Friday Jobs Blogging

A couple workforce-related items to bring our week to a close:

1. Workforce Oklahoma saw twice as many job-seekers in December as they did in the prior month.  They saw 3,000 in December. (Not sure if that’s statewide or just in Tulsa.) The unemployment rate has climbed from one percentage point since September, from a low of 3.6 to 4.6 as of November (BLS).
2. The Workforce Alliance reports that the Senate version of the stimulus bill (S. 1) contains $3.25 billion in Workforce Investment Act funding. The language focuses on providing services to low-income, low-skilled, and other hard-to-serve populations; allows Workforce Investment Boards to contract with institutions of higher education to provide training services (apparently this is a new provision); and provides $450 million for dislocated workers, especially in high growth sectors.

Read Full Post »

Urban Institute Release

The latest Promising Practices Network newsletter highlights a series of briefs just released by the Urban Institute on how the recession is impacting families.

http://www.urban.org/projects/recession.cfm

A series of briefs from the Urban Institute entitled “Recession and Recovery” describe how the recession may impact families’ economic well-being and access to critical services.  In “The Role of Welfare During a Recession,” the authors discuss how aspects of the Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) program, including the program’s funding through a fixed block grant, have the potential for leaving many families with no welfare safety net during this economic downturn. Furthermore, in “The Recession and the Earned Income Tax Credit,” the authors discuss the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) as a possible tool to help poor households during a recession, but they conclude that the EITC often comes too late to help the neediest families during a recession. These issues will be compounded by a decline in health coverage, as documented in “Health Coverage in a Recession.” These changes in coverage will be particularly acute among State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) recipients. Finally, in “SNAP and the Recession,” the authors describe how broadening eligibility for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) would be a targeted way to quickly assist needy families during this recession.

 

 

Read Full Post »