Skills-First Workforce Initiative Expands to 30 Roles, Encompassing over 35 Million Workers

Skills-First Workforce Initiative Expands to 30 Roles, Encompassing over 35 Million Workers

The Skills-First Working Initiative is moving into a new chapter. Convened by Walmart, led by the Burning Glass Institute and comprised of a cross-industry group of some of America’s largest employers, the Initiative is working to create more opportunities for American workers. Our starting point: establishing a shared language around skills.

For decades, the labor market has lacked a shared language around skills: employers describe the same roles differently; workers lack the means to demonstrate their skills; and training providers struggle to discern what skills learners need to succeed.

In April 2025, the initiative released shared, skills-first taxonomies for nine of America’s most common roles. Today we’re proud to announce our continued progress:

·            Expanding to 30 roles that represent 35 million U.S. jobs (25% of the nation’s private-sector workforce)

·            Identifying the skills workers will need to thrive in an AI-enabled economy

·            Bringing prominent HR tech providers along for the journey

·            Creating an implementation playbook for companies of all sizes to get started

The impacts of this will be transformative: make skills transparent, clear, and transferable across jobs, companies, and industries.

Expansion to 30 Roles, Covering 35+ Million Workers

Today, the Skills-First Working Initiative dramatically expanded its scope — now defining common, skills-first profiles for 30 roles that together represent more than 35 million U.S. jobs – or 25% of the U.S. private-sector workforce.

The expansion reflects demand from leading employers to extend skills-first practices across the full spectrum of the American economy, from shop-floor roles like Truck Drivers and Cashiers to knowledge-economy jobs like Cybersecurity Analysts and Project Managers. The initial nine foundational roles — jobs such as Retail Salesperson, Warehouse Manager, Product Manager, and Financial Analyst — provided employers with a shared reference point for defining, measuring, and applying skills in hiring and workforce planning.

By anchoring these diverse jobs in a common taxonomy, the Initiative helps employers apply skills-first practices consistently, whether on the shop floor, behind the wheel, or in the knowledge economy.

Making It Work in the Tech Platforms Employers Use

At a convening this June, representatives from Workday, Degreed, UKG, TechWolf, SAP, Fuel50, and LinkedIn joined employer members of the Initiative to identify where barriers to skills-first practices arise in current technology workflows—and to explore how those challenges can be solved.

This collaboration was both critical and novel. While technology providers often receive feedback from individual employers, it is rarely framed from the perspective of an entire ecosystem of large firms, or situated within the broader context of what competitors are also offering to the market. Bringing these providers together with employers as a group helps ensure that the “infrastructure” powering talent workflows evolves to support skills-first practices—so they don’t remain ideas on paper, but become part of how hiring, training, and advancement decisions are actually made.

Implementing Skills-First Taxonomies in Practice

To support adoption, the Burning Glass Institute has worked with Skills-First Working Group companies to create an Implementation Playbook that documents lessons from employer partners’ own skill journeys. Drawing on expertise and best practices from many of America’s largest and most sophisticated hirers, the Playbook highlights how skills-first taxonomies can be put into practice to:

·            Align hiring and promotion criteria so they reflect skills rather than credentials.

·            Map learning opportunities directly to the capabilities employers need most.

·            Open new career pathways by making skill adjacencies visible and transparent.

Employers aren’t just experimenting on paper. Companies are beginning to update job descriptions and career frameworks to reflect the taxonomy, making it easier for workers to see how their skills translate into new opportunities. In some cases, employers have piloted hires using skills-first criteria; early proof that the approach can influence real outcomes.

Why It Matters

The Skills-First Working Initiative represents the potential for a new model of collaboration: employers defining a common skills language, technology providers embedding it into their systems, and training providers ensuring current and future workers learn what is most critical for them to succeed. Together, these efforts are laying the foundation for a labor market where skills, not degrees or pedigree, are the true currency of opportunity.

With the expansion to 30 roles, the ongoing creation of an AI skills framework, the engagement of leading HR technology providers, and the development of a hands-on Implementation Playbook, the Skills-First Working Initiative is taking a major step toward making skills-first practices real at scale.

For millions of workers and learners, that means clearer pathways, fairer hiring, and a better chance to succeed in a rapidly changing economy.