"[The trades] are a ticket to the American dream and a lot of Americans are locked out of it... It shouldn’t just be your children and my children that have expectations. Every child should have expectations, and we need to invest in those expectations and the support to achieve them." — Rahm Emanuel

In a recent Brookings conversation, former Chicago Mayor and prior Ambassador to Japan Rahm Emanuel sat down with a panel of experts to discuss a difficult reality. Many industries are currently struggling to find workers. Ford alone has nearly 5,000 unfilled jobs that pay six figures, yet there are over 43 federal training programs on the books that are largely failing to move the needle. As we reviewed the webcast, our team was struck by the honest look at why the current system is leaving so many people behind, both employers and workers.

The discussion made it clear that fixing this mismatch is not just about more programs or policy. It is about fostering a sense of agency. For example, Chicago’s "Learn, Plan, Succeed" initiative reached a 98% compliance rate for post-graduation planning by expecting students to have a concrete path forward.

This is where mindset comes in. Whether someone chooses a trade or an office job, they need a new set of skills to navigate uncertainty and create their own success. These skills, with deliberate practice, foster a shift in one's mindset. The solution is rooted in empowering people to see themselves as active problem-solvers in their own lives, rather than passive participants in a system that isn't working for them.

This issue of VoxDevLit's literature review, Training Entrepreneurs, examines the effectiveness of over $1 billion in annual global spending on entrepreneurship training. While policymakers often fund these programs to drive broad job growth, the evidence suggests that the impact is much more personal. For youth and microenterprises, training typically increases an individual's earnings and self-employment prospects, but it rarely creates immediate "new" jobs for others. Instead, it serves as a tool for individual agency, giving people the capacity to navigate their own success.

The research also shows that mindset-focused content is more effective than traditional business education:

• Personal Initiative Training: Encouraging a proactive mindset—seeking opportunities and learning from errors—consistently outperforms technical training in areas like record-keeping or marketing.
• Significant ROI: In some studies, this focus on proactive mindset boosted profits by 30%, with participants recouping their training costs in less than a year.
• Heuristics: Simplified "rule-of-thumb" training can be highly effective for subsistence entrepreneurs with lower formal education.

This data reinforces what Rahm Emanuel noted in our featured video: we cannot simply shrug our shoulders at failure or rely on outdated systems. Whether through a concrete graduation plan or a "personal initiative" curriculum, success starts with the expectation that individuals have the agency to solve their own problems and create their own path.