Every election is a workforce election because every election is an economic election, and jobs are how people pay for both their things and stuff. And boy, this year’s congressional midterm race sure is an economic election.

That hasn’t helped Republicans this year as gas prices surged due to the Iran War and workers felt the first healthcare and entitlement cuts from the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, the second Trump Administration’s chief legislative accomplishment. Despite what was thought to be a favorable Senate map, Republicans are spending hundreds of millions to try to salvage their majority in the upper chamber.

But an underappreciated trendline that’s emerged over the past few months is how many endangered Republican senators sit on the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions, which oversees workforce spending. That current Republican-led molt of that committee hasn’t exactly made a ton of headway on offering solutions for workforce issues this term. Those would seem to be the kind of answers that endangered senators could use right now on the trail.

Below, I work through what hasn’t happened during this version of HELP, what positions endangered senators have staked out, and what could change for a key arena in workforce policy already facing a significant leadership change.