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Congress is currently on recess and returns Tuesday, September 6.
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Washington Update
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WIA Hearing
On Tuesday, August 16 at 1:00 p.m. EST, the Subcommittee of Higher Education and Workforce Training Chairwoman Virginia Foxx (NC) will join Representative Trey Gowdy (SC) in South Carolina’s 4th Congressional District for a field hearing entitled “Reviving our Economy: The Role of Higher Education in Job Growth and Development.” The field hearing will take place in the Carolina First Gallery at Clemson University’s International Center for Automotive Research, located in Greenville, South Carolina.
The field hearing will feature two panel discussions. The first panel will examine the local economy and job opportunities, while the second panel will focus on the ability of higher education institutions to successfully prepare graduates to join the workforce.
Click here to learn more about the hearing.
Emergency Jobs to Restore the American Dream Act
On Wednesday, August 10, Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky (IL) announced that she plans to introduce a progressive-minded budget outline, the “Emergency Jobs to Restore the American Dream Act,” aimed at putting more than two million people to work, when Congress resumes next month. The plan would cost $227 billion, implemented over two years, and would be financed by separate legislation introduced by Congresswoman Schakowsky entitled the “Fairness in Taxation Act,” which would raise taxes on American millionaires and billionaires. The legislation would also eliminate subsidies for big oil companies and close loopholes for corporations that send American jobs overseas.
Congresswoman Schakowsky said that her plan would create 2.2. million jobs and decrease the unemployment rate by 1.3 percent. The bill would give priority to long-term unemployed individuals who have exhausted both their state and federal unemployment benefits. Federally extended unemployment
benefits are set to expire this year, even though nearly 14 million Americans remain out of work.
Click here to read more on the Act.
Initial Jobless Claims Decrease
On Thursday, August 11, the Department of Labor (DOL) issued its weekly report on new filings for unemployment insurance. In the week ending August 6, the initial jobless claims were 395,000, a decrease of 7,000 from the previous week’s revised figure of 402,000. The 4-week moving average was 405,000, a decrease of 3,250 from the previous week's revised average of 408,250. The advance seasonally adjusted insured unemployment rate was 2.9 percent for the week ending July 30, a 0.1 percentage point decrease prior week's revised rate of 3.0 percent.
Click here to read full report.
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Upcoming Meeting
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MARK YOUR CALENDAR!
WDC 23rd ANNUAL CONGRESSIONAL FORUM
Tuesday, September 13, 2011
WDC 3RD ANNUAL PRE-FORUM TECHNICAL ASSISTANCE PEER-TO-PEER SESSION
Monday, September 12, 2011
St. Gregory Luxury Hotel & Suites
2033 M Street Northwest
Washington, DC
Register now for the 23rd Annual Congressional Forum of The U.S. Conference of Mayors Workforce Development Council (WDC) on
Tuesday, September 13, 2011 at the
St. Gregory Hotel & Suites, 2033 M Street, NW in Washington, D.C.
There will be a Pre-Forum Workshop entitled Best Practices: Navigating the New Economic Climate on
Monday, September 12, 2011 prior to the Forum.
WDC members are encouraged to attend both meetings.
Click here for an
updated draft agenda (as of 8/11/11) for both meetings.
You may now register online at http://usmayors.org/registration/other/wdcforum11/regform.asp.
If you prefer, you can still complete your registration forms manually. Below are the links to access forms for the Pre-Forum Workshop and the Congressional Forum. Please complete the form and fax it to our meetings department at (202) 467-4276.
Click here to access the registration form for the Workshop and the Forum.
Room reservations must be made by calling the hotel directly at 202-530-3600.
Please identify yourself as an attendee of The U.S. Conference of Mayors meeting to ensure the group rate. The deadline to receive the hotel discount rate at the St. Gregory Hotel was
August 11, 2011.
Your involvement in the Workforce Development Council is a great asset to workforce development across the country. We look forward to your participation in the Congressional Forum and our Pre-Forum Workshop. Please do not hesitate to contact me at (202) 861-6723 if you have any questions.
Thank you and I look forward to seeing you in September.
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New from DOL/ETA
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C-SPAN: Jobs In America
C-SPAN's Washington Journal kicked off a weeklong series, "Jobs In America," by having a conversation with Assistant Secretary Jane Oates of the Employment and Training Administration. The 40-minute interview focused on department programs available at more than 2,900 One-Stop Career Centers nationwide, President Obama's initiative to support veterans returning to the workforce, Job Corps, Registered Apprenticeships and Trade Adjustment Assistance. The Department of Labor's My Skills, My Future and My Next Move websites were featured prominently throughout the program.
Click here to watch the conversation.
Click here to visit MySkills MyFuture.
Click here to visit My Next Move.
US Labor Department announces more than $5.4 million in job training grants to benefit homeless veterans
On Friday, August 5, the U.S. Department of Labor announced 23 grants totaling $5,436,148 to provide homeless veterans with job training aimed at helping them succeed in civilian careers. The grants are being awarded by the department's Veterans' Employment and Training Service through the Homeless Veterans Reintegration Program. The grants were awarded on a competitive basis to state and local workforce investment boards, local public agencies and nonprofit organizations, including faith-based and community organizations. These agencies are familiar with the areas and populations to be served and have demonstrated that they can administer effective programs.
Grantees serving 15 states will offer occupational, classroom and on-the-job training, as well as job search and placement assistance, including follow-up services for homeless veterans. HVRP is the only federal program that focuses exclusively on employment of veterans who are homeless. Grantees under the HVRP program coordinate their efforts with various local, state and federal social service providers. The grants announced today are the first of a possible four years of annual awards contingent upon satisfactory performance and congressional appropriations.
Click here to read full list of winners.
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WIA in the News
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How to Close the Skills Gap
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the U.S. currently has approximately three million job openings, all waiting to be filled. With so many Americans out of work, what is the delay? Workers want to work, and so many businesses want to hire—but there is a widening "skills gap" that prevents many Americans from filling the jobs of the 21st century economy. If we want to get our economy back on track and get workers back on the job, we will have to address this issue in a better way.
Consider this: According to a report by the National Commission on Adult Literacy, 90 million adults have literacy skills so low that success in postsecondary education and training is becoming more and more challenging. Anthony Carnevale of Georgetown University, using Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) data, reports that of the nearly 50 million new jobs the BLS projects to be created by 2018, 30 million will require recognized postsecondary credentials. However, there will be three million too few workers with these credentials. Meanwhile, high-school graduation rates are falling—1.2 million students in America drop out of school every year, and young adults are now less educated than their parents' generation was.
Click here to read full article.
Silicon Valley’s Tech Job Boom: A Growing Bubble?
Recent reports revealing a strong appetite in Silicon Valley for tech jobs and fewer layoffs nationwide of high-tech workers have experts speculating on the next tech boom. The U.S. as a whole may be hemorrhaging jobs, but Silicon Valley’s information, communications and technology (ICT) companies are expected to grow technology jobs by 15% in the next two years, according to a recent study by a cluster of workforce boards in that region.
Sixty percent of Silicon Valley’s ICT employers plan to have more full- and part-time employees 12 months from now, the study found. The report, which included a survey of 251 ICT companies, counts nearly 7,500 ICT establishments in Silicon Valley employing more than 215,609 workers, whose earnings average $182,000 a year.
Click here to read full article.
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Reports, Announcements, and Articles
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New from Brookings
A Weak Job Market, But Not a Collapsing One
After months of gloomy news on the employment front, the latest BLS jobs report offers evidence that the job market, while far from robust, is not collapsing either. The most encouraging numbers in today’s employment report showed that private payrolls grew 154,000 in July. Upward revisions in payroll estimates show that private employment was 26,000 higher in May than reported earlier while the private job total was 49,000 higher in June. Since March, private payrolls have increased an average of 144,000 a month. This rate of employment gain should be fast enough to whittle down the number of unemployed, although at a very slow rate.
Click here to read full article.
Increasing Productivity and Boosting Wages: Is Innovation the Answer?
The United States continues to confront a weak economic recovery. According to this month’s employment report by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, payroll employment increased by 117,000 in July, and the unemployment rate edged down to 9.1 percent. The private sector added 154,000 jobs while governments continued to shed jobs. Furthermore, recently released GDP numbers show that economic growth fell far more during the worst part of the recession than was previously thought and the pace of recovery since then has been well below that seen in past recoveries and weaker than expected.
As policymakers turn attention back to policies to drive a near-term economic recovery, it is also crucial to target longer-term policies that will spur the pace of U.S. innovation, boost earnings for American families, and raise our competitiveness in the global economy. In this month’s posting, we focus on the role of innovation in determining American living standards. We also continue our look at the nation’s “job gap,” or the number of jobs that the U.S. economy needs to create in order to return to pre-recession employment levels while also absorbing the 125,000 people who enter the labor force each month.
Click here to read full article.
Government as Innovation's Spark Plug
When he visits a battery plant in Holland, Michigan, today, President Obama will talk about the connection between innovation, advanced manufacturing, and economic growth. But he has an opportunity to make an even more important connection: between government action and innovation.
At a time when the federal government seems unable to manage anything well, and state governments are still grappling with budget shortfalls and crippling layoffs, it is easy to forget that the public sector is a critical driver of innovation, particularly in the energy sector. As James Duderstadt, Mark Muro, and others have pointed out, there are several market failures that cause private energy companies to systematically under invest in innovation.
Click here to read full article.
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ETA Releases
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