Program Year 2025 (July 2025 - June 2026) was not an easy year to do this work. Federal funding landscapes shifted. Layoffs mounted. The communities we serve faced mounting pressure — economic, political, and practical — while the systems meant to support them were tested in ways that felt new even for those of us who have navigated disruption before.
And yet: the work continued. Partnerships deepened. Programs launched and graduated cohorts. Workers found jobs and gained credentials, employers found talent and built capacity, and — with the right support around them — moved toward something more stable. That is the story of PY25. Not a story without difficulty, but one of a workforce system that showed up anyway.
Investing in the People who Do This Work
The most durable investments we make aren't always the ones that show up in placement numbers. Sometimes they're in the practitioners behind the numbers — and in the people those practitioners serve.
This June marked the fourth graduating cohort of the Workforce Practitioners Academy (WPA), bringing the total to more than 100 frontline staff trained since the program's launch. This year's cohort was the first focused specifically on youth workforce development — a deliberate expansion of what the Academy can do and who it reaches. These are case managers, employment specialists, and digital navigators who serve thousands of job seekers each year.
Program Spotlight
Bringing College to the Community: Medical Assisting Cohort
120+ community members raised their hands. 19 were selected. Classes launched in April 2026 at the Filipino Community of Seattle — largely tuition-free through braided funding, with childcare support, books, laptops, and supplies offered.
Partners: Filipino Community of Seattle · ACRS · Seattle Central College · WDC Programs staff
PROWD (Partners for Reentry Opportunities in Workforce Development) continued to demonstrate what's possible when workforce systems center people who have historically been shut out. The second annual Opening Doors to Opportunities career fair connected justice-involved job seekers directly with employers and community partners.
The King County Jump Start program saw 13 of 16 participants complete clean energy apprenticeship pathways and secure employment. A new cohort of 10 is now enrolled. Through a partnership with Americans 4 Equality (A4E), nine IT training graduates — primarily from the Black community — moved into supervised internships in AI data analytics, marketing, and program management. New cohorts in Maritime Welding and AI Essentials expanded that pipeline further.
And when Boeing layoffs and regional flooding created immediate need, WDC secured Boeing DWG/RRAA and flood-recovery grants to provide rapid, targeted support for dislocated workers.
Building the Systems That Scale
Individual outcomes matter. So do the systems that make them possible at scale — and PY25 was a year of meaningful infrastructure built.
The WorkSource online request form — developed by our local One-Stop Operator team — cut average wait times from three weeks to three days and connected 4,000 job seekers to services. That's not a marginal improvement. That's a fundamentally different experience for someone in urgent need.
The Universal WIOA Intake Application reduced program approval from a process that once took several days to an average of eight minutes, freeing case managers to spend more time with the people they serve.
The Workforce Index, launched in January 2026, established WDC as a regional source of real-time labor market intelligence. It was created to track job openings, wages, layoffs, and skills trends across King County on a monthly basis even through BLS data delays. The Index was cited in the Seattle Times, KUOW, KIRO 7, and the Wall Street Journal - a testament to the growing need for grounded insights on local labor market trends.
The Self-Sufficiency Calculator was completely rebuilt from the ground up — replacing a 20-year-old tool with a modernized platform that embeds the Atlanta Federal Reserve's benefit cliffs data and makes critical information more accessible for advocates, case managers, and the workers themselves.
Strengthening the Partnerships and Funding That Make It All Possible
None of this work exists without sustained investment — and PY25 was a year of significant advocacy, diversified funding, and deepened employer and community partnerships.
The 2026 state budget sustained funding for Economic Security for All (EcSA) and the Community Reinvestment Program (CRP) — including a net $1 million increase for EcSA and $60 million in CRP funding over the biennium. WDC joined partners statewide to fight for these investments, and they held.
Through CRP, WDC and partners Tabor 100 and Seattle Latino Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce awarded 56 small business grants of up to $10,000 — with prior recipients reporting an average monthly revenue increase of $4,371.
Looking Ahead
PY25 ends not with a sense of arrival, but of direction. The labor market is still rebalancing. Federal policy is still uncertain. The communities we serve are still navigating more than they should have to navigate alone.
But the infrastructure built this year — the tools, the trained practitioners, the deepened partnerships, the sustained funding — is exactly what makes the next year of work possible. We head into PY26 grounded in what we've built together, and committed to the workers and communities who depend on what comes next.