Trump signs federal skills-based hiring executive order
EO will allow government to 'better recognize the talents and competencies of all Americans' it hires: Ivanka Trump
President Trump on Friday signed an executive order that aims to promote skills-based hiring for federal jobs.
"Today, I'll sign an executive order that directs the federal government to replace outdated...degree-based hiring with skills-based hiring," Trump said Friday during a meeting with the American Workforce Policy Advisory Board. "The federal government will no longer be narrowly focused on where you went to school but the skills and the talents that you bring to the job."
Trump added that the administration has "looked at merit for a long time."
President Donald Trump speaks with Ivanka Trump during a meeting with the American Workforce Policy Advisory Board in the East Room of the White House, Friday, June 26, 2020, in Washington, D.C. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
Adviser to the president Ivanka Trump, who co-chairs the board, said the EO will allow the government to "better recognize the talents and competencies of all Americans" it hires.
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The executive order aims to "modernize" the federal recruitment process by looking at candidates' specific skills through assessments and interviews rather than prioritizing candidates with degrees that can sometimes be unrelated to the job, the first daughter said during a Friday call with reporters.
Such a hiring process will not prioritize those without degrees over those with degrees but is rather intended to level the playing field for those who chose not to attend college or could not afford to go, a senior administration official said during the call.
Ivanka Trump speaks during a meeting with the American Workforce Policy Advisory Board in the East Room of the White House, Friday, June 26, 2020, in Washington, D.C. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
The average cost of tuition for the 2019-2020 school year at public U.S. colleges was $10,116 compared to $36,801 at private colleges, though that number is higher at many top colleges for out-of-state students, according to data from U.S. News. Student debt hit a record of $1.5 trillion in the U.S. in 2018.
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The federal government employs more U.S. workers than any other American institution with more than 2 million employees, according to an October 2019 Congressional Research Service report, though the federal hiring process has gone largely unchanged.
Additionally, more than two-thirds of Americans in the U.S. workforce do not hold a college degree, a 2016 report from the Economic Policy Institute shows.
President Donald Trump speaks with Ivanka Trump during a meeting with the American Workforce Policy Advisory Board in the East Room of the White House, Friday, June 26, 2020, in Washington, D.C. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
The senior administration official added that while college degrees are necessary in many lines of work, such as jobs in the medical field, degrees are not always necessary for federal workers.
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The government sometimes prioritizes applicants with degrees even if those degrees are unrelated to the jobs they are applying to simply because they have college experience, the official said.
Prioritizing assessments over degrees will move the workforce away from the idea that you have to have a college degree to get a good job, he concluded.
More than 45 million people have filed jobless claims since mid-March, and the unemployment rate has reached more than 14 percent as of April.