Q: What I am looking for is if LERN has national analysis info on: 1) state of workforce training on a national scale, 2) an analysis of workforce training grant opportunities potentially available for the next year, 3) an analysis of skills most often requested by companies for their employees (current and future), and lastly, 4) national trends for continuing education including personal enrichment education.
A: The problem with your WFD questions is that such resources don't really exist (at least in an easy to translate/find format). I'm going to give you what data I know below; however, I'm also going to suggest you start a discussion about some of these questions within the Workforce Development Group on LinkedIn. There are over 500 members in that group. I know that some of the people attended one of my sessions at conference that was on WFD funding and some good ideas were shared there.
Here is what I do know:
1) For what training to develop, there is a federal document called the Occupational Outlook Handbook. Unfortunately, by the time the data is gathered and it comes out, it's often out of date. Plus, the data individual states gather often comes from help wanted ads in the newspaper and many jobs, especially those requiring training are advertised that way anymore.
2) The only centralized grant resource I know of is the federal governments Grants.gov site. Individual states governments also have money but I don't think there is a centralized resource sharing all that. You would need to check with your state departments of education and economic development to see if what monies they have available. There are also foundations that give workforce development grants.
3) Regarding what employers want, looking at a number of different surveys, what I find is that: Qualities most consistently reported as desired by employers are: Ability to work in a team, Verbal communication skills, Ability to make decisions and problem solve, Ability to obtain and process information, Ability to plan, organize, and prioritize work. Careers areas in which employers plan to hire include accounting; finance; business administration; and mechanical, electrical, and computer engineering
4) I have provided links to two resources of interest. The annual “State of the Industry Report” published each October by Training Magazine and an article from CNN Money on training gaps and how to begin to address them.
https://trainingmag.com/trgmag-article/2017-training-industry-report
http://money.cnn.com/2018/03/01/news/economy/us-worker-job-training/index.html