attainment, limited work experience, and likely weak professional networks—do not generally have good labor market prospects, likely facing high unemployment and low-wage jobs.

But more broadly, leaving so many people on the economic and social margins squanders human potential and productivity. A lack of educational credentials does not equal a lack of talent and drive. In this phase of life, young people should be charting their futures, developing their talents, and plugging into the labor market, thereby allowing themselves to support themselves and their families, pay taxes, and contribute to their communities. Instead, many young people face an obstacle course.

Notably, however, prioritizing young people does not mean only focusing on young people. Given that the infrastructure sector is struggling to find and retain workers, outreach should be broad. There are good reasons to focus on other communities or specific geographic areas. For instance, current car and bus mechanics, regardless of age, are good candidates to receive additional training to become certified in EVs.

And many of the strategies to support young people’s success in workforce development are beneficial to other groups as well, such as assistance with transportation or guidance about post-secondary options.

But reaching young people will require some specific approaches, such as partnerships with high schools (including career and technical education programs), high school re-engagement programs, and youth-serving nonprofits. Youth-serving initiatives should also include program design elements based on lessons from other youth-serving workforce development and education programs, such as the importance of positive and supportive relationships, cohort models, and stipends or paid work-based learning opportunities.

Conclusion

The Los Angeles region is in the middle of an infrastructure spending boom from federal, state, and local investments. Local and regional leaders can play a pivotal role to ensure that there is a sufficiently prepared and skilled workforce to carry out the multitude of projects planned and underway. They cannot afford to treat recruiting, training, and hiring for infrastructure projects as an afterthought: that is a recipe for project delays, quality control problems, and cost over-runs. But with stronger partnerships between infrastructure employers and workforce development actors, local leaders can connect more Los Angeles residents to education and employment to the mutual benefit of both workers and employers.

There are important questions ahead about which organizations should be involved, what roles they should play, and who should be in leadership positions. These are not easily or superficially answered questions; cross-sector coalitions promoting greater economic opportunity “can be messy, time-consuming, and often marked by friction,” as noted by Brookings colleagues. There is not a unitary model or template for success: coalition governance and structures vary by place, and so do the idiosyncrasies of organizational capacity and relationships. But since no single organization has the knowledge, influence, and resources to carry out the work of a sector initiative, the goal of creating more and better employment opportunities for people and workers on the economic margins requires a coalition that leverages the strength of many.