I 
118TH CONGRESS 
1ST SESSION H. R. 1403 
To amend the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act to create a new 
national program to support mid-career workers, including workers from 
underrepresented populations, in reentering the STEM workforce, by 
providing funding to small- and medium-sized STEM businesses so the 
businesses can offer paid internships or other returnships that lead 
to positions above entry level. 
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 
MARCH 7, 2023 
Ms. HOULAHAN (for herself and Mr. BAIRD) introduced the following bill; 
which was referred to the Committee on Education and the Workforce 
A BILL 
To amend the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act 
to create a new national program to support mid-career 
workers, including workers from underrepresented popu-
lations, in reentering the STEM workforce, by providing 
funding to small- and medium-sized STEM businesses 
so the businesses can offer paid internships or other 
returnships that lead to positions above entry level. 
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representa-
tives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, 
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SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE. 
This Act may be cited as the ‘‘STEM Restoring Em-
ployment Skills through Targeted Assistance, Re-entry, 
and Training Act’’ or the ‘‘STEM RESTART Act’’. 
SEC. 2. RETURNING SKILLED WORKERS TO THE STEM 
WORKFORCE. 
(a) IN GENERAL.—Subtitle D of title I of the Work-
force Innovation and Opportunity Act is amended— 
(1) by redesignating section 172 (29 U.S.C. 
3227) as section 173; and 
(2) by inserting after section 171 the following: 
‘‘SEC. 172. GRANTS TO SUPPORT SKILLED WORKERS IN RE-
TURNING OR TRANSITIONING TO THE STEM 
WORKFORCE. 
‘‘(a) FINDINGS.—Congress finds the following: 
‘‘(1) The Brookings Institution expects the 
coronavirus pandemic will have lasting effects on the 
labor market and could change the composition of 
available jobs indefinitely, with the ensuing economic 
decline ushering in a new era of automation. Em-
ployers will likely shed less skilled workers and re-
place them with higher-skilled technology workers, 
which increases labor productivity as a recession 
tapers off. 
‘‘(2) The current pipeline of engineering talent 
does not include many college graduates from large 
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cohorts of the population. Women represent over 57 
percent of college graduates but only 22 percent of 
the engineers entering the workforce. Within the 
workforce, only 14 percent of engineers are women. 
Women also leave the engineering profession in 
greater numbers than men do. 
‘‘(3) A 2018 Pew Research Center study 
showed there are wide racial gaps among current 
STEM workers regarding reasons why so few Black 
and Hispanic people work in STEM. For example, 
over 70 percent of Black STEM workers view lack 
of access to education and discriminatory hiring and 
promotion practices as reasons there are so few 
Black men and women in the STEM fields. By com-
parison, less than 30 percent of White and Asian 
STEM workers view that lack of access and those 
practices as barriers to Black people entering the 
fields. Additionally, 62 percent of Black STEM 
workers say they have faced discrimination in their 
jobs compared to just 13 percent of White STEM 
workers. 
‘‘(4) Among the 25,300,000 United States 
women ages 25 through 54 with a bachelor’s degree 
or higher degree in 2017, 4,200,000 were out of the 
labor force. While some of those women were dis-
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abled or retired, the remaining 3,600,000 women 
may be candidates to return to work. 
‘‘(5) The Center for Talent Innovation’s re-
search shows that while 93 percent of women who 
left the workforce want to resume their careers, only 
74 percent manage to get any kind of job at all and 
just 40 percent successfully return to work full-time. 
‘‘(6) Mid-career internship and other returnship 
programs are an effective way to address the dif-
ficulties of former STEM employees seeking to re-
turn to work, as the programs provide a proba-
tionary period and also an opportunity to obtain 
mentorship, professional development, and support 
as the participants transition back to work. Even 
more important, returnship programs allow an em-
ployer to base a hiring decision on an actual work 
sample instead of a series of interviews. At the same 
time, the programs give participants an opportunity 
to return to work together, in a cohort of similarly 
situated returners. 
‘‘(7) Fortune 500 companies like Apple, Honey-
well, Northrop Grumman, Ingersoll Rand, and The 
Procter & Gamble Company have taken the initiative 
to try to close the gender gap among STEM profes-
sionals by providing mid-career internships for re-
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turning technical professionals. However, a 2008 
study by Anthony Breitzman and Diana Hicks for 
the Office of Advocacy of the Small Business Admin-
istration, entitled ‘An Analysis of Small Business 
Patents by Industry and Firm Size’, found that 
‘Small firms are much more likely to develop emerg-
ing technologies than are large firms. This is per-
haps intuitively reasonable given theories on small 
firms effecting technological change, but the quan-
titative data here support this assertion. Specifically, 
although small firms account for only 8 percent of 
patents granted, they account for 24 percent of the 
patents in the top 100 emerging clusters.’. 
‘‘(b) PURPOSES.—The purposes of this section are 
to— 
‘‘(1) prioritize expanding opportunities, through 
high-quality internships or other returnships in 
STEM fields for unemployed or underemployed 
workers, particularly workers from underrepresented 
populations and workers from rural areas, who are 
mid-career skilled workers seeking to return or tran-
sition to in-demand industry sectors or occupations 
within the STEM workforce, at positions and com-
pensation above entry level; and 
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‘‘(2) establish grant funding and other incen-
tives for small-sized and medium-sized companies in 
in-demand industry sectors or occupations to estab-
lish programs that provide on-the-job evaluation, 
education, and training for mid-career skilled work-
ers described in paragraph (1). 
‘‘(c) DEFINITIONS.—In this section: 
‘‘(1) MEDIUM-SIZED
ENTERPRISE.—The term 
‘medium-sized’, used with respect to an enterprise, 
means an entity that employs more than 499 and 
fewer than 10,000 employees. 
‘‘(2) RESTART 
GRANT.—The term ‘RE-
START grant’ means a grant made under sub-
section (d). 
‘‘(3) RETURNSHIP.—The term ‘returnship’ shall 
mean any internship, apprenticeship, re-entry oppor-
tunity, direct hiring opportunity with support, or 
other similar opportunity designed to provide work-
ers seeking to return or transition to the STEM 
workforce with positions that— 
‘‘(A) are above entry level; 
‘‘(B) provide salaries, stipends, or other 
payments, and benefits, that are above entry 
level; and 
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‘‘(C) provide training that leads workers 
toward full-time careers and provides pathways 
toward advancement and leadership. 
‘‘(4) RURAL
AREA.—The term ‘rural area’ 
means an area that is not an urban area (within the 
meaning of the notice of final program criteria enti-
tled ‘Urban Area Criteria for the 2010 Census’ (76 
Fed. Reg. 53030 (August 24, 2011))). 
‘‘(5) SMALL-SIZED
ENTERPRISE.—The term 
‘small-sized’, used with respect to an enterprise, 
means an entity that employs more than 49 and 
fewer than 500 individuals. 
‘‘(6) STEM.—The term ‘STEM’ has the mean-
ing given the term in section 2 of the America COM-
PETES Reauthorization Act of 2010 (42 U.S.C. 
6621 note). 
‘‘(7) UNDERREPRESENTED POPULATION.—The 
term ‘underrepresented population’ means a group 
that is underrepresented in science and engineering, 
as determined by the Secretary of Education under 
section 637.4(b) of title 34, Code of Federal Regula-
tions (as in effect on the date of enactment of the 
STEM RESTART Act). 
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‘‘(8) UNEMPLOYED OR UNDEREMPLOYED INDI-
VIDUAL.—The term ‘unemployed or underemployed 
individual’ means— 
‘‘(A) an unemployed or underemployed in-
dividual as defined by the Bureau of Labor Sta-
tistics; and 
‘‘(B) a displaced or furloughed worker. 
‘‘(d) GRANT.— 
‘‘(1) IN GENERAL.—From the amounts made 
available to carry out this section, the Secretary 
shall award grants, on a competitive basis, to eligible 
entities, to carry out returnship programs that pro-
vide opportunities above entry level in STEM fields 
for mid-career skilled workers, and achieve the pur-
poses described in subsection (b). 
‘‘(2) PERIODS.—The Secretary shall award the 
grants for an initial period of not less than 3 years 
and not more than 5 years. 
‘‘(3) AMOUNTS.—In awarding grants under this 
subsection, the Secretary shall award a grant— 
‘‘(A) for a small-sized enterprise, in an 
amount so that each annual payment for the 
grant is not less than $100,000 or more than 
$1,000,000; and 
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