The nation's 118 Job Corps centers provide low-income youth with a comprehensive array of services aimed at helping them obtain the skills necessary to get a job, enter the military, or go to college. The Department of Labor (DOL) operates 94 Job Corps centers under agreements with various service providers. The U.S. Department of Agriculture's (USDA) Forest Service operates the remaining 24 cent

Coal mine operator bankruptcies have led to the transfer of about $865 million in estimated benefit responsibility to the federal government's Black Lung Disability Trust Fund (Trust Fund), according to DOL estimates. The Trust Fund pays benefits when no responsible operator is identified, or when the liable operator does not pay. GAO previously testified in June 2019 that it had identified three

The National Mediation Board (NMB), which facilitates labor relations for airline and railway carriers, has implemented one of GAO's seven recommendations remaining from past reports (see table). Specifically, NMB has developed a policy to prevent violations of ethics rules regarding outside employment and monitors compliance with that policy. NMB has not yet fully implemented the other six recom

Job Corps centers reported 13,673 safety and security incidents involving students from July 2016 to June 2017, according to GAO's analysis of the Department of Labor's (DOL) Employment and Training Administration's (ETA) data. Most reported incidents occurred onsite and involved recently enrolled male students under age 20. During that time, the program served about 79,000 students at 125 Job Co

The National Mediation Board (NMB), which facilitates labor relations for railroads and airlines, has implemented five of the eight recommendations GAO made in its December 2013 and February 2016 reports. The three remaining recommendations--on information security, information privacy, and rail grievance arbitration--are not yet fully implemented. Regarding information security, GAO found that N

Department of Labor (DOL) data show that some states have formal warning policies that allow Unemployment Insurance (UI) claimants to receive benefits after the first discovered occurrence of their failing to meet work search requirements while most states do not have such policies. As a result, states are inconsistent in whether they report such benefit payments as overpayments, which has an imp

The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) cannot accurately track the amount of work time employees spend on union representational activities, referred to as official time, agency-wide because it does not have a standardized way for its facilities to record and calculate official time. Specifically: (1) Recording official time--VA uses two separate time and attendance systems that capture official

The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) cannot accurately track the amount of work time employees spend on union representational activities, referred to as official time, agency-wide because it does not have a standardized way for its facilities to record and calculate official time. Specifically: (1) Recording official time--VA uses two separate time and attendance systems that capture official

Federal agencies made limited use of special government employees (SGE) not serving on federal boards. As of December 2014, approximately 3 percent of SGEs (1,138 of 40,424) were working as experts or consultants and not serving on federal boards, according to the Office of Government Ethics (OGE). Over a 10-year period (2005 to 2014), GAO found that agencies used an annual average of approximate

Benefits associated with telework programs include continuity of operations and reduced employee absences, based on GAO's literature review and the experiences of six selected agencies. The benefits most frequently cited by the selected agencies--the Department of Transportation (DOT), Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), General Services Administra