Due to the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Recovery Act), both the number of--and funding for--federal employment and training programs have increased since our 2003 report, but little is known about the effectiveness of most programs. In fiscal year 2009, 9 federal agencies spent approximately $18 billion to administer 47 programs--an increase of 3 programs and roughly $5 billion

According to Labor officials, the grant initiatives were designed to shift the focus of the public workforce system toward the training and employment needs of high-growth, in-demand industries, but Labor will be challenged to assess their impact. Under the initiatives, Labor awarded 349 grants totaling almost $900 million to foster this change. However, the grant initiatives were not fully integ

Labor has proposed action steps that one-stops may take to link employers and older workers and has ongoing efforts to promote employment for older workers to a wider audience. While Labor knows little about the results of these efforts, planned evaluations may provide some information on the impact of Workforce Investment Act(WIA) services on older workers. Based on our survey results, we estima

Governments and employers have developed a variety of laws, government policies, and formal and informal practices, including periods of leave, flexible work schedules, child care, and training. Each of the countries we reviewed has some form of family leave, such as maternity, paternity, or parental leave, that attempts to balance the needs of employers and employees, and, often, attempts to hel

Governments and employers developed a variety of laws, government policies, and formal and informal practices, including periods of leave, flexible work schedules, child care, and training. Each of the countries we reviewed provides some form of family leave, such as maternity, paternity, or parental leave, that attempts to balance the needs of employers and employees and, often, attempts to help

Labor's monitoring of programs it directly oversees has been limited. We found that in 2004 Labor reviewed only 4 percent of programs in the 23 states where it has direct oversight. According to federal program directors in those states, limited staff constrained their ability to do more reviews. Also, Labor has focused in recent years on registering new programs and recruiting apprentices. Altho

Local workforce boards used an estimated 40 percent of the WIA funds they had available in program year 2003 to obtain training services for WIA participants. Nationally, local boards had approximately $2.4 billion in WIA funds that were available to serve adults and dislocated workers during program year 2003 and used about $929 million for training activities. The remaining funds paid for other

In summary, we found that while many states supported streamlined reporting, 36 states indicated that implementing the EMILE system, as proposed, would be very burdensome. Most states indicated that launching EMILE would require as much or more effort than was required of them to meet WIA reporting requirements in 2000. Labor has underestimated the magnitude and type of changes EMILE would requir

While about half of all employers are aware of their local one-stops, awareness increases with employer size, with about half of small, two-thirds of medium, and three-quarters of large employers knowing about their local one-stops. Similarly, of all employers aware of the one-stops, about three-quarters of large employers are likely to use one-stop services, while approximately one-half of mediu

GAO began the 21st Century Workforce Forum by presenting some of the key demographic, economic, and fiscal trends. In the past 50 years, the size of the U.S. labor force has more than doubled. However, over the next 50 years, the labor force as a whole is projected to grow much more slowly--at about one-third the previous rate. The labor force is also projected to become much more racially and et