Landscape Study of Federal Employment and Training Programs

Written by Mason Bishop, Founder of WorkED Consulting.

• The failure to revise and integrate federal employment and job-training programs over a five-decade history has resulted in a policy and bureaucratic maze that creates challenges for program administrators at the federal and state levels and, most importantly, confusion for employer and worker users of the system.
• The Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA) outlines the structure and requirements for one-stop service delivery at the state level; however, individual programs and appropriations funded by numerous federal agencies provide challenging obstacles for state and local officials to make one-stop service delivery a reality.
• Arbitrary requirements and “one-size” federal mandates contained in WIOA create bottlenecks and obstacles for the efficient and effective delivery of employment and job-training services.
• Wide variation in the level of integration and coordination of employment and job-training programs and services exists throughout the states and has implications in the types and quality of services provided to residents of various states.

Executive Summary

The United States government has funded various employment and job-training programs since the 1930s. Many of these programs remain in effect today, including the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA). WIOA provides funding for services tar­geted at low-income adults, dislocated workers, and disadvantaged youth and mandates the structure of one-stop service delivery among a number of pro­grams that provide federal funds to states. However, while mandating one-stop service delivery, WIOA pro­vides few tools for state and local officials to integrate programs and funds, making it challenging to realize the vision of true one-stop service delivery.

This report demonstrates the challenges of man­dating employment and job-training coordination through WIOA because programs, policies, and fund­ing incentivizes continued program delivery sepa­ration. First, during the past five decades, federal programs have continued to be created and autho­rized across multiple federal agencies, each with dif­ferent interest group constituencies and bureaucratic layers. Second, opportunities to undertake signifi­cant reforms of many federal programs simply have not materialized. Rather, federal program reform attempts are often contradictory—while attempting to provide “flexibility” to states to deliver employ­ment and job-training services, additional unneces­sary mandates are placed in federal law that induce inefficiencies and hamper effectiveness in an attempt to protect the various interest groups’ piece of the federal appropriations pie. Finally, more funding to serve more employers and workers does not address the issue of a duplicative, fragmented, and confusing service delivery architecture. In fact, more funding only exacerbates and incentivizes separate program delivery through separate agencies and bureaucracies.

To demonstrate attempts at rationalizing frag­mented federal employment and job-training deliv­ery on the ground, this report examines three states at different places on the spectrum. Virginia is a state that remains “siloed” in its approach with numer­ous state agencies overseeing employment and job-training programs. Conversely, Utah represents a highly integrated state where one state agency admin­isters and delivers almost all the major employment and job-training programs funded by the federal gov­ernment. Finally, Kentucky represents a state in the midst of reforms of its service delivery system based on labor market conditions and a desire to streamline services to customers.

Introduction

The United States government has funded employ­ment and training programs since the New Deal in the 1930s. The Wagner-Peyser Act of 1933 created the United States Employment Service (ES), one of the oldest components of today’s employment and training program matrix. ES was a companion to the federal-state Unemployment Insurance Program (UI) and established basic services, such as job-search assistance and employment acquisition, designed to help those who were unemployed during the Great Depression.

Both the ES and UI programs—while over 80 years old and existing during enormous technological and workplace change—remain relatively unchanged today. Each program retains a separate authorizing statute and a separate appropriation as part of the federal budget. Each program also retains a unique feature not present in many other employment and training programs; services must be provided by “state merit staff” employees—that is, state employ­ees who are part of the civil service and are not “at will.”¹

ES and UI programs are now part of a “one-stop delivery system” under today’s federal job-training legislation—the Workforce Innovation and Opportu­nity Act (WIOA). The one-stop delivery system was created to better coordinate provision of multiple federally funded employment and training programs to benefit workers, job seekers, and employers. WIOA also authorizes funding for employment and train­ing services targeted to low-income adults (Adult Program), workers dislocated from their jobs (Dis­located Worker Program), and disadvantaged youth (Youth Program).

Read the full report.

Notes

1. 20 CFR § 652.215; and US Department of Labor, “Training and Employment Guidance Letter,” January 3, 2013, 11–12.

Article reposted from the American Enterprise Institute.