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New from DOL
The Employment Situation: November 2008
On Friday, December 5th, DOL released a report on the current employment situation for November that showed a loss of 533,000 jobs. The unemployment rate rose from 6.5% to 6.7% this month making 10.3 million now unemployed. Since December 2007, the start of the recession, the number of those unemployed rose by 2.7 million and the unemployment rate rose by 1.7 percentage points.
Click here to view report.
DOL Annual Report, Fiscal Year 2008 Performance and Accountability Report
On Thursday, December 4th the DOL released its annual report for FY08 that presents program results and costs. It also includes assessments of progress on achieving the following performance goals presented in the Department’s Strategic Plan and Performance Budget: 1) prepared workforce, 2) competitive workforce, 3) safe and secure workplaces, and 4) strengthened economic protections. It also identifies and suggests strategies for addressing the following management challenges facing DOL: protecting the safety and health of workers, improving performance accountability of grants, ensuring the effectiveness of the Job Corps program, safeguarding unemployment insurance, improving the Federal Employees’ Compensation Act program, improving procurement integrity, maintaining the integrity of Foreign Labor Certification programs, securing information technology systems and protecting related information assets, ensuring the security of employee benefit plan assets, and preserving departmental records.
Click here for the full report.
New from the Business Roundtable
Friday, December 5 the Business Roundtable released figures from their national survey of ceos asking such questions as how do they expect their company’s sales, capital spending, and employment to change in the next six months. The overall results suggest the difficult economic constraints businesses are facing and its impact on workforce.
Click here to view press release.
Click here to view survey results.
New from National Fund for Workforce Solutions
National Fund for Workforce Solutions: Experience and Evidence
Released this November, the brief presents the strategies of the National Fund for Workforce Solutions which derive from strong evidence that supports the roles of workforce partnerships or intermediaries and sectoral approaches: 1) building regional funding collaboratives, 2) organizing efforts around key industry sectors, building career pathways, and 4) facilitating alignment across programs and systems.
Click here to view the brief.
Principles and Policy Implications
Also released this November, this brief describes the National Fund’s four strategies for making the U.S. workforce development system better for workers, employers, and regions in more detail and gives specific recommendations for each.
Click here to view the brief.
New from the Federal Reserve Board
The Enduring Challenge of Concentrated Poverty in America: Case Studies from Communities across the U.S.
In 2006, the Community Affairs Offices of the Federal Reserve System partnered with the Brookings Institution to examine the issue of concentrated poverty. Released in November, the report profiles 16 high-poverty communities from across the country, including immigrant gateway, Native American, urban, and rural communities. Through these case studies, the report contributes to our understanding of the dynamics of poor people living in poor communities, and the policies that will be needed to bring both into the economic mainstream.
Click here for the report.
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