Overview:
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A key element of the Department of Labor, the Employment and Training Administration (ETA) promotes job-training initiatives and programs across the country. ETA’s largest task is to distribute funding that helps Americans receive employment training, either as first-time workers or those transitioning into new lines of work as a result of job displacement. One such program advocated by the Bush administration resulted in ETA distributing millions of dollars in grants without competition or oversight by labor officials, resulting in criticism from Congress and government auditors.
History:
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The Employment and Training Administration (ETA) was formed in 1975 in the Department of Labor (DOL) during the administration of President Gerald Ford. ETA took over from the Manpower Administration and absorbed all of its duties in becoming DOL’s main office for assisting job training and employment development throughout the US.
During the 1980s ETA underwent several organizational restructurings. The Office of Trade Adjustment Assistance was moved into ETA from the Bureau of International Labor Affairs in 1981. The following year, ETA officials created the Office of Comprehensive Employment and Training, the Office of Employment Security and the Office of the Associate Assistant Secretary for Employment and Training by combining the functions of several existing divisions with ETA. Two other, smaller reorganizations were conducted in 1984 and 1989.
The Labor Department in the Carter Administration
What it Does:
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The Employment and Training Administration (ETA) implements job-training initiatives and programs for the Department of Labor. ETA’s largest task is to distribute funding that helps Americans receive employment training, either as first-time workers or those transitioning into new lines of work as a result of job displacement. The office also helps state and local governments provide unemployment assistance to individuals. ETA operates numerous subsections and programs to carry out its mission, including:
Policy Development & Research formulates ETA’s “big picture” perspective on labor and job training. It recommends legislative changes and options for policy initiatives and coordinates new regulatory actions for ETA. The office has two main divisions:
- Division of Policy, Legislation and Regulations (DPLR) develops policy recommendations on new and existing legislation for workforce investment system programs. It also coordinates the development, publication and implementation of new federal regulations affecting job training. In addition, DPLR produces research, demonstration and evaluation reports. DPLR performs all of its functions through the Policy Initiatives, Legislative Activities, Regulatory Activities, and ETA Advisories sections.
- Division of Research and Evaluations operates pilot projects and conducts applied research for experiments aimed at developing new knowledge in the field of employment and training. This division includes the ETA Research Publication Database and information on Research, Demonstration, and Evaluation Projects. Other information can be found in the National Agricultural Workers Survey, which provides demographic and employment characteristics of the US crop labor force, as well as on ETA’s Five-Year Research Plans and Operating Plans.
This office oversees the many operations of ETA that directly impact workers seeking job training. The Division of Adult Services manages programs that help millions of Americans receive workforce preparation and placement services through the Workforce Investment Act (WIA) Adult Program, WIA Dislocated Worker Program, Core One-Stop Services, National Farmworker Job Training Program, Senior Community Service Employment Program, Indian and Native American Program and Disability Program Navigators. The Division of Youth Services coordinates programs designed to help young people enter the workforce. The Business Relations Group works with employers to implement two key initiatives: Partnerships for Jobs and the High Growth Job Training Initiative. The Partnerships for Jobs Initiative is designed to connect large, national businesses with the training, education and employment services available at state and local One-Stop Career Centers. The High-Growth Job Training Initiative, a major policy decision by President George W. Bush, focuses federal funding towards job training that helps workers gain employment in key economic sectors, such as health care, information technology and advanced manufacturing.
Office of Foreign Labor Certification helps businesses import skilled labor through work visas. The office does not issue visas (that responsibility lies with the US Citizenship and Immigration Services). Instead, it provides information through offices in Washington, DC, Chicago and Atlanta on the foreign labor certification process and how employers may apply to bring foreign workers into the US for employment.
Workforce Security has little to do with security and everything to do with producing information. All of the subsections of the Office of Workforce Security are responsible for dispensing information of one kind or another on performance management (of unemployment insurance programs run by states), unemployment insurance operations (helping workers find the right program to apply for) and historical legislation that deals with job training and employment development.
National Response is a key office within ETA that tries to help the economy during significant job-loss periods or episodes. The Office of National Response dispenses National Emergency Grants to states experiencing tough times due to recessions (large layoffs), natural disasters or military base closures. States are also assisted by the Office of Rapid Response, which sends out teams to work with employers and unions to organize public and private resources to minimize the impacts of job losses. A third segment of the Office of National Response is the Division of Trade Adjustment, which seeks to help American workers who lose their jobs as a result of companies moving their operations outside of the US.
Office of Apprenticeship provides a variety of information and services to help workers gaining on-the-job training opportunities.
Job Corps is an educational and vocational training program administered by the Office of the Secretary of the Labor Department that helps young people (ages 16 through 24) find employment. ETA does not administer Job Corps but merely provides information about it on its web site.
Outreach provides workforce information and materials to the media, education communities, businesses, industries and individual citizens. It also coordinates local and national ETA outreach activities.
Where Does the Money Go:
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From 2000-2006 ETA distributed $55.2 billion in grants and contracts to 2,553 recipients
in support of job training activities and unemployment assistance, according to FedSpending.gov. Of this total, more than 90% went to various state and local government agencies, with the remainder parsed among non-profits and higher education among others. The top 10 recipients were:
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California Employment Development Dept.
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$5,168,648,720
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Texas Workforce Commission
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$3,126,711,399
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New York State Dept of Labor
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$2,972,613,298
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Illinois Dept of Employment Security
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$1,625,017,955
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New Jersey Dept of Labor
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$1,459,874,764
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Pennsylvania Office of Employment Security
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$1,435,054,177
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Washington Employment Security Dept.
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$1,428,709,061
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Louisiana Dept of Employment & Training
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$1,078,982,274
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Georgia Dept of Labor
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$1,048,732,698
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Right to Employment Administration
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$1,007,920,507
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Examples of smaller recipients, all of whom were beneficiaries under the High Growth Job Training Initiative, are National Retail, Downriver, Good Samaritan, Shoreline, Maryland Department of Labor, Manufacturing Institute, Service Employees International Union, Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, Career Firms and Brevard. These recipients were studied by the Labor Department’s Inspector General as part of a
(PDF) of ETA’s grant giving (see Controversies).
Controversies:
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ETA Slammed for Poor Oversight of Funds
As part of President Bush’s High Growth Job Training Initiative, the Employment and Training Administration doled out $271 million in grants over seven years to a wide range of private companies, non-profits and governmental agencies, all with the expressed purpose of increasing high-demand job opportunities for American workers. But two audits by the Labor Department’s Inspector General (IG) found that ETA made little effort to follow up on how government funds were used. Nor did ETA bother to use competitive biding criteria to find would-be recipients.
Democrats blasted ETA and Labor Secretary Elaine Chao. “This report reveals a double insult for American taxpayers–not only did the Bush administration’s Labor Department handpick the organizations to receive DOL grants, but many of those organizations failed to deliver measurable results,” said Sen. Tom Harkin (D-IA).
Brent Orrell, acting assistant secretary for ETA at the time the April 2008 report was released, defended his office’s work, claiming it was “not necessary or valuable” to measure and evaluate all grant results. Orrell, who stepped down a short time later, argued ETA’s approach was “prudent, necessary, and successful.”
The April 2008 report followed on the heels of another IG report that was released in November 2007. The first report found that ETA had failed to follow government procurement procedures when giving out grants. Many decisions were not adequately justified or documented, and in some cases matching-grant funds were not collected by recipients.
Oversight Lax on Labor Grants, Audit Says (by Carol D. Leonnig, Washington Post)
Inspector General Report, April 2008
(PDF)
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Former Directors:
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Brent Orrell (Acting) (January 2008 to May 2008)
In his capacity as Deputy Assistant Secretary for ETA, Brent Orrell served as acting head of the agency from January to May 2008. Orrell graduated from the University of Oregon with a degree in European History in 1986.
From 1987 to 2001, Orrell worked for several members of Congress. From 1989 to 1996, he served as deputy legislative director to Senator Sam Nunn (D-GA) where he handled health care, welfare, judiciary and other domestic policy issues. From 1996 to 1998, Orrell served as legislative director to Senator Dan Coats (R-IN). He was the lead staff person overseeing the Project for American Renewal, an omnibus legislative package designed to highlight and support the work of religious and community organizations. He also oversaw the creation of REAL Life, a separate faith-based and community package more narrowly tailored to the economic, social and educational problems of urban areas. Orrell also worked as legislative director to Senator Sam Brownback (R-KS) and as administrative assistant to Congressman Gil Gutknecht (R-MN).
Orrell then joined the Bush administration and helped implement the President’s controversial faith-based initiative as the director of the Center for Faith-Based and Community Initiatives at the Labor Department. Working with ETA, he was responsible for designing the initiative’s first mini-grants program to fund small faith-based and community organizations that provide job development services to poor and under-served communities. He was the principle author of the Ready4Work, a three-year, $32.5 million demonstration project to faith-based and community groups assisting men and women who are returning from prison.
Ready4Work was the basis for the President’s four-year, $300 million request to Congress for a comprehensive prisoner re-entry program that was announced in the January 2004 State of the Union Address. Orrell also designed and implemented Touching Lives and Communities, a technical assistance program encouraging state and local workforce development officials to partner with faith-based and community organizations in the delivery of formula grant-funded job development programs.
Orrell then moved over to the Administration for Children and Families (ACF) in the US Department of Health and Human Services as the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Policy and External Relations in June 2005, before returning to DOL as deputy assistant secretary for ETA. Orrell left ETA in May 2008 shortly after the release of a critical report by the department’s inspector general regarding the administration of hundreds of millions in job-training grants (see Controversies)
Emily Stover DeRocco (June 2001 to January 2008)
A native of Pennsylvania, Emily Stover DeRocco served as Assistant Secretary for Employment and Training until January 2008. DeRocco graduated from Pennsylvania State University with a Bachelor of Arts degree in journalism and received her Juris Doctorate degree from the Georgetown Law Center in 1982. She was admitted to the Bar of the District of Columbia in 1983.
DeRocco served in the Reagan administration under cabinet officers at the Department of the Interior and the Department of Energy. She also spent more than 10 years as the executive director of the National Association of State Workforce Agencies.
While leading ETA, DeRocco implemented a “demand driven” workforce investment system that linked employment, education and economic development. Under her watch, ETA dolled out hundreds of millions of dollars in job-training grants as part of President Bush’s High Growth Job Training Initiative—a program that was soundly criticized by the Inspector General of the Labor Department after DeRocco left the administration.
DeRocco left ETA to become president of the Manufacturing Institute’s National Center for the American Workforce and a senior vice president of the National Association of Manufacturers.
Emily DeRocco To Head National Center For The American Workforce (Manufacturing.net)
- Table of Contents
- Overview
- History
- What it Does
- Where Does the Money Go
- Controversies
- Suggested Reforms
- Comments
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Founded: 1975
Annual Budget: $8.4 billion for administration and $38.3 million for payment of unemployment benefits
Employees: 1,000
Official Website: http://www.doleta.gov/
Employment and Training Administration
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