The U.S. stands at a pivotal moment in workforce development. Increasingly, new credentials and innovative technologies have enabled transformative changes in how people access education, demonstrate their skills, and connect to career opportunities. But realizing the full potential of these advancements hinges on a critical foundation: credential transparency.
Credential Engine’s latest research reveals that the U.S. now offers at least 1.85 million credentials, representing $2.34 trillion invested annually across more than 134,000 providers. This expansive landscape of learning validation — college degrees, industry certifications, apprenticeships, digital badges, and more — reflects both our dynamic economy and a decentralized approach to talent development. But it’s this diversity that also creates challenges.
In order for all this information to seamlessly flow between systems, credentials need to be described in structured, open, linked, and interoperable data formats so it’s clear what they represent and how they connect to skills and jobs. Without this credential transparency, learners struggle to navigate education and career pathways, employers cannot identify qualified talent, and policymakers lack the information needed to ensure accountability and quality.
The convergence of federal workforce priorities with the rapid digitization of credentials creates unprecedented opportunities. With a strong desire to embrace digital transformation, the question for policymakers now becomes how they can ensure that federal investments catalyze a transparent, interoperable system that serves all people, no matter their education or career path.
Talent Marketplaces: Building the Infrastructure for Skills-Based Economies
One of the most promising developments in workforce policy is the emergence of state and regional-level talent marketplaces — integrated digital platforms that connect learners and workers with employers and career opportunities. These marketplaces allow for actionable ways to validate skills and learning, and allow people to connect their education and work experience to job opportunities. Recognizing the potential, the U.S. Department of Education launched the Connecting Talent to Opportunity Challenge that invites states to build or scale talent marketplaces that include credential registries, learning and employment records (LERs), and skills-based job description generators.
States like Arkansas and Pennsylvania have demonstrated what becomes possible when credential information is transparent and actionable, creating platforms where residents can see clear pathways from credentials to careers, and employers can find qualified talent regardless of the educational route workers took to gain their skills.
However, the true potential emerges when these marketplaces and registries can communicate across state lines and system boundaries. State credential registries create tremendous value within their borders, but people and jobs are not stagnant within geographic boundaries. When state and federal systems are built upon structured, open, linked, and interoperable (SOLID) data — particularly the Credential Transparency Description Language (CTDL) — they become part of a robust infrastructure rather than isolated islands of information. This interoperability is essential as federal policy increasingly emphasizes talent mobility and cross-state credential recognition.
Take action: Federal policymakers can accelerate this infrastructure development by mandating that information about all credentials and skills that are federally funded, authorized, or overseen are made public using structured, open, linked and interoperable data (SOLID) formats. When every provider of a credential or skill uses a common language to describe credentials, including associated skills, providers, and outcomes, the data becomes usable not just within individual state systems but across the entire talent marketplace ecosystem — from career navigation tools to employer applicant tracking software to federal accountability systems.
Workforce Pell: Transparency as the Foundation for Accountability
Nowhere is credential transparency more immediately critical than in the implementation of Workforce Pell. In 2025, Pell Grant eligibility expanded to include short-term workforce training programs between 150 and 599 clock hours, creating new pathways for millions of people to access credentials aligned to labor market demand. As negotiations over implementation details have transpired, these new programs must demonstrate quality and positive outcomes to ensure taxpayer dollars support credentials of genuine value.
The law requires Workforce Pell programs to meet rigorous completion, job placement, and earnings metrics, requiring that at least 70 percent of students complete programs and at least 70 percent of completers obtain related employment. States are responsible for evaluating whether programs meet federal standards, and those with transparent, interoperable credential registries will be better positioned to meet these accountability requirements.
Take action: Mandate transparent credential data with Workforce Pell systems to ensure accountability. When credentials are described using CTDL, the skills, competencies, and outcomes associated with each program become clear and comparable, allowing states to assess alignment with labor market needs. Also, interoperable data systems allow states to track outcomes data across institutions and state lines, providing accurate completion and placement data even for highly mobile populations. Transparent credential registries create public visibility into which programs meet quality standards, helping students make informed choices and enabling continuous improvement.
Credential transparency supports the integration of Workforce Pell with broader workforce systems, including the ability to connect short-term credentials into stackable pathways that lead to further advancement and mobility. Transparent data about how credentials relate to each other — which programs share competencies, which credentials build toward degrees, which pathways lead to family-sustaining wages — makes these connections visible and navigable for students, advisors, and policymakers alike.
Learning and Employment Records (LERs) and Skills-Based Hiring: Making Skills Visible and Verifiable
There is broad bipartisan recognition that LERs represent a critical piece of workforce infrastructure. These digital records carry learning, skills, and competency information, and can bring greater clarity to both sides of the labor market, helping workers identify opportunities and employers find the right talent.
LERs work best when they are usable — that is, interoperable — across states and systems. This interoperability is essential to the functioning of a national LER infrastructure so that when people move between states, their data can go with them. Without common data standards, individuals’ verified skills and credentials become trapped in proprietary systems, limiting portability, and reducing the value of the entire education-to-career ecosystem.
Take action: Information about all providers, programs, credentials, and skills across federally funded programs must be made publicly available through structured and linked data. Simultaneously, federal funding should be awarded only to LERs that meet standards for data openness and interoperability. This ensures that federal investments build toward a coherent national system rather than creating new silos.
Both the Department of Education and the Department of Labor are already moving in this direction. Through an interagency agreement transferring $2.18 billion in workforce programs to DOL’s leadership, the agencies aim to create a national common language of skills credentialing, where learning is translated into human and machine-readable, industry-recognized competency statements via LERs. As long as this work is built on structured, open, linked, interoperable data (SOLID) standards, LERs enable the skills-based hiring practices that are essential for expanding opportunity to all Americans.
The Path Forward: Federal Leadership for a Transparent Skills Economy
We are at the tipping point of a once-in-a-generation opportunity to build workforce infrastructure that serves all people, regardless of age or educational attainment. But realizing this potential requires policymakers to prioritize credential and skill transparency in every program, grant application, and accountability framework. Federal policymakers must:
- Require federally funded programs to publish credential, skills, and provider information using SOLID standards like CTDL
- Make data interoperability a prerequisite for federal workforce investments, including talent marketplace grants, LER systems, and Workforce Pell eligibility systems
- Support states in developing the data infrastructure needed to collect, share, and use transparent credential information for program improvement and accountability
- Ensure that privacy protections and learner data ownership remain central as systems become more interconnected
The 1.85 million credentials available in the U.S. represent an extraordinary asset — one of the most diverse and extensive opportunity landscapes for talent development in the world. Without transparency, this diversity becomes confusion. With the right infrastructure, complexity turns into clarity, credentials become currency, and our country’s investment in people reaches its full potential. The policy choices made today will determine whether the credential marketplace serves as a barrier or a bridge to opportunity for generations to come.