Where the numbers on Retraining Report come from

Every program and figure on this site comes from one official file. This page explains what that file is, what we change, and what we leave as reported.

The Department of Labor's list of approved training programs

Under the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act, every state keeps a list of training programs that workforce funding can pay for. The US Department of Labor publishes all of them together on TrainingProviderResults.gov, with each program's price, length, entry requirements and how its students did. We use the file for program year 2024 (July 2024 to June 2025), which lists 77,085 programs. That makes the data about a year old when it reaches this site, because states report results after students have left.

The list holds only programs whose schools applied for approval. Schools that never applied are missing, so a page never shows everything a state or city offers.

How a program lands on a trade, state and city page

Each program carries a federal course code (the Classification of Instructional Programs). Each trade on this site is one of those codes: CDL training, for example, is 49.0205, truck and bus driving. A program belongs to the state that approved it for funding, even when the school is just across a state line; its card then shows the real city.

City pages cover a whole metro area as the US Census Bureau draws it, so the Dallas page includes Fort Worth and Arlington. A program is placed by the ZIP code of its school. Metro pages list only programs approved by the state the classes are in, and leave out online programs, which appear on the state pages. A page is built only when it has at least 10 programs.

Some states list the same course several times. We merge listings only when the state, school, city and course name are all identical, so a certificate and a degree at the same school stay separate.

What the price, results and earnings figures mean

• Price is tuition and required fees for someone paying without funding, as the school reported it. Prices under $100 count as not reported, because the file holds many blanks entered as $0. A few prices that are clearly a rate per credit hour, such as $175 for a two-year degree, also show as not reported. "Most programs cost" is the middle half of the programs on the page: a quarter cost less and a quarter cost more.
• Finished is the share of students who completed the program. Working 6 months later is the share employed in the second quarter after they left. For Nevada, Pennsylvania and Utah we leave this share out: their rates sit far below every other state's, and the counts suggest jobs were traced only for students whose training was publicly paid.
• Earnings are the middle earnings of those working in that second quarter. States take them from the wage reports employers file every three months, so the file has one quarter. The yearly figure is that quarter times four, rounded to the nearest $100, and marked as an estimate. A quarter under $1,000 counts as not reported.
• Length is the program's length in weeks as reported. For CDL, CNA and phlebotomy courses, a length over two years counts as not reported.

A figure for a whole page, such as what most programs cost or how many students typically finished, is shown only when at least 5 programs report it and they make up at least a quarter of the page. Otherwise the page says "Not reported".

What Retraining Report never changes or adds

Figures for named schools are shown exactly as reported, without labels like "best" or "worst". Where a state left a field empty or the Department of Labor withheld it to protect small groups of students, the page says "Not reported"; nothing is estimated to fill the gap. When a school listed the same course twice with different results, the card shows the listing with the most students and says so. The file also records whether a school is public or private, but those entries are wrong too often to print, so we leave them out.

Facts that don't come from the file, such as who qualifies for funding, financial aid and the GI Bill, link to official sources, numbered at the bottom of each page.

How to use these figures when choosing a training program

Results describe students who left a program in recent years. They are no guarantee of how the next class will do, and prices change. Before you enroll, confirm the price, length and funding with the school and your local American Job Center. If something here looks wrong, tell us and we'll check it against the source.

Last updated 5 October 2026