International Experience with Job Training: Lessons for the United States

Abstract

Public job training programs funded by the U.S. Department of Labor (USDOL) are now 40 years old. Since their inception, the programs have evolved from strong federal control to significant local autonomy, from narrowly targeted to broadly available services, and from prescribed training options to significant customer choice. The evolution has been marked by four distinct stages. The 1962 Manpower Development and Training Act (MDTA) provided funding administered by regional offices of USDOL directly to job training providers delivering classroom training in local areas. The first elements of decentralized decision making were introduced by the Comprehensive Employment and Training Act (CETA), which superceded MDTA in 1973. CETA required establishment of local administrative entities, called "prime sponsors," to coordinate programs and competitively finance training providers. MDTA and CETA each targeted job training services to economically disadvantaged workers and youth. CETA was supplanted by the Job Training Partnership Act (JTPA) in 1982. JTPA continued the decentralization trend that CETA had begun by significantly reducing the federal and state role and replacing it with a well-developed performance management system. JTPA was a results-driven job training program, which added dislocated workers as an eligible client group.The Workforce Investment Act (WIA) of 1998 replaced JTPA. WIA retained local administration but created a customer focus to programs with universal access and a greater reliance on market mechanisms. It expanded the array of job training, education, and employment services that could be accessed by customers, and mandated that one-stop centers for employment services be created in every labor market throughout the country. Universal access to programs has welcomed a wide variety of customers into the system, many of whom are served through core and intensive services. The provision of training services changed radically with the introduction of vouchers (individual training accounts) to provide training, and choices limited to training providers certified as eligible by the local WIA administrator. To inform their choice, voucher recipients have access to performance information about potential training providers-including job placement rates-through a system of consumer reports on past performance of job training participants.WIA included a sunset provision, with funding beyond five years after enactment of the original program requiring WIA reauthorization. The Bush administration proposed a number of incremental changes to the current program, the most important of which is the consolidation of all adult programs:x disadvantaged adult, dislocated worker, and the employment service funded under the Wagner-Peyser Act. This change would incorporate the public labor exchange into the basic WIA system.This book looks at federally funded training programs as they exist today. It reviews what job training is and how training programs have been implemented under WIA. More specifically, it ex...

Uneven South African private enterprise training: the national skills survey of 2003

“…The OECD observes that training 'tends to reinforce skill differences resulting from unequal participation in schooling in all countries' (OECD, 1999, p. 136). The complementarity of formal schooling and subsequent on-the-job training is widely acknowledged in the literature (see, for example, Jennings, 1998;O'Connell, 1999;Dabalen et al, 2003;Kletzer & Koch, 2003;Ok & Tergeist, 2003). Those workers who are disadvantaged by poor educational backgrounds, can experience this as a vicious cycle of lack of opportunity and neglect.…”

Human Resource Economics and Public Policy: Essays in Honor of Vernon M. Briggs, Jr.

“…Economists generally distinguish between active and passive labormarket policies (Kletzer and Koch 2004), and nations typically offer a mix of active and passive policy elements. Active labor-market policies include five types of activity: job matching and job search assistance (such as public employment services), enhancing the supply of labor (e.g., training), reducing labor supply (by means such as encouraging early retirement or prorating unemployment benefits to accommodate reduced work weeks), creating stronger labor demand (e.g., through public works or public service employment), and changing the structure of demand (e.g., by the use of employment subsidies) (Auer, Efendioglu, and Leschke 2008).…”

“…Active labor-market policies have also been called "selective labor-market policies" to distinguish them from macroeconomic policies and to emphasize their targeted nature (Marshall 1984). Sweden and other European nations, as well as a few Asian countries, provide examples of countries that have long pursued labor-market policies emphasizing active elements, whereas the United Kingdom and the United States are often seen as examples of countries that have adopted more passive forms (Kletzer and Koch 2004).…”

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“…Thus, this perspective highlights the function of workfare as a mechanism that facilitates social cohesion through the provision of work opportunity (Lodemel and Trickey, 2000). From this perspective, workfare is synonymous with active labor market policies, which are geared towards enhancing the employment of unemployed workers with low skills and/or little work experience (Kletzer and Koch, 2004).…”