; and (2) by inserting after section 171 the following: 172. Grants to support skilled workers in returning 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. Employers will likely shed less skilled workers and replace 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 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 comparison, 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 disabled or retired, the remaining 3,600,000 women may be candidates to return to work. (5) The Center for Talent Innovation’s research shows that while 93 percent of women who left the workforce want to