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Strategic Objective
Provide marketable skills and knowledge to increase workers' incomes and help them overcome barriers to the middle class through partnerships among business, education, labor, community organizations, and the workforce system
Strategic Objective
Overview
As the economy recovers and job growth returns, the public workforce system has a critical role to play in ensuring that job seekers and employers have access to the skills they need to compete and succeed. The Department recognizes that more credentialing can help lay the human capital foundation necessary to support new and growing sectors of the economy. Investing in skills development not only helps individuals return to work, but also helps workers obtain the measurable and specific skills they need to move along directed career pathways, while giving employers access to the skilled workers they need to compete globally. Therefore, the Department committed to the Agency Priority Goal of increasing credential attainment by public workforce system participants. This goal reflects a growing appreciation of the urgent need for a more highly-skilled workforce to compete in today’s global economy and supports the Administration’s efforts to increase skill development opportunities for American workers, particularly those most disadvantaged in the current economic climate.
Read Less...Progress Update
Employment and Training Administration programs that support this objective include Registered Apprenticeship, WIA Youth, Job Corps, YouthBuild, and Reintegration of Ex- Offenders.
A recent study of the Registered Apprenticeship program found that those who complete the program earn $240,000 more than non-participants over their careers, with net social benefits of over $50,000 per completing participant. [5] And in FY 2015, the six month average earnings for completers of apprenticeship programs were $31,124. ETA is leveraging Registered Apprenticeship’s success by promoting partnerships with WIA and now WIOA programs. In FY 2014, ETA formed a Registered Apprenticeship College Consortium (RACC) to provide college credit for completion of a Registered Apprenticeship program. In September 2015, ETA awarded $175 million to grantees that competed for assistance to train and hire more than 34,000 new apprentices over the next five years in industries as diverse as healthcare, IT, and advanced manufacturing. The FY 2016 budget appropriation enacted $90 million for ApprenticeshipUSA program activities, the first-ever appropriation to support wide-scale apprenticeship expansion across the United States. Funding is aimed at supporting innovative, job-driven approaches that result in the Department’s goal to double and diversify Registered Apprenticeships that train workers with 21st century skills to meet employer and industry workforce needs. The FY 2017 budget requests continuation of this new funding, and supplements it with a $2 billion mandatory Apprenticeship Training Fund.
Other ETA programs also demonstrated success in increasing workers’ skills and knowledge through partnerships, particularly through targeted technical assistance efforts. In the WIA Youth program, the share of participants entering employment or enrolling in post-secondary education, the military or advanced training/occupational skills training in the first quarter after exit increased from 59 percent in PY 2011 to 67 percent in PY 2014 (most DOL training and employment programs are forward-funded and report performance on a Program Year (PY) that lags the Federal fiscal year by nine months. Exceptions that report on a standard fiscal year are the Apprenticeship program and the Trade Adjustment Assistance program).
Due to the program’s residential structure and highly individualized services, Job Corps students continue to outperform WIA Youth program participants by most measures. For example, in PY 2014 79 percent of its students were placed in employment or education and 63 percent had significant literacy or numeracy gains – compared to 67 percent and 51 percent, respectively, for WIA Youth. However, some Job Corps centers continue to face challenges with safety and security (the DOL OIG identifies this as a top management and performance challenge for the Department (http://www.dol.gov/_sec/media/reports/annual2015/2015annualreport.pdf))
To address those challenges, Job Corps has begun conducting unannounced visits to centers with an elevated risk profile. Job Corps conducted 30 such visits between September and December 2015. During these visits, federal staff from Job Corps’ national and regional Offices assess each selected center’s compliance with established policy covering center safety and security; disciplinary and behavior management systems; significant incident reporting; residential and recreational programing; student attendance and accountability; and counseling and evaluation of student progress. Each visit also included focus groups with randomly selected students and line staff.
Many job seekers continue to face challenges in finding employment opportunities because jobs now require a higher level of education and credential attainment, pointing to the need for different training strategies that focus on the attainment of industry-recognized credentials (the BLS indicates employment occupations that require some post-secondary education for entry are projected to grow by 14% by 2022, while those without this requirement are projected to grow just 9%). For this reason, the Department is emphasizing the importance of such credentials in its training programs, as well as the involvement of employers in the design of training programs to ensure programs confer skills employers value.
As noted above, resources for training are limited. Even in this challenging climate, ETA achieved the target for the credential attainment priority goal by increasing the percentage of training program (WIA Adult, Dislocated Workers, National Dislocated Worker Grants, Youth, Trade Adjustment Assistance, Registered Apprenticeship, Reintegration of Ex-Offenders, Job Corps, YouthBuild, Green Jobs, Innovation Fund, H-1B Innovation Accelerators and H-1B Technical Skills Training) exiters who earn an industry recognized credential from 64 percent in FY 2014 to 67 percent in FY 2015. ETA incentivized state formula grantees to place greater emphasis on credentials by designing grant competitions, where applicable, to specifically promote credential attainment. ETA also provides technical assistance and training to grantees on resources and strategies for increasing the attainment of industry recognized credentials. For example, ETA updated its electronic tools to include information on credentials related to each occupation – from short-term certificates to apprenticeship to licensure and certifications – and the quality or value of specific certifications. WIOA continues the focus on credentials and includes credential attainment as one of the primary indicators of performance. The law also emphasizes employer engagement in the development of this measure to better connect employers with jobseekers that have the credential necessary to be marketable in high-demand industries.
To address the serious needs of low-income youth, the FY 2017 President’s Budget includes an increase for the Youth formula grant program. It also proposes $5.5 billion over 4 years to Make a Commitment to a First Job and a Degree for Every Young American, which would provide year-round and summer paid opportunities to create educational and workforce pathways to get more than 1 million disconnected young Americans on the path to a successful career.
[5] Reed, Debbie, et al. (2012). An Effectiveness Assessment and Cost-Benefit Analysis of Registered Apprenticeship in 10 States, Oakland, CA: Mathematica Policy Research. (http://wdr.doleta.gov/research/FullText_Documents/ETAOP_2012_10.pdf)
