Workforce Developments

Using blogs for advocacy

Couple of weeks ago I did a guest post over at the terrific blog run by the Ohio Workforce Coalition, all about using blogs for advocacy work in our field. Here's the post in its entirety. They're running a series of posts by national workforce development experts - click over to the OWC blog to read much more. 

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Let me start with a couple of facts I think we can all agree on:

1) What we do in workforce development is important. More important today than perhaps any time in recent history.

2) Far too few people know about workforce development.

3) We’re overworked and underpaid, and don’t have the time or staff to take on another task.

All that being true, how can you use blogs to support your workforce development advocacy efforts?

Here’s another fact of life in our modern world: You can’t do advocacy work without having an online component, but your advocacy work can’t take place only online. What you do online has to be coordinated and should build on what you’re doing in the real world, and vice versa.

I’ve been blogging since 2006 over at Workforce Developments and I’ve been teaching workshops about blogging and social media since 2007. In that time I’ve seen blogs go from “the hot new thing” to just another tool in your advocacy toolkit. 

Even though Twitter and Facebook have taken over the hot new social media tools, blogs still matter. They’re the place where you can create original content and go into issues in more detail than a quick status update will allow. They give you a platform where you can speak in an informal voice to a broad audience.

And right now, you have something important to say. 

Everyone knows employment in the US is a wreck. As a workforce development practitioner or advocate, you know unique details, trends and underlying causes about the current employment crisis. You also know about solutions that work. What’s more, you know that getting people back to work in this economy is hard work that just takes time to succeed.

If we’re going to get good policies and smart investments at the federal, state or local level rather than simplistic slogans and short-term infusions of cash, you need to educate policymakers. The general public needs to hear from you too if they’re going to support workforce development policies. This is why blogging remains an important tool for your advocacy work. You need to explain what you know to all those audiences. 

If you work for a government agency, you may not be able to engage in “advocacy” work, but you should be blogging too. You have access to data, and you have stories to tell about what’s working and what’s not in your programs or the ones you fund.

Government employees used to tell me that “we’re different – we can’t blog.” The Obama presidency ended that, ushering in a new era of government blogging. Check out this list of blogs from federal agencies. The Center for Technology in Government at SUNY-Albany recently did a nice overview of “eight essential elements” governments should consider when setting social media policies. Their report includes examples of policies from a wide range of agencies.

Whether you’ve been running a blog for a while or just getting started, here are a few suggestions to help you use blogging to support and build your advocacy work.

Create a blogging schedule that’s right for your organization and stick with it. If that means once a week, then post once a week. If it’s more or less than that based on your staff resources, that’s fine. Just be consistent. 

Keep it simple. One idea per post – that’s all you need. If you find yourself going into detail on background info to explain something, then you should probably save all that background content for a new post.

Seek blog content in the everyday. Every single day, your organization and your colleagues in workforce development and related fields are writing reports, issuing statements, creating web pages and otherwise generating information you can blog about. Next time an email hits your inbox with a report by a colleague, instead of marking it to read when I have time and never getting back to it, read it and write a quick blog post about what their findings mean for your community.   

Be strategic with your social media networks. That means getting links to your blog posts out via Twitter, Facebook, StumbleUpon and other sites. Make it as easy for people find your content as you can.

Don’t forget the people.  Connect with other workforce development sites, blogs, Twitter feeds and so on. Link to them from your blog, but also connect with those people personally. At its heart, this social media phenomenon really is about people.

Do your homework. Stay up-to-date on how other nonprofits, government agencies and even businesses are using social media for advocacy work. Take a look at what your high-profile colleagues are doing. A few of my favorite social media resources these days are Heather Mansfield’s Nonprofit Tech 2.0 blog, the indispensable Beth Kanter’s blog and Mashable . But don’t stop there – follow their links to far more resources than I could ever list here.  

Advocate for our field. Workforce development matters and anything you can do to raise the profile of your work and that of your colleagues helps us all.

Texas integrates. Workforce and education data, that is

Last month I posted on my own blog about listening to Dr. Catherine Pareonseault, Senior Education Specialist - Academic Programs in the Academic Affairs and Research Division of the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board (THECB) talk about the terrific data sharing that was going on between K-12, higher education, and the Texas Workforce Commission (TWC) in Texas.

I was intrigued (and jealous!) hearing her talk about how they were able to track people from high school through multiple stops in two and four year institutions, then several years out into the workplace. Determined to learn more, I followed up and a few days ago had a chance to speak with Dr. Gabriela Borcoman, one of the lead staff in the THECB Division of Planning and Accountability and integral in the development of the Automated Student and Adult Learner Follow-Up System (ASALFS).

Most basically, I was curious about the architecture of this multi-system data integration. In essence, THECB collects data from the various post-secondary systems in the state (public and private). They also collect data from K-12 schools, and they collect data from the TWC on their participants. Dr. Borcoman explained how this model – everything funneling up to the THECB – was critical because FERPA rules make it difficult for educational institutions to share data with workforce boards or other government agencies. Then she and her staff do the data matching and analysis, all based on social security number. Their analysis and reports are made available to institutions across the systems. All of the agencies share the cost of the data analysis efforts by contributing funds based on the number of enrollments (and because this reporting is mandated by the State legislature, there is limited griping I am told).

So what kind of reports and analysis are they working on? More than I can write about here. Most of it has to do with where enrolled students end up 1, 2, and 5 years after enrollment. Do they transfer? How well do they do when they transfer? Complete a degree or certificate? What is their GPA?

Do they get jobs? In what industry? At what salary? In what zip code? In what occupation? For their annual reports they are able to report on 75% of enrollees (they can’t track individuals who leave the state, people who end up in prison, or otherwise disappear). When I asked about surprises in the data, Dr. Borcoman had many. A few for you:

• In North Texas, the match between what local workforce boards identified as high-growth occupations had hardly any overlap with the most common occupations for very recent graduates in the region. Time to look critically at how those high-growth occupations were being forecast.

• Even when policymakers are right about certain things – e.g. oil and gas industries are going to be a key driver of job growth in Texas – there is risk of missing nuance. Do you know what occupation a recent graduate is most likely to get when he/she joins the oil and gas industry in Texas? Accounting. Yes, I see the irony in that, but as workforce professionals let’s focus on what this means programmatically – train more accountants.

• There were significant gaps between the average starting salaries reported by post-secondary institutions (especially private institutions) and the actual average salaries of graduates at 1, 2, and 5 years out. This is important data for a number of reasons, not the least of which is incoming students taking out large loans anticipating large post-graduation salaries.

• Low transfer rates are a problem in Texas as they are in much of the country. Many two-year institutions in Texas thought that their low transfer rates were due to the fact that previous tracking only counted whether students who had more than 30 credits moved on to a four-year institution whereas anecdotally, they believed they were actually transferring many students who had accumulated just a few credits. With this improved data integration, they were able to count more carefully. It turns out that even when accounting for all those students who move from two-year to four-year institutions with fewer than 30 credits, the transfer rate barely inched up 2%.

• Finally, some of the cohort tracking is great. For instance, a cohort of 1998 7th graders found that while the African American males struggle to complete high school (of 21,000 African American 7th graders, less than 13,000 completed high school by 2004), roughly 75% of those who do complete high school enroll in post-secondary institutions. But then they struggle to finish, with only about 1,500 earning any type of degree or certificate by 2009.

And more.  If you want to dive in, see ASALFS, High School to College Linkages, and  Community College Transfers.

The point here is that as cliché as it is, information is power. This kind of information enables administrators and policymakers to better understand what is happening as individuals move through our educational and workforce systems and into their careers. Dr. Borcoman says progress is slow, but institutions in Texas are beginning to take note of this information and think about how to scale up programs and practices that are working and re-focus initiatives that aren't.

She talked about a culture shift – a move towards data-driven decision-making and away from anecdotal and status quo-driven decision-making. The data certainly doesn't provide all the answers, and it doesn't explain how to navigate the political and budget intricacies of cross-system actions, but it can help focus the conversation on tackling the right issues.

In my home state of California I suspect our state fiscal crisis, higher education furloughs, and unemployment above 12% make investment in such cross-system data integration unlikely in the near-term. Yet, I am hopeful that as progress is made in clearing the logisitical hurdles of cross-system data integration, and as decision-makers realize the value of such data, we will see such ambitious efforts spread across the nation. And I hope that as workforce development professionals, we are among the loudest champions.

Erica Bouris, Ph.D. is the Principal of B Square Impact.

State unemployment systems going broke

As the Great Recession wears on and states have had to pay out ever more unemployment benefits to struggling citizens, flaws in the unemployment system have been laid bare. Twenty million Americans collected benefits last year. 

And twenty-six state unemployment trust funds have gone broke in the process. They've borrowed money from the feds to stay afloat. But worse, some have started whittling away at benefits to try and stop the flow of red ink.  

Is your state in trouble? This map from Pro Publica shows the current state of unemployment revenues, or read more detail on their terrific Unemployment Insurance Tracker page. 

The National Council of State Legislatures recently held a webinar on State Unemployment Insurance Trust Fund Solvency to help states find strategies to address the problem. You can watch a recording of the webinar here (free registration required). 

Yes, economists are saying they see hints that we've turned the corner on the recession. However, unemployment is still at record levels in many states and regions, and states are still struggling to stay afloat. They'll continue to need help for their citizens in greatest need for a long time to come. 

Tracking layoffs in higher education

It's been heartbreaking to watch how higher education has been decimated during the Great Recession. The budgets of many colleges and universities had already been cut to the bone during the good times, especially teaching schools and community colleges that don't attract a lot of public or private research dollars.

Here in the US, education and training has served as a pathway to the middle class for people from all walks of life. It's part of what makes us unique - no matter what your parents and grandparents did for a living, you can get an education and within a generation make an enormous leap in economic status.  

It's stunningly short-sighted and bad public policy to try to solve our economic problems by laying off teachers, overloading classes and cutting budgets for books and computers. Don't worry, the wealthy and advantaged will still be able to buy an education to maintain their status. It's everyone else who will lose the opportunity. Perhaps worse, we could end up with a system where the elites get classes with live instructors while those who can't pay as much get online-only classes taught from India or China.

Think that isn't possible? Some professors have already outsourced grading to Asia. 

To track layoffs and other cuts, the Chronicle of Higher Education has launched the Campus Cuts blog. Search for your favorite educational institution on the site. They cover everything from major research institutions to teaching schools to community colleges.

This is just one of many online resources to track Great Recession layoffs, like this one for cutbacks in the news industry. This amazing map tracks the progression of net job gains and losses in major metro since 2004.  

If you don't like what you see, the time to speak up for education is now.

Pre-school graduation photo by Gideon Tsang.

The next jobs bill: targeting those in greatest need

In the Great Recession, unemployment has not hit all demographic groups equally. Youth, African-Americans and Latinos are all experiencing higher rates of unemployment than older, white Americans. Workers with less education have higher unemployment than those with more. Men have been hit harder than women. Different parts of the country have experienced wildly varying rates of job losses. 

In its recent State of Black America report, the National Urban League argues that the next jobs bill should more precisely target those groups experiencing the greatest unemployment. Read the report here or watch a webcast from its release. From the report: 

With black unemployment numbers nearly double that of whites, the National Urban League's State of Black America report shows that the ravages of the recession are impacting minorities much worse than the rest of the nation. The solution to this crisis is getting jobs to people in these communities and the Urban League is encouraging the nation's leaders to act swiftly and support a $168 billion plan it has to generate jobs to make sure no one is left behind or left out of economic recovery efforts.

Their six-point Plan for Putting Americans Back to Work includes proposals to fund direct job creation, create "green empowerment zones" in areas where at least 50 percent of the population has an unemployment rate higher than the state average, and investing $500 million in housing counseling agencies nationwide to help delinquent borrowers secure more affordable mortgages.  

After the release of the NUL's report, several African-American leaders discussed the issue on CNN. Watch below. 

If you can't see the embedded video, click here to watch it on PolicyLink's Equity Blog. 

Readers, what do you think? Should the next jobs bill target those in greatest need? What is the best way to do that? 

Important message from Senator Patty Murray on the Workforce Investment Act

Senator Patty Murray (D-WA), Chair of the Senate HELP Committee on Employment and Workplace Safety, discusses the re-authorization of the Workforce Investment Act.

Click to the Worksystems blog to watch.

Greetings from NAWB 2010!

by Tricia Ryan

According to conference organizers, this is the first time in a while that all 50 states, Puerto Rico, the US Virgin Islands, and Guam have all been here together. The feeling this year is one of real camaraderie and mutual respect for the work that we do. After all, we're all fighting the same fight to help people get through this awful economy in countless local communities across the country.

Jane Oates , Assistant Secretary for Employment and Training, US Department of Labor, was an inspiring choice to kick off the conference. We've been hearing for some time that the Workforce Investment Act will be reauthorized but she spoke with such optimism that it left the impression that it may be imminent. She stated that it will include a re-defining of the role of local and state boards because the language was "too vague" the first time around and that the role of business and economic development needs to be enhanced.

I really loved her challenge to the private sector members of workforce investment boards in the audience. She told them (in no uncertain terms) that they MUST use the system. Not doing so was, in her words, akin to a restaurant owner not eating the food. Businesses should be the biggest spokespeople we have and their use - or non use - of the system speaks volumes.

Other things to look for in the coming months include a re-invigoration of the Registered Apprenticeship Program, new opportunities for on-the-job training, a new community of practice for Rapid Response, and bringing Job Corps back to ETA with a real commitment to integrating YouthBuild and WIA Youth programs into the one stop system.

One last heads up: DOL's 2010-2016 Strategic Plan is currently under development and there will be ample opportunities for us to get involved.

More posts soon!

Reposted with permission from the Worksystems blog

Blogging the 2010 NAWB Forum

The annual forum of the National Association of Workforce Boards (NAWB) has hit the ground running! Or so I hear - I'm not in DC this week, but I'm following it online. My favorite tweet from the forum so far:

@NNSP: Jane Oates on Workforce Innovation Fund in budget: "We're going to be innovative with or without WIA reauthorization." #NAWB

Go Jane!

If you prefer to get your news the old-fashioned way - via blog - I have good news. Once again, I'm partnering with Tricia Ryan of Worksystems Inc. in Oregon to bring you coverage of the conference. Tricia will be blogging the conference at the Worksystems blog, and I'll be republishing her posts here on Workforce Developments. Let me introduce Tricia:

Tricia Ryan is the Chief Operating Officer of Worksystems, a nonprofit organization working to build a comprehensive workforce development system that supports individual prosperity and business competitiveness in the City of Portland, Multnomah and Washington counties.  She has 15 years experience in economic development and workforce development in the States of Oregon and Michigan.

You can also follow Tricia and Worksystems on Twitter @worksystems.

If you're at the NAWB Forum and want to share what you're hearing and learning, add your comments below or drop me a line. If you're tweeting from the conference, add a comment below with a link and be sure to use the hashtag #NAWB so the rest of us can follow you. 

The annual forum of the National Association of Workforce Boards (NAWB) has hit the ground running! Or so I hear - I'm not in DC this week, but I'm following it online. My favorite tweet from the forum so far:

@NNSP: Jane Oates on Workforce Innovation Fund in budget: "We're going to be innovative with or without WIA reauthorization." #NAWB

Go Jane!

If you prefer to get your news the old-fashioned way - via blog - I have good news. Once again, I'm partnering with Tricia Ryan of Worksystems Inc. in Oregon to bring you coverage of the conference. Tricia will be blogging the conference at the Worksystems blog, and I'll be republishing her posts here on Workforce Developments. Let me introduce Tricia:

Tricia Ryan is the Chief Operating Officer of Worksystems, a nonprofit organization working to build a comprehensive workforce development system that supports individual prosperity and business competitiveness in the City of Portland, Multnomah and Washington counties.  She has 15 years experience in economic development and workforce development in the States of Oregon and Michigan.

You can also follow Tricia and Worksystems on Twitter @worksystems.

If you're at the NAWB Forum and want to share what you're hearing and learning, add your comments below or drop me a line. If you're tweeting from the conference, add a comment below with a link and be sure to use the hashtag #NAWB so the rest of us can follow you. 

House passes jobs bill; Blogger struggles to find something to say about it

Yesterday, the House of Representatives passed a $15 billion jobs bill that seems unlikely to make much of a dent in our nation's chronic unemployment problem. It's almost identical to a measure passed by the Senate last week, but different enough that the Senate will have to take additional action to reconcile the two versions. The Senate bill itself was a scaled-down version of a much larger bipartison compromise jobs bill.

Republicans and Blue Dog Democrats opposed to the bill say it's too expensive and doesn't cut taxes enough. Liberal Ds like Rep. Barbara Lee from Oakland, CA, say it's far too little and helps businesses rather than actual workers. 

Let's do the math. Today's report from the Bureau of Labor Stats finds 14.9 million Americans unemployed. Another 8.8 million are working part-time when they'd prefer to work full-time. Another 2.5 million are "marginally attached to the labor force," meaning they've simply stopped looking for work. That's a total of 26.2 million Americans who need jobs help.

This $15 billion jobs bill would provide about $573 for each person in need. Anyone in workforce development will tell you it costs a lot more than that to retrain a person and get them placed in a new job.

But it's more than just the price tag that's at stake here.

As a blogger who writes about jobs a lot, I find it hard to find anything to say about the jobs bill at all. Tough times call for imagination, creative problem-solving and foresight. From Congress we're getting short-term thinking that relies on tired, uninspiring ideas.

Our reps in Congress promise this is only step one and that more legislation is on the way. Will it just be more of the same? Or will we see legislation that addresses fundamental problems in our national economy?

Where are the creative ideas that respond to the way labor demand and jobs are being restructured by global economic forces today?

Resources on jobs, human services and Obama's 2011 proposed budget

The devil is in the details. Wonder where they are in Obama's 2011 budget?

Here are a few places where you can learn about what the administration wants to do related to jobs and human services:

the National Skills Coalition (formerly known as The Workforce Alliance) offers this preliminary analysis of the proposed 2011 budget. They also have a great budget chart comparing the 2009 budget, ARRA, 2010 budget and Obama's 2011 proposal.

The Coalition for Human Needs is hosting a free webinar tomorrow, February 5, to explain the details. Speakers include Robert Greenstein, Executive Director of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities and Deborah Weinstein, Executive Director of the Coalition on Human Needs.

UPDATE FEB 5: The webinar has been postponed due to snow. It's currently rescheduled for Tuesday, February 9, 3:00-4:30 p.m. EST

And for the more ambitious of you, here's the full text of the proposed budget, including appendices. 

Have other 2011 budget resources to recommend? Add them in the comments below. 

What should Congress do to create jobs? Tell us what you think

To be sure, there will be legislation on jobs. The House squeaked through a $154 billion jobs bill in December, and the Senate is working up their own version. I've heard one pundit say the Republicans won't dare do to it what they've done to health care legislation because they won't want to be seen as being opposed to jobs. Then again, the House version of the bill barely passed.

But will it be enough? Can Congress really pass legislation that will create jobs? 

How do you think they should go about doing it?  Vote here: 

To vote, just click in the box on the answer you like best.

If your answer isn't one of the choices above, then get in the comments and tell me what you think Congress should be doing to create jobs.

And please share this post with your colleagues and friends! I'd love to hear from them.

Workforce development 2020

It’s the new year, and I am thinking of workforce development issues for the next decade. Let’s give it a whirl in the next few posts. My company, Corporation For A Skilled Workforce has a mission of re-imagining work and learning. This frequently requires me to re-imagine my own job, but I am the fortunate one. It turns out in the next ten years people are going to have to learn new skills and re-tool more often than ever before.

Here in Arizona, recently ranked dead last in job creation in the nation, the demand for an increasingly skilled and educated workforce is growing steadily. The region of Southern Arizona is responding to this situation with Innovation Frontier Arizona, a workforce development initiative led by the Pima County One Stop.  But funding from the DOL WIRED program runs out the end of June.

Despite the current economy and high unemployment we realize that unless we increase output from postsecondary institutions, the demand for college talent will exceed its supply, even here.

Yet the Arizona state budget proposed by our governor contains truly draconian budget cuts that will ripple through every student’s future.

Throughout the nation we are beginning to read that the jobless are overwhelming retraining programs. We recently celebrated filling all of our places for a logistics training program at Pima Community College, and I was delighted to see that logisticians are in the list of jobs with a more secure future. Many communities now have waiting lists of six months or more for job training programs.  Prior DOL, ETA and stimulus funding has been spent, and many of those currently in training will be cut off July 1.

Things are changing so fast these days, I often think . . . "we're not in Kansas anymore." By the way, Kansas has been a leader in workforce development. The Workforce Alliance of South Central Kansas has 1,100 workers on a waiting list because it has already obligated all the training money that was supposed to last until June, says board coordinator Amanda Duncan. Unemployed Wichita-area workers who sign up now for training for healthcare or other in-demand jobs could have to wait at least five months if the agency doesn't get any of the emergency grants it has applied for, she says. See this article on how the jobless are overwhelming training programs. Surrender Dorothy!

With the reduction of educational funding, can you see this perfect storm brewing, creating perhaps systemic cycles of skills shortages and sustained high unemployment? So here in 2010 the number one workforce development solution increasingly means helping people to say: "I am an entrepreneur!" But what about all of these 20 year olds who cannot get the training they’ll need for now, let alone ten years from now?

What is your strategy for workforce development 2020?

Contributor Lewis Humphreys leads the Corporation For A Skilled Workforce's community transformation initiatives in the Southwestern U.S.

Your help needed: rate the best online job search tools

With every crisis comes the con artists, and in the 21st century, they proliferate the web. Think about all those "Obama wants moms to return to school!" ads you've seen online. 

With so many websites and online job boards claiming to help job seekers, how can you separate the good resources from the garbage? 

The US Department of Labor's Employment and Training Administration has issued a challenge to help job seekers and the workforce development professionals who serve them find the best online tools available for their job search. They're harnessing the power of the internet to find out what works best, and your input is needed. 

DOL's Tools for America's Job Seekers Challenge is went live today. Here's how it works:

Step 1 (Nov 30 through Dec 18): Do you know of any good online job seeker tools? The site developers should post them to the challenge site. They might be 

• General job boards, listing sites and aggregators
• Niche job boards
• Career tools such as ladders, transition tools, etc.
• Web based career exploration sites
• Web 2.0 social media sites specializing in job searches or job postings
• Other job matching and career advancement tools

Step 2 (Jan 4-15, 2010): Look through the online job seeker tools on the challenge site. Take them for a test drive and see how they work. Then rate them and comment on them - what works, what doesn't?

Step 3 (beginning Jan 18): Find out what job seekers and your workforce development peers rated as best. DOLETA will publish the top tools in each category.

This challenge is based on the concept of crowdsourcing, and the idea that together, we are smarter than we are individually.

It's the same idea that drives much of the social web, from Wikipedia to the comments section on a blog like this - I don't know everything in workforce development. We all gain knowledge when you add your thoughts, ideas and wisdom by commenting below. What's more, if you find a mistake here (and it has been known to happen), you can help by correcting it. James Surowiecki's The Wisdom of Crowds explores the concept in much more detail.

The more people engage in nominating online tools and rating them, the better DOL's challenge will work. We'll get more ideas and more input from more people. So get to the challenge website and start adding your favorite job tools today. You can also help by spreading the word to friends and colleagues.

And if you think this all sounds too modern and web-savvy to be the Department of Labor you know and love, read the bureaucrat-ese version of the challenge with all the details in TEN 16-09 below: 

Tools for America's Job Seekers Challenge -

Forty years of failed employment policy

The Great Recession didn't create today's employment crisis. It has only exacerbated and laid bare employment and earnings trends that began in the 1970s. One of those trends is a federal employment policy based on this idea: "Get the economy right; unleash the power of capital markets, and these labor market problems will take care of themselves."

So says Gordon L. Berlin, President of MDRC. He spoke earlier this year at a Recovery and Reemployment Research Conference sponsored by the Employment and Training Administration of the U.S. Department of Labor. MDRC is the outfit that does all those excellent evaluations and research reports on employment programs that you wish you had time to read.

My recommendation: don't skip out on reading Berlin's remarks. They explain how forty years of employment programs and policies have brought us to the state we're in today, where employment policy is viewed as a "backwater." In sum, he says, "the U.S. Department of Labor has not played a central role in the affairs of the nation's workforce for more than 40 years." In that time,

• The minimum wage has not kept up with inflation and remains far below its original historical benchmark of 50 percent of the average wage;
• The unemployment insurance system has eroded to the point where a majority of laid-off workers do not qualify for benefits; and
• Funding for Workforce Investment Act programs fell roughly 25 percent between 2000 and 2008 at a time when the economy twice fell into recession. 

Berlin focuses on the role of research in identifying which programs work so that we can replicate them and bring them to scale. This is the first White House administration in a long time, he says, that's actually interested in doing rigorous evaluations and investing in what works. He doesn't shy away from the tough issues either, like the way performance standards can sometimes create incentives to serve those who are most likely to land a job, rather than those who need the most help to get and keep one.

In speaking of dislocated workers, those who have worked and have soft skills but lack specific training for today's jobs, Berlin says this: "The key is to determine the role of public service employment in a period when cyclical unemployment is so severe that it could plausibly create a new generation of long-term structurally unemployed as the duration of unemployment reaches levels not seen since the Great Depression."

By "public service employment" he means New Deal-style job creation programs. If you've been reading this blog for any time at all, you know my position on that.

This is "an extraordinary moment for employment policy," Berlin told his audience in September. That's even more true today. Since then, unemployment nationally has hit double digits, and President Obama has announced plans for a "jobs summit" next month.

It's not just that jobs are the key to our recovery from this recession cycle, but that a fundamental change in workforce and employment policy has to happen. I'd say we need to enact new policies that ensure that

• Work pays enough to live on,
• We invest adequately in proven education and training programs needed for the jobs that are available, and
• When there isn't enough work to go around, a real safety net catches and helps lift up those in need.

The Department of Labor wants you!

The Employment and Training Administration (DOLETA) is looking for practitioners to review grant proposals. Virginia Hamilton at the California Workforce Association reports that Assistant Secretary Jane Oates is looking to have two-thirds of all review panels be made up of workforce development professionals like you and me.

If you're interested, you'll be asked to make a pretty serious time commitment. Here's how they put it in their outreach memo:

Selected panelists must make a full-time commitment to this effort for the duration of the panel, which could last as long as two weeks. The estimated workload for selected panelists to review and evaluate is between 10 and 15 applications. Written documentation detailing the rationale in support of each score will be required.

In addition, you'll have to sign a conflict of interest statement. Obviously, you can't review proposals for a grant you've applied for, or where family members, close friends or colleagues are in the running.

Your time will be compensated, and DOLETA is looking for qualified reviewers to apply now. They've  issued a series of Solicitations for Grant Applications (SGAs) under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (Recovery Act) for careers in the energy efficiency and renewable energy industries, health care and other high growth and emerging industries. They're looking for folks with expertise in all of the following:

• Public Workforce Investment System
• Labor Market Information and Research
• Community College Education
• Apprenticeship Programs
• Career Pathways, Clusters, and Competency Models
• Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Industries and Related Industries
• Health Care Industry
• Sector Strategy Development and Implementation
• Workforce Training and Skills Development
• Faith and Community Based Organizations Serving Targeted Populations

If you're interested, submit your contact information and a resume highlighting your primary and secondary areas of expertise in the above areas to eta.paneling@dol.gov by September 1, 2009. 

For questions or more info, check out DOLETA's recruitment memo, or contact Kristopher Turner of ETA's Division of Federal Assistance at 202-693-3605 or turner.kristopher@dol.gov.

And if you're selected, let them know you heard about it on the Workforce Developments blog!

Can our economy recover without a real jobs creation program?

Two and a half years later, the pundits might be starting to catch up with your humble blogger.

This week, Time magazine explores the possibility of creating a WPA-type jobs program to put people back to work. The WPA - the Works Progress Administration - was a New Deal program that employed 8.5 million people at a cost of $11 billion. It put people back to work, put food on the table and kept people in their homes during the Great Depression.

But wait, you say. Unemployment was really, really high back during the Depression, on the order of 25%. Well, unemployment in Imperial County here in California is above 27% already. If you include all the people who have given up looking for work or who are working part-time when they want to work full time, rates in many states like Michigan and Oregon are above 20%.

Back in April 2007 I wrote a post on this blog titled It's time for a new New Deal. The jobs problem was already clear back then to many of us in workforce development. It took an almost complete economic collapse for the rest of the country to experience what had been happening in low income and disadvantaged communities. For the middle class to find out they can't leverage their future on cheap credit forever.

I argued then - and still do today - we need a jobs program that focuses on the industries where we have the greatest need to rebuild. Health care and education are both fraying at the edges, so they're at the top of my list. The Obama administration has made green jobs hip and sexy, so let's have them too. Jobs rebuilding the infrastructure that is crumbling beneath our feet as a result of disinvestment have to be a priority.

Even the narrow minded taxes-are-always-bad crusaders are starting to argue that we can't rebuild our economy without investing in jobs. They're wrong when they argue that tax cuts will magically create jobs, but they're right that creating jobs and preparing workers for those jobs is absolutely necessary.

Way back in November when the president-elect's team started talking about a stimulus plan, I was optimistic their investments would create the jobs we need to recover.

They haven't done that yet, but there's still time for lawmakers to reconsider whether it makes more sense to pay the the salaries of Wall Street executives or the wages of the people who teach our children, care for us when we are ill, and build the roads we drive every day.

Finding workforce development in my community garden

Late last year, the city where I live in the megalopolis that is Los Angeles County (one of almost 90) started its first community garden. I signed up quickly and was one of the lucky ones to get my own plot.

Then we had to build it. Beginning in January, volunteers like me spent countless hours on evenings and weekends clearing the long-vacant lot of rocks and roots, building the raised beds and filling them with soil and mulch, one wheelbarrow-full at a time.

Note to Michelle Obama: we were doing it before you made it cool.

The last of the beds have finally been finished, and nearly all the gardeners have planted their plots. We also have a fruit trees, and a demonstration garden in front showing how to landscape with drought-resistent native plants. After all, this is the edge of the desert. What's more, we are the first community garden in the state to be watered entirely with recycled water.

This spring and summer, I've eaten more home-grown Swiss chard, beets and mustard greens than you can imagine. Wonderful tomatoes. A bit less luck with green beans.

Now to this weekend and our garden's official opening and ribbon-cutting, with the mayor and a couple of city council members on hand for the show. Imagine my surprise when the mayor got up and started his remarks with this gem:

"It's interesting how things always come back around. Back in the 1970s there was a program called the Comprehensive Employment and Training Act, or CETA."

Apparently one of the mayor's early jobs was managing community gardens for CETA, where laid-off workers could get work experience, earn some money and grow food for themselves and their families.

Here are the lessons I took away:

• Workforce development is not a dead-end career. You could eventually become mayor.
• Maybe CETA wasn't such a bad program after all.
• Good ideas like community gardens will always come back in fashion.

Congress kicks off workforce funding bill markups

And so it begins.

The House of Representatives began marking up legislation to fund workforce programs in the Labor-HHS-Education Appropriations bill on Friday. There's not a lot of detail available yet, but The Workforce Alliance is doing their usual great job of getting the word out quickly. You can read the details here or get an overview from their Federal Policy Director Rachel Gragg in this video (what could be better - workforce development on YouTube!):

Right now the bill includes golden oldies like Youthbuild ($100 million) and training and supportive services for dislocated workers ($1.4 billion) and some hot new hits like green jobs ($50 million), community services jobs ($615 million) and a "Social Innovation Fund" to scale up new community-based solutions ($35 million). Total amount across Labor, Health and Human Services, Education and related agencies: $160.7 billion for fiscal year 2010. This table gives all the details.

Read a statement on the bill from Appropriations Committee Chair Representative David Obey. TWA's brief summary of the bill is here.

Republican members of the committee are already beginning to complain that the dollar amounts in the bill are not sustainable. I'd say that in this economic climate, with national unemployment approaching 10% and levels well above that in many areas, we shouldn't limit ourselves to an amount that's "sustainable." Programs to get people back to work urgently need a big shot in the arm.

More work in Congress is expected this week, and will probably continue for some time. Stay tuned.

(If you can't see the embedded video, click here to watch it on YouTube.)

Resources to help you make sense of the health care policy debates

As the national debate on health care policy picks up steam, we're going to be inundated with a lot more noise and flashing lights. To make good decisions and have well-informed opinions, we need to get past the sound and fury to find good information.

Here are a few resources I've found helpful. I hope you will too.

Health Reform page at the Kaiser Family Foundation, with multimedia content, polls and more in-depth research.

Health Issues page at Rand Corporation, offering briefs, fact sheets and other short reports to members of Congress.

Health page at the National Conference of State Legislatures, with updates on how states are tackling the problem of rising health costs and rising uninsurance rates.

Health Reform Resource Center at the Paraprofessional Healthcare Institute's PolicyWorks site, which looks at the issues from the point of view of health care workers. The workforce development angle!

Whenever legislation is finally introduced, you'll be able to follow it on OpenCongress.org, most likely on the Health page.

Readers, if you know of other resources with good data and information to help inform the health care policy debate, please share them!

Promoting a green recovery: Sec Solis talks new Dept of Labor priorities

As President Obama released his 2010 budget (news coverage here) last Thursday, Labor Secretary Hilda Solis appeared online in a pre-recorded video to give an overview of the part her department will oversee. Then she opened it up for questions that she answered in a live text chat online. After the first hour, DOL staff took over answering questions.

You can watch the video and read all the questions and answers here. Staff reports they will continue answering questions over the next few days.

I submitted a question during the live chat via Twitter, and am looking forward to reading their answer: Does DOL have plans to incorporate social media into programs & svsc, or fund grantees for that?

A few highlights from the live and ongoing chat:

On DOL's new priorities:

My priorities for the Department's FY 2010 budget include promoting a "green" recovery, beginning to restore the capacity of our worker protection programs to vigorously carry out their mission, ensuring that our programs are transparent and accountable, and promoting diversity and stakeholder inclusion in every aspect of the Department.

On unemployment:

While the Obama Administration's efforts are beginning to turn the economy around, millions of Americans, who are willing to work but cannot find a job, are being helped by the current Federal unemployment benefit extension. As we get closer to the end of the year, when the current program is scheduled to expire, the Administration will be taking a close look at economic conditions and the continued need for benefits.

On apprenticeship:

The Department is actively working on a comprehensive set of Solicitation for Grant Award which will, amongst other policy goals, encourage greater partnerships with and promotion of Registered Apprenticeship programs. Also in our ARRA Policy Guidance, we are encouraging the publicly funded workforce system to more actively reach out to Registered Apprenticeship programs, including labor management organizations.

Finally, in the past year, ETA has provided over $10 million in discretionary resources to support and promote Registered Apprenticeship. $6.5 million was made available to national organizations to incorporate elements of the revised regulatory framework governing the National Apprenticeship System. $2.5 million was made available to State Apprenticeship Agencies to assist in their efforts to modernize their Apprenticeship systems. Finally, technical assistance resources were provided for a series of Action Clinics around the country to promote greater collaboration with Registered Apprenticeship.

On the Career Pathways/Community College program:

This program was not cut. The 2009 budget included $125 million for Community-Based Job Training Grants. The 2010 budget renames and refocuses that program as Career Pathways Innovation Fund and increases funding to $135 million. The new program will focus on developing career pathways in community colleges for high-growth careers in partnership with workforce investment boards, faith-based groups and other community groups.

On Workforce Investment Act reauthorization:

We have received numerous letters identifying issues relevant to reauthorization of the Workforce Investment Act, and we are appreciative of your interest and input. The Department looks forward to working with Congress and stakeholders as legislation takes shape. President Obama has called on Congress to work with him to reauthorize the Workforce Investment Act, and the Department's FY 2010 Congressional Budget Request continues to support efforts to improve the effectiveness of the workforce system. The Administration is conducting a comprehensive review of federal job training programs to assess their effectiveness, which will inform the Administration's proposal for an improved workforce system.