Contingent workers constituted a relatively constant proportion of the total workforce from 1995 through 2005 and had diverse characteristics. While the population of the contingent workforce grew by an estimated 3 million workers during this time period, the proportion of contingent workers in the total workforce remained relatively constant at about 31 percent. In 2005, there were about 42.6 mi

This is the Spanish-language version of GAO-02-925. Day laborers generally are individuals who work and get paid on a daily or short-term basis. To find work, they often congregate on street corners and wait for employers to drive by and offer them work. Day laborers may also be employed by temporary staffing agencies that assign them work on a daily basis with client employers. Day laborers have

Day laborers generally are individuals who work and get paid on a daily or short-term basis. To find work, they often congregate on street corners and wait for employers to drive by and offer them work. Day laborers may also be employed by temporary staffing agencies that assign them work on a daily basis with client employers. Day laborers have an informal relationship with the labor market, oft

Under the Workforce Investment Act, local workforce areas are likely to offer dislocated workers services that are tailored to local needs and that emphasize a quick return to employment. Nine of the local workforce areas that GAO visited emphasized a quick return to work and enrolled fewer dislocated workers into training than were enrolled under the Job Training Partnership Act (JTPA). Five loc

Congress passed the Workforce Investment Act (WIA) in 1998 to bring most federally funded employment and training services into a single, one one-stop center system. GAO assessed three programs that provide service through this system. States and localities have begun to implement the new performance measurement system for the three WIA-funded programs but report several challenges. States had to

The Workforce Investment Act was passed in 1998 to unify a fragmented employment and training system. The act sought to change the workforce development system by streamlining the delivery of employment and training services, enabling job seekers to make informed choices among training providers and course offerings and enhancing the private-sector role. During the early stages of the act's imple

A competitive national economy depends on providing individuals with marketable skills and employers with access to qualified workers. In the past, the nation's job training system was fragmented and did not serve job seekers or employers well. The Workforce Investment Act in 1998 created a system that links employment, education, and training services to better match workers and labor market tre

GAO noted that: (1) employers have used the H-1B visa program to fill hundreds of thousands of positions in which certain skills, including computer programming, engineering, education, and medicine, were needed quickly; (2) according to Immigration and Naturalization (INS) data, about 60 percent of the positions that new workers were approved to fill in fiscal year (FY) 1999 were related to IT;

GAO noted that: (1) GAO's data showed that an increasing number of American workers are covered by the exemptions--GAO estimates that between 19 and 26 million workers (between 20 to 27 percent of the full-time workforce) were covered by the exemptions in 1998; (2) based on GAO's high estimate of 26 million, GAO's estimate represents an increase of 9 million workers over GAO's 1983 estimate of 17

GAO noted that: (1) in 1998, between 20 and 27 percent of the full-time U.S. workforce--or 19 to 26 million workers--were executive, administrative, or professional employees covered by white-collar exemptions of the FLSA; (2) in recent years the percentage of employees covered by these exemptions has been increasing; (3) the number of employees working in certain service industries nearly double