The End of an ARRA

8/6/2019 The End of an ARRA

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www.nycfuture.org JUNE 2

The eNd of AN ARRAThe 2009 federal stimulus brought a huge infusion of funds to New York City for jobtraining and workforce development; with the money now running out, we examinehow the funds were spent and what the end of this funding stream means at a time

when countless New Yorkers are still out of work


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This report was written by Carl Vogel, ClaireMichaels and Lydia Wileden, and edited byJonathan Bowles and David Giles. Additionalresearch by Eric Sorensen. It was designed by

Ahmad Dowla.

The report was generously funded by the RobertSterling Clark Foundation. General operatingsupport for City Futures has been provided byBernard F. and Alva B. Gimbel Foundation,Deutsche Bank, Fund for the City of NewYork, Salesforce Foundation, The SchermanFoundation, Inc., and Unitarian Universalist

Veatch Program at Shelter Rock.

The Center for an Urban Future is a NewYork City-based think tank dedicated toindependent, fact-based research aboutcritical issues affecting New Yorks future,including economic development, workforcedevelopment, higher education and the arts.For more information or to sign up for our monthly e-mail bulletin, visit www.nycfuture.org.

E ecutive Director : Jonathan BowlesDeputy Director : Amy Crawford

Rese rch Director : David GilesOper tions Coordin tor : Ahmad Dowla

City Futures Board of Directors: Andrew Reicher (Chair), Margaret Anadu, Michael Connor,Russell Dubner, Gretchen Dykstra, Blake Foote,Jalak Jobanputra, David Lebenstein, GiffordMiller, Lisette Nieves, Jefrey Pollock, John Siegal,Stephen Sigmund, and Mark Winston Griffith.

Cover: vermininc/flickr

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

THE NEED aND THE Law

ARRA Workforce Development Programs

aRRaS PERfORmaNCE

wHaT DID wE LEaRN

RECOmmENDaTIONS

ENDNOTES

aPPENDIx: THE PROgRamS

Summer Youth Employment Program

Community-Based Job Preparation andPlacement Services

Individual Training Grants

In School Youth Programs

Out of School Youth Programs

Specialized Health Care Training

Parks Opportunity Program

Adult and Continuing Education

FDNY and DCA Occupational Trainings

Advance at Work

Workforce1 Sector Career Center


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The end of An ARRA

In the winter of 2009, with more than 1.4 million job losses in thefirst two months of the year, the federal government passed theAmerican Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) into law as a

way to quickly inject liquidity into a stalling economy and maintaincritical services that would allow individuals and communities tosurvive through the recession. At first glance, New York City madeout pretty well. More than $7 billion in Recovery Act funds went toprograms benefitting New York City residents, which was more thanmany entire states received. These funds went toward failing schools,community development block grants, building retrofits and a much

needed temporary increase in the federal match for Medicaid, amongmany other things.

The most important way of assessing these investments hasalways been in terms of the jobs saved and people helped, but fromthe beginning it was also hoped that Recovery Act investments wouldprovide a unique opportunity for policy innovation and reform. In nopolicy area was this truer than in workforce development. And in noother city would the payoff and potential pitfalls be clearer than inNew York, the countrys largest workforce development system.

In all, the city received more than $86 million in ARRAfunds for workforce development programs at the Department of Small Business Services (SBS) and the Department of Youth andCommunity Development (DYCD), the citys primary agencies for

workforce training; $63 million came from the Workforce InvestmentAct (WIA), the citys dominant source of funding for workforcetraining programs, and $23 million from Community Service BlockGrants. The new funds brought the citys workforce budget up tolevels it hadnt seen for years.

However, all that money also came with strings attached:First, the funds had to get out the door and into the economy asfast as possible; the programs were supposed to be, as the Obamaadministration put it, shovel ready. Second, all ARRA funds hadto be spent by June 2011, after which the citys regularly scheduledfunding streams would resume at pre-stimulus levels. In other words,in order to receive ARRA funds, workforce programs had to be eitheralready up-and-running or far enough along in the developmentprocess to begin implementation almost immediately, and they hadto be flexible enough to absorb a lot of additional funds over a shortperiod and then shrink back down again.


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To determine ARRAs impact on New York Citys workforce development system, our team of researchers reviewed municipal budgets andperformance data and interviewed more than 40city officials, representatives from community organizations, advocates and other experts on the

workforce development system and its programs.Despite federal and city efforts to providetransparency in the distribution of the Recovery Act funds, tracing funding in this complex andmultifaceted system was a challenge. This is thefirst overview of not only where the dollars werespent, but how well they were spent and whattheir lasting impacts are likely to be.

We found that Recovery Act dollarsspecifically for workforce development in New York City funded about 3,000 job placements,

trained 6,500 individuals, provided internshipsfor 3,000 students, and paid for 27,900 teensand young adults to have a summer job. ThreeprogramsIndividual Training Grants, contracts

with community-based organizations, and thecitys Summer Youth Employment Programreceived about two-thirds of the $63 million inadditional WIA funds, though more than a dozenother programs received support as well.

ARRAs huge injection of funds also led to somesignificant policy innovation. The Departmentof Small Business Services, for example, usedRecovery Act funds to roll out or resume severalideas and partnerships that had been heldback by recent budget cuts, including a new Workforce1 Career Center that was specifically focused on the health care sector, new courses

with support services for health care training,and new programs that helped jobseekers withmore experience and those who are working toadvance in their careers. In addition, many of these ARRA funded programs moved the systemtoward more collaboration. City agencies like the

Fire Department and the Department of CulturalAffairs were connected to job training programs,and SBS deepened its relationships with theDepartment of Education, the City University of New York (CUNY) and other agencies, as wellas with a loose network of community-basedorganizations.

Considering the economic environment of the past two years, those are some very solidaccomplishments. However, it is also true thatmany of these new programs and initiatives

could have been implemented even sooner hadthe federal government not cut back dramatically on workforce development funding in the yearspreceding the Great Recession. In fiscal year2002, for example, the citys share of federalWIA funds totaled $142.5 million. By 2009,

before ARRA funds were made available, thatnumber had been reduced to $68.4 million, a52 percent decrease in only seven years. 1 In2011, the Individual Training Grants program,

which issues vouchers to qualifying jobseekers,had a total budget of $12.7 million. That wassignificantly smaller than it was in 2006, even

with ARRA funds added.In some cases, Recovery Act funds also made

it possible for the city to cut back on its owninvestments in workforce development programs,

which had been increasing over the last few years in order to make up for federal and statecuts. In 2010, for example, ARRA funds allowedthe city to cut $15 million of its own funding forthe Summer Youth Employment Program, whichno doubt helped the overall budget in a time of great fiscal strain but also canceled out some of ARRAs effect.

Moreover, because of the time constraints,the vast majority of the new funds went toprograms that were already well-established andable to absorb a short-lived spike in funding. TheSummer Youth Employment Program (SYEP), forexample, which matches 14-to-24 year-olds withsummer jobs in a variety of public and privateorganizations, received more than $18 million inWIA funds and $23 million in Community ServiceBlock Grants. Those funds made it possiblefor the programs enrollment to balloon from43,113 in 2008 to 52,255 in 2009, a huge boonto thousands of families. But it was also a one-time benefit, and already in 2010 the programdropped enrollment dramatically, denying spots

to over 100,000 applicants.Even the more innovative workforce programs

that ARRA funded were almost exclusively programs that were already connected in oneform or another to New Yorks workforce system.For example, most of the community-basedorganizations that contracted with SBS underARRA-funded programs had already worked

with the agency in the past, and SBS had already done most of the planning to open the healthcare Workforce1 Center.


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To close observers of the citys workforcedevelopment system, those results arentsurprisingor necessarily a bad thing. It allowedus to do a little more and a little sooner, but by and large the things that were done followed thedirections that we had already set, says Reginald

Foster, IBMs Corporate Community RelationsManager for the Tri-State area and a memberof the New York City Workforce InvestmentBoard (WIB). The expansions followed existingstrategies. A lot of the ARRA money went to doingmore within the system.

I think basically they took the money and were able to spend it on an agenda they hadalready outlined and designed, agrees Patricia

Jenny, the program director for community development and the environment for the New

York Community Trust. [SBS] had a lot of conversations about how to spend the money,but in the end they spent it on programs that

were already underway. You certainly couldntdesign and start something up in an 18 monthtimeframe.

With the economy now on the mend, albeitslowly, and no political will for big-ticketspending at the federal level, another sharpuptick in WIA funding now seems extremely unlikely. Nevertheless, the last two years of increased funding offer a number of usefullessons. First, even though only a minority of ARRA dollars went to new initiatives, the fact thatthe city had several innovative programs already planned shows that the workforce system has thecapacity and leadership to expand and innovate

when given the right amount of support. TheDepartment of Small Business Services (SBS),in particular, was given the chance to test outinitiatives designed for dislocated workers whoare higher up the career ladder and more firmslearned that the system could serve their needs

in finding that kind of candidate.Next, ARRA came with several productive

(and potentially permanent) changes to the way WIA dollars are disbursed, including a raise inage from 21 to 24 for WIA youth programs andthe ability to use WIA funds to directly contract

with educational institutions. In the past, city agencies were prevented from using WIA fundsto develop training programs at community colleges, but because of this last change SBS wasable to work closely with CUNY to build two of

the agencys most successful new programs. Bothorganizations want to continue the relationship.

Since 2003, when Mayor Bloombergsplit the responsibility for services betweenthe Department of Youth and Community Development (for youth) and the Department

of Small Business Services (adult), the citysonce moribund workforce development systemhas made enormous strides. Most notably, thecity has refocused attention on working moreclosely with local firms to provide training andplacement services that match the real worldneeds of businesses. But there is still a lot workto do, and the need for workforce developmentto evolve has only increased since the GreatRecession.

The citys unemployment rate is still at an

alarmingly high 8.6 percent. In late 2010, there were more than 96,000 New Yorkers who hadbeen unemployed for more than a year, and62,000 who had been unemployed for more than18 months. 2 Many mid-level managerial positionsand low-level jobs in fields like constructionand manufacturing arent coming back even asthe economy begins to improve. More than ever,skills and a post-secondary education are arequirement to find a job.

For these reasons, when the funds run outin June 2011, the workforce system will sorely miss the support of ARRA. The opportunity foremployment for low-skilled, poorly educatedAmericans is almost certainly going to besignificantly smaller than it was in 2007. And yetfederal cuts to WIA are expected to continue, andthere still hasnt been a meaningful shift towardstruly supporting the integration of trainingand education into our workforce developmentsystem. Programs at DYCD and SBS still lacksufficient coordination, to say nothing of theshadow programs still operating at the Human

Resources Administration (HRA). Talks of majorcuts at the state level mean that some programsthat were bolstered with ARRA funds risk beinggreatly diminished or, as with the innovativeAdvance at Work program for working poor New Yorkers, disappearing altogether. 3

How well did ARRA perform for workforcedevelopment? I think the city took full advantageof the money, says Suri Duitch, director of adultand continuing education at CUNY, and now itsgone.


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The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act(ARRA) of 2009 was signed into law on February 17, 2009. Designed to help the country climb outof the biggest economic collapse since the GreatDepression, ARRA provided $787 billion infederal tax cuts and incentives, social entitlementspending, and funding for agency-awardedcontracts, grants, and loans. Of that, $4.81 billion

was allocated nationwide to support workforcedevelopment programs administered by the U.S.Department of Labor (DOL).

For New York City, like most parts of thecountry, the need for stimulus and support wasacute. From February 2008 to February 2009, thecitys unemployment rate nearly doubled, risingfrom 4.5 percent to 8.4 percent. 4 By the end of 2009, it climbed to an alarming 10.3 percent.Even worse, the unemployment rate for those

with less than a high school diploma was 13percent, while the rate was 16 percent for blacknon-Hispanic males (nearly twice as high as for

white non-Hispanic males, at 9 percent) and the

rate for Hispanic males was 13 percent. Youthunemployment was perhaps most alarming: For16-19 year olds it was 37 percent. 5

The recession, stemming from the collapseof the housing market and Wall Streetsunsustainable bet on mortgage bonds, also bitdeeper into some labor markets than othersand had a bigger and longer lasting effect thanprevious economic downturns. Unemploymentin manufacturing rose to 15.1 percent and inconstruction it climbed to 13.5 percent. Lower-

level corporate jobs also appear to have takenthe brunt of the unemployment shift, office andadministrative support had an unemploymentrate of 10.4 percent and service occupations hadan unemployment rate of 9.3 percent. 6

A poll of unemployed Americans in December2009 by CBS News/New York Times found thatfewer than half of respondents expect all the lost

jobs in their communities to come back whenthe economy recovers. 7 And more than a few

economists agree. In this reshuffled job market,theres more of a premium on skills and educationthan ever before, with many positions requiringat least two years of college. Moreover, a hugeinflux of recently laid-off workers who haventlooked for a job for yearseven decadeshavenow entered the market without the skills they need to transition into new careers. Facingthis huge need is New York Citys workforcedevelopment system.

Over the last decade, New York has vastly improved its services to help connect jobseekers

with work. In 2003, Mayor Bloomberg took theresponsibility for adult workforce developmentservices out of the hands of the citys Departmentof Employment and gave it to the citysDepartment of Small Business Services, signalinga commitment to listen to and serve businessesas well as jobseekers and creating opportunitiesfor collaboration with the citys business sector.

Meanwhile, youth workforce developmentservices were placed with the Department of

Youth and Community Development, allowingDYCD to focus on the different employment needsof teens and disconnected youth. In 2006, theNYC Workforce Innovation Fund, a partnershipbetween SBS and private foundations that poolresources to spur innovation, released planninggrants through the NYC Sector Initiative topromote a sectoral approach to workforcedevelopment, one that identifies the needs of growing industries like health care and educationand develops skills training to fulfill those needs.

The most visible example of this new emphasison workforce development are New YorksWorkforce1 Career Centers, where jobseekerscan find a range of services such as workshops,career advisement and job search resources.WIA mandates that every service district in thecountry that receives federal money establish andmaintain at least one of these one-stop centers.In 2000, the city had exactly the minimum: onecenter located in Jamaica, Queens, to serve the

The need And The LAw


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entire city. By 2010, the city had added eight morecenters, at least one for every borough andthree specializing in specific economic sectors:health care, manufacturing and transportation.

Despite the important structural changes,however, the system has consistently facedprogram and budget cuts. Between 2002 and2010, federal Workforce Investment Act (WIA)dollars, the single largest source of workforcedevelopment funding in the city, was cut by morethan 53 percent, from $142.5 million in 2002to $67.1 million in 2010 (not including ARRAfunds). In order to make up for declining federalsupport, in 2008 the city started to invest muchmore of its own funds in workforce trainingprograms. For instance, between 2007 and 2008,federal funds for SBS workforce programsdropped from $50 million to $41 million, whilethe citys own contribution rose from $1.6 millionto $20 million. However, when federal fundingincreased again due to ARRA, the city madecorresponding cutbacks on its contributions toimportant workforce development programs.In 2010, as ARRA funds hit their peak, the city reduced its own contribution to SBS programs by $6 million and to DYCD programs by $16 million. 8

According to projections by the citysIndependent Budget Office, the city will pull backsupport even more in the next three years (seegraph on page 8). As a result, in 2014 total fundingfor SBS workforce development programs isprojected to be nearly 50 percent smaller than in2010 and 36 percent smaller than in 2006. 9

How ARRA Came to NYCIn the very broadest sense, all the money for

the Recovery Act was aimed at stimulating theeconomy and keeping people working during amassive economic jolt. Funding that supported

job creation came through a wide variety of programs, including Community DevelopmentBlock Grants, competitive grants to nonprofits,formula funds to the states, discretionary funds,and Congressional earmarks. In the case of New York Citys workforce development system, themajority of the ARRA dollars were allocatedthrough the Workforce Investment Act.

ARRA WIA funding to New York wasallocated on the basis of the citys demographiccharacteristics and brought an additional $63million on top of the citys standard allotmentof $68 million for 2009, $67 million for 2010 and$61 million for 2011. The money was split almost

Line Graph: New York City WIA Total Funding 2002-2010

$0

$20

$40

$60

$80

$100

$120

$140

$160

2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011

W I A F u n d

i n g

i n M i l l i o n s

Year

New York City WIA Workforce Funding: 2002-2010

Source: NYC Department of Small Business Services. All funds in 2011 adjusted dollars.


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8

exactly in half between youth programs and adultprograms. The adult dollars were also allocatedfor specific purposes$15.3 million designatedfor standard skills and placement services foradults and another $16.5 million for dislocatedor laid offworkers.

However, because ARRA was designed andpassed as a stimulus to the economy, the new fundsit made available presented a number of specialchallenges. First, to speed up disbursement,most of the money was provided through theWorkforce Investment Act, which comes withcertain limitations. For example, WIAs paymentsare geared toward goals such as entry intoemployment and job retention, giving providersfewer incentives to work with individuals whohave very low educational attainment, limitedEnglish proficiency, or substance abuse issues.

Even more challenging, the ARRA rulesrequired all the money to be spent within two

years, an already aggressive timeline that wassped up even more by state officials: at least 75percent of the funds distributed through WIA

would have to be spent in the first 12 months,they decided. The funding for youth programs

was announced on March 23, 2009, and the

funding levels for adults and dislocated workers were made available three weeks later. The city had 15 months to spend about $41 million beforethe fiscal year was over on June 30, 2010, andanother year to spend down the remaining $22million. There was additional pressure to movequickly because governors could reclaim andreallocate any non-directed funds by September2010.

The deputy mayors and chiefs of staff began tocorral ideas immediately. They looked to officialsat the citys Workforce Investment Board, SBSand DYCD, as well as to officials in tangentially related departments like the Department of Education, the Parks Department and CUNY.

We looked for any opportunity to engage with city agencies, says Angie Kamath, deputy commissioner for the Workforce DevelopmentDivision at SBS. We werent willing to create aton of new processes and turn everything upsidedown, because the funds were going away. So[we looked at] what infrastructure within ourportfolio and programs can expand and contractpretty easilythat was part of our criteria. And wealso looked for where we could fund innovation.

Stacked Bar Graph: SBS Workforce Funds: 2005-2014

(Source: IBO)

$0

$10,000,000

$20,000,000

$30,000,000

$40,000,000

$50,000,000

$60,000,000

$70,000,000

$80,000,000

$90,000,000

2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014

Year

SBS Wor kforce Funds: 2005-2014

Federal ARRA City

Source: NYC Independent Budget Office


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Pie Chart: SBS ARRA Funding

Pie Chart: DYCD ARRA Funding

4.79%5.39%

9.74%

3.25%

76.84%

DYCD ARR A Funding

Administration

Out of School Youth: SubsidizedInternship Program

In-School Youth: Go to School, Geta Job

POP Connect

Summer Youth Employment Program

$1,595,747

$2,810,780

$1,263,874

$1,131,535

$11,009,280

$12,180,813

SBS ARR A Funding

Advance at Work

CUNY Healthcare Trainings

Healthcare Workforce1 Center

Other Agency OccupationalTrainings

ITG Vouchers

Adult and Dislocated Worker Contracts


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10ARRA WoRkfoRce Development pRogRAmsNew York City split the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act unding or WIA among almost a dozen di erent programs, several o which included multiple projects and/or service providers. For a more complete description o the programs, see the Appendix.

Summer Youth Employment ProgramARRA unding:$41.9 millionPrimary Agency: Department of Youth and Community

DevelopmentParticipants enabled by ARRA: 27,900The city added thousands o slots in its long-standingsummer jobs program or youth, which provides subsidizedpositions across the city.

Community-based job preparation andplacement servicesARRA unding:$12.2 millionPrimary Agency: Department of Small Business ServicesParticipants enabled by ARRA: 2,568SBS contracted with community-based organizationsaround the city to provide job training, job placement andcounseling.

Individual Training GrantsARRA unding:$11 millionPrimary Agency: Department of Small Business ServicesParticipants enabled by ARRA: 5,507WIA provides Individual Training Grants or job training,vouchers that a jobseeker can spend as he or she sees ft.ARRA dollars more than doubled the number o ITGs thecity o ered.

In School Youth ProgramsARRA unding:$5.3 millionPrimary Agency: Department of Youth and CommunityDevelopmentParticipants enabled by ARRA: 2,796Funding supported the creation o a paid internshipcomponent to DYCDs existing In School Youth program.

Out of School Youth ProgramsARRA unding:$2.9 millionPrimary Agency: Department of Youth and CommunityDevelopmentParticipants enabled by ARRA: 175

With ARRA unding, DYCD added new slots to a programthat provides training or disconnected youth and were alsoable to provide internships or participants in that program.

Specialized health care trainingARRA unding:$2.8 millionPrimary Agency: Department of Small Business Services/CUNY Participants enabled by ARRA: 492SBS took advantage o a change in WIAs rules to contractwith CUNY to o er three programs that provided trainingservices around health care.

Parks Opportunity ProgramARRA unding:$2.3 millionPrimary Agency: Parks Department/HRA/SBS/DCYS/

DOEParticipants enabled by ARRA: 255Two new transitional jobs programs were created withARRA work orce unds, one to train electricians and one ordisconnected youth ages 18-24.

Adult and Continuing EducationARRA unding:$1.8 millionPrimary Agency: Department of EducationParticipants enabled by ARRA: 308The DOE supported its O fce o Adult and ContinuingEducation, using unds to sustain their auto mechanic,culinary, Licensed Practical Nursing and computer trainingprograms.

FDNY and DCA Occupational TrainingsARRA unding:$800,000Primary Agency: Department of Small Business Services/FDNY/Department of Cultural AffairsParticipants enabled by ARRA: 104SBS unded two small programs with the Fire Departmento New York to train EMTs and the Department o CulturalA airs to train art handlers.

Advance at WorkARRA unding:$1.6 millionPrimary Agency: Department of Small Business Services/Center for Economic OpportunityParticipants enabled by ARRA: 1,871ARRA allowed the city to continue a pilot program designedto help working poor individuals through training, careercoaching, and promotion assistance to get better jobs.

Workforce1 Sector Career CenterARRA unding:$1.3 millionPrimary Agency: Department of Small Business Services/CUNY

Participants enabled by ARRA: N/AWith ARRA unds, SBS ulflled a plan to open the thirdWork orce1 Career Center ocused on a specifc sector,the health care center operated by CUNYs La GuardiaCommunity College.


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1

The majority of ARRA dollars in New YorkCity went to just three programs: the SummerYouth Employment Program, IndividualTraining Grants and contracts to community-based organizations to provide job training, jobplacement and counseling. In total, more than$42 million of the $63 million in extra WIA funds

was invested in these programs, and the SummerYouth Employment Program received another$23 million from ARRA funded Community Service Block Grants on top of the extra it gotthrough WIA.

With the remaining ARRA WIA money, the city expanded existing programs for out-of-schooland in-school youth, created new transitional jobsprograms with the Parks Department for welfarerecipients, launched a new Workforce1 CareerCenter focused on health care, funded a programto help working poor employees advance at work,and more.

Without a doubt, the city did well in itshandling of the most basic demands of ARRA:

Getting the money out the door via the targetedprograms in a timely manner. The vast majority of the money has been spent down as expected.It may seem like a low bar to cross, but it is worthnoting because of the purpose of the stimulusactto keep dollars circulating during the worstof the recessionand the very tight timetablethat the funds required.

On the other hand, cutting checks is notnecessarily the same as funding programs thathave an impact. When announcing their plans,

SBS said that ARRA funding would provide job training and placement services for 10,000additional participants in its adult and dislocated

worker programs. Similarly, DYCD estimatedthat it could use the extra money to add 17,000additional slots for SYEP, internships and otherprograms. Did the agencies meet those targets?

ARRA funding for workforce developmentplaced about 3,000 jobseekers in a new jobthrough the CBO contracts, the Workforce1 Career

Center and the CUNY cohort training program.For training, more than 5,500 individualsreceived an ITG voucher, and nearly 1,000 more

were trained through the health care cohortprogram, the CUNY Health Scholars program,Licensed Practical Nurse pilot program, DOEsfour adult and continuing education programs,and the ARRA-funded POP Sparks program.SBSs Advance at Work program helped nearly 1,900 individuals upgrade their jobs. By ourcalculations, more than 27,900 youth were hiredfor the Summer Youth Employment Programand another 3,000 received training and supportthrough the expanded DYCD in-school and out-of-school youth programs.

That comes to approximately 11,400additional participants in SBS programs and,

with the addition of $23 million in Community Service Block Grants, nearly 31,000 additionalslots in DYCDs programs. 10 Clearly, the city metits goal.

I think [ARRA WIA] was remarkably

successful in New York City, and I think the workforce system across the country showed upto perform to the task, says Philip Weinberg, theexecutive director of the New York City WorkforceInvestment Board, the entity mandated by WIA toset priorities for workforce policy and coordinatethe activities of city agencies and other publicand private sector institutions that receivegovernment funding. From the citys workforcesystem standpoint, we saw a tremendous return.

The vast majority of the other individuals

we interviewed for this report also gave the city positive marks overall. At the same time, as wedetail below, some people thought the city wasteda number of opportunities and could have focusedmore on innovations.

The Need for InnovationThere is another layer of analysis of the

ARRA funding beyond reaching its participationgoals. How much innovation did it encourage?

ARRAs PeRfoRmAnce


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As noted earlier, the citys workforce programshave been improved in many ways over the lastseveral years. But the job market has evolved as

well and the field has continued to redefine whatthe best practices are in the 21st century.

For example, providers often struggleto serve jobseekers with serious barriers toemployment, such as low skill levels, little or no

work experience, or health issues. The systemis also typically not designed for displaced mid-level employeesthose who have moved up theladder a bit but still need a hand finding a job.In the current economy, this group is larger thanever. Skills development has been another bigobstacle: Right now, the workforce system is setup to help people find work, not to help themdevelop skills while on the job so they can movetoward career-track employment with family-supporting pay. 11

In the last several years, policy-makers havealso come to realize the importance of buildingrelationships with employers. In order to find theright job or provide training credentials that willhave true market value, workforce programs haveto have a deep appreciation for what it is thatemployers are looking for. For many programs,one solution has been to focus on specific sectors

of the economy, both in order to locate recently created jobs and to account for specific industry trends. At its best, the workforce developmentsystem should be aligned and integrated with thecitys economic development priorities.

But all these ideas require a workforcesystem that has broken down the silos between

youth and adult services, welfare programs andnon-welfare programs, K-12 education andcollege-level coursework New York has begun toconnect the pieces that can provide a coherent

collection of agencies and stakeholders to supply all the necessary components of an effective workforce system, but the level of collaborationand coordination is still insufficient.

Many of the programs operated with ARRAfunds did not attempt to innovate at all. TheSummer Youth Employment Program, forexample, was run as it always has been, with littleinput from other agencies and a strong focus onhigh school kids. In many ways it was an ideal

program for ARRA funds, because new kids couldbe taken on and placed in summer jobs without alot of administrative hassle; the extra funds wouldgo to pay their salaries, and a lot of employers

were willing to take on more participants. It wasa structure already in place, says Rae Linefsky, amember of the Youth Council and a board memberat the citys Workforce Investment Board. Therealready were contractors that were ready, and[the city] looked to see who could handle more.

It was simple for us to put a lot of [ARRAfunding] towards summer youth employmentbecause the message we got from D.C. throughNew York State was to spend it quickly andto spend it wisely, says Alan Cheng, DYCDsassistant commissioner of SYEP. For us it wasa way to spend it widely and it was the mosteffective use.

Not everyone completely agrees with thatassessment. We missed an opportunity todevelop and model innovative programming,says Lazar Treschan, director of youth policy at the Community Service Society, a leadingnonprofit research and advocacy organizationthat has published several reports aboutdisconnected youth and issues facing low-income New Yorkers. I think we had a chance to

use some new dollars to make model programsto work with out-of-school youth that combineeducation and workforce development targetedto neighborhoods. CSS is part of the Campaignfor Tomorrows Workforce, which wrote an openletter to DYCD before the final choices weremade on how to spend the ARRA funds. Thegroup pointed out that more than 95 percentof the SYEP participants are in college or highschool, and decried the lack of opportunitiesfor disconnected youth. The group called for a

quarter of the WIA Youth funds to be spent onout-of-school youth.A seven-week summer job is not really a way

that the older youth reconnect. Theyre goingto need more ways to reconnect, says SierraStoneman-Bell, the co-director of NeighborhoodFamily Services Coalition, which also belongsto the campaign. I think while DYCD felt very pressured by the time frame, there was a lot of support and flexibility from the federal and state


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1

guidance that we thought they could have donesomething a little more creative.

Linefsky says, though, that putting money into summer youth employment was a good thing.Summer youth employment was part of the livesof people, she says Reduction of summer youthemployment was like a rug pulled out from underlots of families. Stoneman-Bell says she doesntentirely disagree. Shes not against SYEP, just thelack of commitment to new programs.

On the adult side, the analogous program would be Individual Training Grants, WIAsprimary mechanism for financing workforcetraining of adults and dislocated workers. About$11 million of the Recovery Act workforcefunding went to ITGs; in fact, the original SBSestimates for the vouchers was $6.6 million, but

when other programs came in under budget, thecity added another $4 million in ITGs. All told,about a third of the SBS budget for ARRA WIA

went to these vouchers.The city has greatly improved accountability

for ITG voucher training providers, and 90 percentof workers who receive a voucher complete thetraining it pays for. Critics say, however, that the

vouchers do not come with enough supportiveservices to ensure the success of trainees and that

the vouchers are insufficient to pay for the kind of long-term training that can make the differencein a workers career. A study of WashingtonState Community and Technical College systemstudents found that attending college for at leastone year and earning a credential provides asubstantial boost in earnings for adults with ahigh school diploma or less. 12 This tipping pointcan make the difference between low-wage workand a living wage, and is not being reached by New Yorkers who are given ITG vouchers.

Certainly, considering the aggressive timelinefor using ARRA funds, working within establishedparameters to ensure a program would workmakes sense. Even outside observers are quick toacknowledge that reality. When there is a majorinflux of funds, theres usually a small window of time to complete spending, says Sara Garretson,the president of ITAC (Industrial & Technology Assistant Corp.), a nonprofit consulting andtraining organization. They use their vendors

and their existing relationships to distributefunding into communities. This ensures thatthings are relatively consistent, economically efficient and controlled, [but] there isnt time forcreativity in how the funds are used.

Innovation in handAlthough the majority of the funds for WIA

were spent on programs that could be calledtraditional workforce development in the city,there were also examples of innovation andcollaboration. This was particularly true onthe adult side, where the Department of SmallBusiness Services used the opportunity to rollout several ideas and partnerships that had beenheld back by past cuts in funding. We were ableto reach people who werent normally involved

with our system, says SBSs Angie Kamath.With ARRA funding, SBS was able to continue

and expand Advance at Work, a program thatallowed the workforce centers to broaden therange of participants to include working poorresidents who want to move up in their jobs orfind higher paying work somewhere else.

Maybe youre not happy in your job. We need you back in the Career Center because maybethere are opportunities for you to find that better

job, explains Alex Saavedra, vice president of programs at Seedco, a large workforce servicesprovider and operator of two Workforce1 Centers.[We can show them] how to promote themselvesto their own employer, or how to navigate theresources out there. How do I plan my scheduleso I can do what I need to do to make myself thatnext rung employee? Learning about that wasthe biggest benefit to us.

From the contract program with community based organizations, Grant Associates, a private

consulting company that currently operatesfour Workforce1 Career Centers, created CareerPlus to work with displaced workers who hadbeen earning as much as $50,000 annually. Any Workforce1 Center could refer an applicant toCareer Plus if they were well-suitedsomeone

who had lost their job after a long period of employment, say, or someone who hadnt lookedfor work in years. Grant Associates worked

with CUNY to develop special programming for


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working with this population and spent more timeon preparing participants, including updatingcomputer skills, a week of special interviewingand workshops on topics like personal brandingand a 10-second elevator pitch.

Over 11 months, 600 individuals enrolled inthe program, of which 346 found a job, a placementrate of 56 percent. The average hourly wage wasnearly $20 per hour, almost twice the average ata standard Workforce1 Center. We had always

wanted to do an experiment working with people who have higher wages but who were needy nonetheless. Theyre not highly paid enough toget comprehensive help placement services, andthey dont come to the typical Workforce1 Center,said Dale Grant, president of Grant Associates.We had been discussing this with SBS, so, whenARRA funding became available, they gave usthe opportunity to do just that.

Some of the most dramatic innovations werepossible because of changes to long-standing WIArules that were implemented with the Recovery Act. Arguably, the biggest of these changesallowed the city to start contracting directly witheducational institutions rather than giving themITG vouchers to develop programs on their own.It was kind of amazing, says Shayne Spaulding,

director of workforce initiatives at CUNY Central.One of the issues with nursing is that there arentenough clinical seats in degree programs, somoney was used to expand the number of clinicalseats and to pay for people to go to college. WIAnever paid for people to go to college.

In the cohort health care programs at LaGuardia Community College, the program hadfunding to screen candidates up front and conducta pre-training course that prepared participants

with contextualized adult literacy, one that led

seamlessly into the health care training. Theprogram also offered a vestibule, which is atechnical term for wrap-around services thatinclude tutoring, mentoring and supportiveservices.

The retention numbers have been excellent,Spaulding says. Its all because of the screeningthey do, the pre-training they do, and all theretention services that are associated with thetraining. They had a lot of flexibility and the

resources to design a highly supported model,and I dont think they could have done that with[previous] WIA funds.

Sandra Watson, dean of workforcedevelopment at La Guardia Community College,notes that the trainings and Workforce1 Center

work hand-in-hand. Weve been working tomake it a seamless system, so that the sales teamgoes into the training classroom early enough forthe trainees to know that they have somewhereto go to get jobs once they complete training. That

was the nature of the Workforce1 HealthcareCareer Center. It was designed to be able to [also]provide training, she says. With its sectoralapproach, the program at La Guardia is also ableto ensure that the students are receiving trainingthat will pay off with employment. For example,Watsons team was hearing that employers arelooking for nurses to have training in geriatrics,pediatrics and phlebotomyso those topics wereadded to the coursework.

We were very fortunate to be funded by SBS, because it gave us the ability to developthe kind of curriculum that was needed that wecould continue, Watson says. [We had supportfrom CEO and WIA in the past to get started] butI really do think that the stimulus money gave us

an opportunity to develop our training system ina way that we wouldnt have been able to do.On the youth side, a big change in WIA rules

extended the age limit for participants, from21 to 24. Increasing the age requirement to 24allows DYCD programs to reach older kids whoare both out of work and out of school and, inthe case of the SYEP program, match them withsummer jobs that could be the first step intonext tier programs for successful participants.Additionally, a new partnership between the

Parks Department and DYCD opened the out-of-school youth program to 14-to-24 year-old welfare recipients and provided them with anumber of paid internships.

CollaborationThe new funding from ARRA did not produce

a sea change in collaboration among the many agencies and departments that have a role in New Yorks workforce development system. There are


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still silos, and most workforce programs operate without being truly coordinated with otheragencies. Even with an additional $41 million inARRA funds for SYEP, for example, no effort wasmade to connect participants to other programs.Several workforce experts say that could havebeen particularly helpful for older kids whoarent in school during the year and dont havefull time jobs.

However, from the start, the city did aim touse the Recovery Act funding to broaden the ideaof workforce development in the city, and someof the smaller programs, like the trainings forthe Fire Department and Department of CulturalAffairs are the results of that effort.

The Parks Opportunity Program expansionbrought SBS, HRA, the Parks Department andCUNY together in ways that hadnt happenedbefore. And the Adult and Continuing Educationcourses at the Department of Education created

some new lines of communication between theDOE and SBS. A new GED referral programoffered through the Workforce1 Career Centers

with DOE, while not funded by ARRA, is aresult of that collaboration. That wouldnt havehappened if we hadnt made the connections withDOE through the ARRA funded occupationaltraining programs, says Matt White, assistantcommissioner of planning and policy at SBS.

In a more substantial way, as was already established, the connection of CUNY with the

workforce system was deepened by the ARRA-supported programs. We met monthly with SBS,and that really provided an opportunity for us tocollaborate on other things, to talk about other

ways that we could collaborate with these twosystems, Shayne Spaulding says. We talked abouthow we can better connect the CUNY students tothe Workforce1 Centers, and the idea of trying tofind higher wage jobs. Thats continuing.

whAT did we LeARn?The federal government is showing no signsof providing a similar infusion of funds for

workforce issues anytime soon, certainly not with an accelerated stimulus timeline forimplementation. And while more traditionalfederal funding for workforce support has beendwindling for years, the fall, while precipitous,

will not have been as immediate as the end of the ARRA funds.

That said, there are aspects of the ARRA erathat are useful to understand. The two years of Recovery Act funding served as a sort of stresstest to the leadership, and there are some clearlessons from how the city decided to respondto the huge need for workforce developmentservices brought on by the Great Recession.

The city can tap a relatively robust workforcesector. As noted previously, most of the dollarsspent by ARRA on workforce development wentto established programs that were operating whenthe Recovery Act was passed. The fact that theseprograms were able to successfully absorb havingtheir budgets and accompanying expectationsballoon so drastically, in such a short amountof time, shows that the citys existing workforceinfrastructure has the capacity to reach a lotmore participants if given enough funding.

The level of federal support for the citys workforce programs has been dwindlingdramatically, even as the city has beenreorganizing departments and investing more of its own money in new programs. For example, thetotal budget in 2011 for SBSs Workforce1 CareerCenters was $17 millionthat includes some


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ARRA support, though not as much as 2010.Five years earlier, with fewer Career Centersin operation and less support from the city, thebudget for that program was $21 million. TheITG programs drop in federal funding has beeneven more dramatic. In 2011, with stimulus fundsstill in the system, the program budget was $12.7million, down nearly 40 percent from its 2006peak of $21 million. 13

[The ARRA money for SYEP] proved that wehave a really good system set up, and it provedthat we have a lot of kids ready and willing to

work, says the Neighborhood Family ServicesCoalitions Gigi Li. It also shows the immensedemand out there and that we could have used

the federal support all along.Note too that in the years that ARRA wasoperational, the citys workforce programs grew even in areas that were not funded by Recovery Act dollars. There are now nine Workforce1Centers in New York, and the number of placements by that system has grown from about17,000 in 2007 to more than 30,000 this year(when the unemployment rate was much higher).In Mayor Bloombergs state of the city speech in

January, he said that the goal will be to do 35,000

this year, in part by opening ten new Workforce1Centers across the city.

There are seeds of innovation ready tosprout. Because of the sudden nature of thefederal support, ARRA funds were almostexclusively spent on workforce programs that

were already established or planned when theRecovery Act was passed. Seedco and most of thecommunity-based organizations that contracted

with SBS, for example, had already worked withthe agency in the past. That is true even of themore innovative programs. Advance at Work wasalready operating when ARRA was announced,for instance, and SBS had done most of theplanning to open the health care Workforce1Center.

On the one hand, you could argue that ARRAfunding was not really responsible for theseinnovative programs, since they were already more or less established. On the other hand,the fact that the city did have innovative ideasplanned is a positive sign that the citys workforcesystem can continue to expand and innovate, if given the right amount of federal support.

In some cases [ARRA] let us accelerate ourimplementation of strategies and programs, forexample, a sectoral approach and the careerenhancement program, notes Philip Weinbergfrom the WIB. There are things that made senseas priorities for us that were given additionalmomentum and resources.

Workforce development can serve people who earn a little more. The current downturnprovided a case study on the needs for working

with dislocated workers who are higher up the

career ladder than a typical workforce trainingparticipantthose with moderate job experience,a high school diploma, and an opportunity toearn slightly higher wages. With the wave of midlevel lay-offs during the recession, a flood of such jobseekers entered the market.

With the Advance at Work program and otherCBO-led efforts, the system took significant stepstowards serving this population. SBS finally got the opportunity to test out ideas and buildrelationships with employers who are looking

for that kind of candidate. Weve realized thatthe system has a whole lot more potential. Wevebeen able to break out of our shell in a way thanksto ARRA, says Angie Kamath.

CUNY is a strong partner for workforcedevelopment, and the city knows it. Thereis a rising interest in connecting workforcesystems with the training capacity and linksto higher education available at community

CUNY can o erhigher level training,

positions that reallyreach and stay in themiddle class.


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colleges. Even before ARRA, the Department of Small Business Services had several programsconnected to CUNY, but the collaborations that

were undertaken on the basis of Recovery Actfundsincluding the health care Workforce 1Career Center, specialized cohort trainings andthe Health Professions Scholars programhasonly strengthened the interest in working withcommunity colleges.

The relationship with CUNY is really multifaceted, says one SBS official familiar withARRA. I would say that theyre probably themost important partner for this agency, in partbecause they can offer higher level training,positions that really reach and stay in the middleclass.

For its part, CUNY reciprocates the interest.SBS decided to invest a pretty significantamount of ARRA money on a few projects withCUNY, and that was a very big deal for us,says Suri Duitch, CUNYs director of adult andcontinuing education. Programs where peopleearn a certificate and can use that to get a jobor go further in a credit-bearing program thatcan lead to a degree: That kind of framework of a career ladder is an example of a direction we

want to go.

Changes to some of the program parametersfor the Workforce Investment Act had a bigimpact. As noted in the section on innovation,the city was quick to take advantage of severalchanges in what WIA allows: the ability tocontract directly with educational institutionsand a change in age from 21 to 24 for DYCDs

youth programs. Both changes should be madepermanent upon re-authorization this year.If they are, they could help city programs to

broaden their mission to include more careerpath skills development and more outreach toolder disconnected youth. The citys evolvingrelationship with CUNY, in particular, couldprove to be a real game changer for the system.

With the federal Workforce Investment Actsrules and incentives shaping so much of whatthe workforce system is capable of, additionalrule changes like these should be identified andencouraged.

The workforce system will sorely miss thesupport of ARRA. The unemployment rate inNew York City is still at 8.7 percent. Althoughbetter than in many other parts of the country,thats a number that would have been consideredunbelievably high as recently as three years ago.The city is still 90,000 jobs below the employmentpeak before the recession. Toward the end of 2010, there were still 96,000 New Yorkers whohad been unemployed for longer than a year,and 62,000 who had been unemployed for longerthan 18 months. The unemployment rate forthose without a high school diploma still stood at15 percent.

Yet in June, the ARRA funding runs out and with it a number of the most innovative new training programs will either end completely or suffer serious cutbacks. Only two of the sixoriginal training tracks in the CUNY healthcare cohort trainings will be continued in asubstantially similar manner, for example. Allthe new CBO contracts for dislocated workerprograms will be discontinued. Advance at Workis over. The ITG vouchers are back to pre-ARRAlevels and are actually on hold until the summer.

SBS is working to keep some programsoperational, including La Guardias Workforce1

Career Center focused on health care, butbecause of declining federal support, the city ishaving to contribute more of its own money. Also,

with work, the relationships with the CBOs canbe maintained, and the lessons about operationalchanges in how ITGs are distributed can becomestandard, even if the funds for counseling andother wrap-around services arent available.

[The citys workforce development system] was expanded suddenly and massively withstimulus money, but then it faces a cliff, says

Sheila Maguire, senior vice president for programeffectiveness at Public/Private Ventures, anational research organization that focuses on

workforce development issues. That in and of itself is a dynamic that is a challenge.

For the Summer Youth Employment Program,the end of ARRA funding is already being felt.Since the application to SYEP was put online in2006, application rates have sky-rocketed. Evenin 2009, when more than $27 million in ARRA


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funding was supporting the program, demandfar outstripped supply, with more than 87,000applicants turned away. By 2010, with an overallbudget drop of more than $16 million, morethan 107,000 SYEP applicants were not offeredpositions. The Neighborhood Family ServicesCoalition has started a campaign in Albany topush for a dedicated funding stream for summer

jobs for youth, which would also give theproviders the lead time and momentum to plan amore robust system.

The strict reporting guidelines requiredby ARRA were too cumbersome To ensurethe money was being spent wisely, the federalgovernment required extremely strict reportingrules, and as WIA funds came through Albany the state added another layer of requirements.Since the law was passed quickly, the federalDepartment of Labor was still providing new guidelines on how to produce the requiredquarterly reports in October of 2009.

Lianne Friedman, chief operating officerfor the DOEs Office of Adult and ContinuingEducation, recalls how the new trackingrequirements could delay program release. Inan effort to make sure things were track-able

and accountable, systems had to be put in place,she says. Its natural for things of this size acrossthe city to take time to execute inter-departmentrelationships.

Due to tracking requirements, money for theAdult and Continuing Education program wasreleased late, after the programs were already under way.

The timeline for reporting was also extremely tight. By statute, quarterly reports were due tendays after the end of the quarter, and to allow

for processing the state required data to be in itshands only four days after the end of the quarter.Because so many of the programs were runthrough other agencies, institutions and CBOsin some case even subcontractors were usedcomplying with these rules could be extremely complicated and time consuming.

The whole citys effort to keep the stimulustracker has been so labor intensive. Its great thattheyre tracking information, but it requires a

lot of time, says CUNYs Shayne Spaulding. Forthe Summer Youth Employment Project, Gigi Li,the co-director of Neighborhood Family ServicesCoalition, says, There was an issue of how ready the providers were to engage in the in-depthreporting.

and yet the level of transparency that wastouted did not occur. One of the key features of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act

was supposed to be the ease with which anyonecould see how the money was being spent, anearly unprecedented level of transparency. Thefederal government even launched a website,recovery.gov, with interactive maps that covereverything from Recovery awards not startedto recipient reported jobs by state, and the citysNYC Stat Stimulus Tracker was designed to usethis and other data to clearly show how ARRAfunds are being spent in the city.

However, it was not possible using thesesources to get a clear picture of how the fundsfor workforce development were being used.Reporting requirements for the Recovery Actused the same template for all programsfromrepairing the Brooklyn Bridge to providing jobcounseling to a dislocated workerand so crucial

basic context like how many students enrolled inthe In-School Youth program were not captured.That means the federal site was at too-broada level to truly discern what the workforceprograms have accomplished, and of courseStimulus Tracker can say how much money hasbeen spent, but not what the results have been.

To be sure, many officials were very clearon what the Recovery Act has meant for

workforce development in New York and eagerto provide help in our research. Even in those

circumstances, though, it was often much harderto piece together what had been done and how well it performed than would be expected froma program that was supposedly a milestone ingovernment transparency. To build on successesand keep the public informed of progress, clearand accessible data is key, and that standard hasnot yet been met.


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Workforce development funds have beenshrinking for decades. In the last ten years,federal WIA funds have dropped by more than52 percent. In recent years, the city has investedmore of its own funds into workforce initiativesbut, according to the Independent Budget Office,

will be pulling back support in the next three years. By 2014, the total budget for workforceprograms at SBS are projected to be 50 percentsmaller than the 2010 ARRA inflated budget and36 percent smaller than the citys 2006 budget.Because of broad changes in the economy thatrequire jobseekers to have advanced skills,a stubbornly high unemployment rate, and agrowing population of young people who areneither employed or in school, New York needsmore money for workforce training, not less.

Having passed the stress test posed by ARRA,the New York City workforce development systemhas shown that it is worthy of more funds. DYCDand SBS were able to resume sector specifictraining programs, offer internships to in-

school youth, and provide career advancementhelp to working poor residents. Several of thoseinitiatives will end now that ARRA funds haverun out and future innovations will be put onhold indefinitely. Still, although it is what thesystem needs most, another dramatic increasein federal funding is unlikely to happen in thenext few yearsand, as it happens, there is still alot that needs to be done even in the absence of more funding.

Below are a few, relatively low-cost

recommendations for improving New Yorks workforce training system.

The Workforce Investment Acts pendingre-authorization is the perfect opportunity tomake ARRAs rule changes permanent. ARRAfunds came with two important rule changes inthe Workforce Investment Act: The ability forgovernment agencies to contract directly witheducational institutions instead of relying on

ITG vouchers and a raise in age from 21 to 24for WIA funded youth programs. Both changeshave proved to be a success and should be madepermanent upon WIAs reauthorization.

Continue to build partnerships with CUNY. CUNY is perhaps the citys most importantpartner for workforce training. Using WIAfunds to create higher level workforce trainingcourses at the citys community colleges will bea huge step forward, if ARRAs rule changes aremade permanent. But in the meantime the city could also have the Workforce1 Career Centersinvest more heavily in ITGs that could be usedfor customized training programs at CUNYinstitutions.

With limited workforce training funds goingforward, the city should not emphasize low-touch, high-volume placement services over

job training. Although it may be tempting to uselimited funds to increase placement services

at the citys Workforce1 Career Centers, SBSshould be careful about doing so at the expenseof innovative training programs. Programs likeCUNYs cohort health care program provideparticipants with skills that can translate into acareer, and as such they are not only a differencemaker in peoples lives but a significantinvestment in the citys economy.

The city needs to better coordinate workforceprograms at SBS and DYCD with those operated

by the Human Resources Administration andsave money by reducing duplicate services.Some workforce development programs thatarent funded through the Workforce InvestmentAct remain completely disconnected from thecitys primary workforce development programsat SBS and DYCD. Programs at the HumanResources Administration, for example, receivefunding through Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) and other sources to support

RecommendATions


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programs for public assistance recipients,sometimes duplicating programs housed in otheragencies. There is no coordination, for instance,between HRAs job centers for TANF recipientsand SBSs Workforce1 Career Centers. TANFrecipients receive no work activities credit for

visiting a Workforce1 Center, and informationabout clients is not shared between the twoprograms. In a time of extreme funding shortfalls,

this sort of duplication needs to be addressed tomaximize returns on workforce investments. In2008, the Human Resources Administration spent$389 million to administer job training, educationand placement. 14 By improving collaborationbetween agencies, the cost of these programscan be reduced or repurposed to eliminateredundancy while also enhancing services forthose badly in need of employment services.

1. New York City Department of Small BusinessServices. All funds in 2011 adjusted dollars.http://www.nyc.gov/html/sbs/wib/html/about/WIBNotes_2010_06.html

2. Office of the New York City Comptroller, Oc-tober 2010.

3. The citys Workforce Investment Cabinet is

due to release a report that addresses severalof these concerns.

4. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Numbers arefor NYC, not metro area. http://www.bls.gov/opub/gp/pdf/gp09_29.pdf

5. Fiscal Policy Institute, Briefing on MayorBloombergs Preliminary FY 2011 New YorkCity Budget, February 2010.

6. http://www.bls.gov/opub/gp/pdf/gp09_31.pdf

7. CBS/New York Times, The Price of 10% Un-employment: Polling the Jobless December

14, 2009. http://www.cbsnews.com/htdocs/pdf/Dec09a-Unemployed-All.pdf

8. Independent Budget Office of the City of New York.

9. Ibid.

10. With ARRA WIA, DYCD was able to add15,500 new slots to its programs, slightly lessthan the 17,000 it had predicted.

11. A recent study commissioned by Wider Op-

portunities for Women finds that a single worker has to earn above $14 per hour or$30,012 per year to meet his or her basicneeds without relying on public subsidies.And since that number is based on nationalaverages for expenses, salary needs areeven higher in New York City. See The BasicEconomic Security Tables, Wider Opportuni-

ties for Women, 2010. http://www.wowonline.org/documents/BESTIndexforTheUnited-States2010.pdf

12. David Jenkins and David Price, Building Path-ways to Success for Low-Skill Adult Students:

Lessons for Community College Policy and Practice from a Statewide Longitudinal TrackingStudy , Community College Research Center,Columbia University, 2005.

13. Independent Budget Office, Analysis of theMayors Preliminary Budget for 2012, March18, 2011, p. 52.

14. Demands of the Time, Office of the New York City Comptroller, October 2008.

15. For example, pre-hospital care programs inthe La Guardia Community College Divisionof Continuing Education in EMT and Para-medic had a 46 percent retention completionrate, while the wrap-around versions had 97percent and 77 percent.

16. This program received additional ARRAfunds outside WIA.

ENDNOTES


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ARRA unding:$41.9 millionPrimary Agency: Department of Youth and Community Development

The Summer Youth Employment Program, frst created in the 1960s, is the citys biggest and longest-running programmeant to combat youth unemployment. In 2010, the U.S. Department o Labor ound that the unemployment rateamong 16-to-24 year-olds was at its highest level since 1947. New York City has long ranked lowest in unemployedyouth among the nations 50 largest cities.

As SYEPs administrator, DYCD operates a lottery system to accept applicants and places them in entry-level jobsthroughout the city. Participants are placed at a variety o private and public employers, including governmentagencies, hospitals, summer camps, non-profts, small businesses, law frms and museums. They work approximatelyseven weeks and earn $7.25 an hour through unds made available by the program.

Among New York City programs, SYEP received by ar the most ARRA unds, $18.8 million through WIA and $23million through Community Service Block Grants. However, because o spending requirements, DYCD spent a largemajority o those unds in the frst year, expanding enrollment rom 43,113 in 2008 to 52,255 in 2009. In 2010, themoney it had le t over wasnt enough to o set a decrease in regularly scheduled unds, and both the total budget andenrollment ell below 2008 levels.

Traditionally, SYEP served students ages 14 to 21, but with ARRA the age limit was moved to 24. DYCD says thatolder participantsa small minority o the applicantswere placed in more private sector positions and the youngerparticipants were generally placed in non-profts and public sector slots.

2008 2009 2010 % change08-09% change

09-10% change

08-10

Participants* 43,113 52,255 35,725 21.20% -31.63% -17.14%Applicants* 103,189 139,597 143,169 35.28% 2.56% 38.74%Applicants not o ered positions 60,076 87,342 107,444 45.39% 23.02% 78.85%ARRA WIA Funding** $548,093 $18,186,710 $36,619 3218.18% -99.80% -93.32%

ARRA CDBG Funding** $9,560,354 $13,563,400 41.87%Total ARRA Funding $548,093 $27,747,064 $13,600,019 4962.47% -50.99% 2381.33%Overall SYEP Funding* $67,500,000 $51,500,000 -23.70%

Source: *2009 and 2010 DYCD SYEP annual reports and DYCD SYEP website; **from IBO numbers for FY 09, 10, 11 respectively

summeR YouTh emPLoYmenT PRogRAm

APPendix: The PRogRAms

Trends in the Su er Youth E ploy ent Pro r , 2008 2010


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ARRA unding:$12.2 millionPrimary Agency: Department of Small Business Services

ARRA unding allowed the city to revive a practice that had been discontinued due to declining ederal unds: For years,the city had contracted with community-based organizations to provide job training, job placement and counseling to jobseekers. These contracts allowed the work orce development system to provide services in di erent neighborhoodsacross the city, while taking advantage o those agencies amiliarity with local residents and businesses.

When the ARRA unding was announced, SBS decided to spend more than a third o its ARRA unds on these sortso contracts and returned to many o its old partners like Seedco, the Fortune Society, and Grant Associates.Thecommunity-based work orce developers in New York City were called to serve, and we were ready, willing and ableat this critical time with so many New Yorkers out o work, says Eileen Reilly, director o work orce development atCAMBA.

By working with these third-party groups, SBS could spend ARRA unds quickly without building a new programwithin the agency. The CBOs were also better able to develop sector approachesincluding health care, retail, andin ormation technologybased on past experience and their relationships with employers. As a group, the CBOswere able to place 2,568 participants in new jobs as o March, 2011. All o these programs will end when ARRA undsrun out in June.

communiTY-bAsed job PRePARATion And PLAcemenT seRvices


ARRA Funded SBS Contractor Type o Program Location SectorGrant Associates Dislocated Worker Manhattan In ormation, Pro essionalServices, Social ServicesSeedco (NonproftIntermediary)

Dislocated Worker All 5 boroughs

Health care, Green Collar/

Energy, Transportation,Accommodations & FoodServices

St. NicksBronxworksChinese American PCGay Mens Health CrisisCAMBAHenry St. SettlementCypress HillsHighbridgeEducational Data Systems, Inc. Adult Brooklyn Retail, Accommodations &Food Services, Health careGoodwill (NonproftIntermediary and contractor) Adult and Dislocated Worker Brooklyn Health care

Per Scholars Adult and Dislocated Worker Bronx ITFortune Society Adult and Dislocated Worker Queens RetailNon-Traditional Employment

or Women (NEW) Adult and Dislocated Worker Manhattan Construction, Green Collar

Cooperative Home CareAssociates Adult and Dislocated Worker Bronx Health care

Restaurant-OpportunityCorporation- NY (ROC-NY) Adult and Dislocated Worker Manhattan

Accommodations & FoodServices


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ARRA unding:$11 millionPrimary Agency: Department of Small Business Services

WIA places great emphasis on allowing the worker to make his or her own choice or what to learn and where to attendclasses. Individual Training Grant recipients receive vouchers rom the city worth up to $3,800 to spend on trainingcourses o their own choosing. ITGs were a natural outlet or ARRA unding because they allowed the city to increasespending sharply without creating new programs or adding new sta

ARRA allowed SBS to greatly increase the number o vouchers it issues. In 2007, or example, the agency issued 2,196ITG vouchers totaling $5.3 million, and in 2008 it issued 4,656 vouchers or a total value o $11 million (see Table 1).However, with ARRA unds available, the total more than doubled in a single year, to 10,245 vouchers totaling $20.5million and, in 2010, to 7,294 vouchers totaling $13.6 million. In all, 5,507 additional residents were able to receive worktraining vouchers because o ARRA. SBSs goal is to place at least 55 percent o recipients in a job via the Work orce1Career Center, and according to our research that per ormance measure has been met in the last two years.

To receive a voucher, a jobseeker has to frst take part in an assessment session at a Work orce1 Career Center, andthen choose rom a list o approved occupations that lead to employment in high demand industries. For example,

SBS will provide an ITG or $1,300 to learn graphic design, $2,200 to become a truck driver or learn delivery services,or $3,800 to learn how to be a bookkeeper or auditor. All told, there are two dozen pro essions that are supportedwithin three cost tiers. Courses must lead to industry-recognized credentials, and the training provider must reportper ormance to SBS on completion o training and job placement. Vendors that ail to meet certain per ormancelevels become ineligible to receive ITGs. According to SBS, 90 percent o the people who receive vouchers completetheir trainings.

individuAL TRAining gRAnTs

0

2000

4000

6000

8000

10000

12000

2007 2008 2009** 2010**

ITG Vouchers Issued at Workforce1Career Centers

$0

$5

$10

$15

$20

$25

2007 2008 2009** 2010**

Dollar Amount of ITG VouchersIssued, in Millions

Source: NYC Department of Small Business Services. **ARRA + WIA Funding


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The In School Youth program (ISY), run by DYCD, supports at-risk, in school youth while also granting them workexperience. Through the ISY program, DYCD provides a wide variety o services, rom career planning and collegeprep to needs assessments, project-based leadership, and tutoring. The year-round services are eligible or low-income, at-risk high school juniors and seniors and are provided by 72 contractors in all fve boroughs. The aim is toensure that participants graduate rom high school, pursue a college education and develop career goals.

With the addition o ARRA unding, DYCDs ISY program enhanced its career planning services, adding paid internshipsor program participants. For quali ying applicants, the programcalled Go to School, Get a Jobo ered paid-

internships or a period o twelve hours a week or twelve weeks during the school year. Through this new program,2,207 students gained part-time employment, collectively earning more than $2.8 million.

Like other youth employment programs, the unds earned by students o ten passed directly into their communitiesand helped support at-risk amilies. Faisal Rahman, director o the Beacon and Work Readiness Programs at DYCD,says Go to School, Get a Job served as both an incentive to achieve in school and a sa ety net or amilies. Without anew unding stream the internship program will disappear a ter ARRA unds run out.

in schooL YouTh PRogRAms


New York Citys population o out-o -school, unemployed young adultsand there are more than 200,000 o themis generally underserved by existing work orce programs. Advocates o ten pinpoint this community as having thebiggest gap in services, both in regards to demand or slots and the types o services o ered.

DYCD contracts with community-based organizations in all fve boroughs to provide services or this hard-to-reachpopulation, including occupational skills training, assistance with job and college placement, GED preparation,support services and 12 months o ollow-up services a ter completing the program. The occupational training isgeared toward a variety o industries such as construction, ood service, tourism, health care and retail.

With ARRA unding, DYCD was able to add an internship component to the CBO programs that didnt already haveoneand or those that did, the agency was able to increase the number o available slots. Currently, 1,900 14-to-24year-olds are participating.

For a community-based provider like FEGS, which had provided services to 67 out-o -school youth, the ARRA unding

added another 30 plus slots. A lot o the young people we work with have no work experience, says CourtneyHawkins, assistant vice president at FEGS. Having the opportunity to have an internship gives them something to puton their resume. We have more than 100 internship partners, so we really try to keep a wide range so young peoplecan fnd an internship theyre interested in.

ouT of schooL YouTh PRogRAms


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2

ARRA unding:$2.8 millionPrimary Agency: Department of Small Business Services/CUNY

In this stumbling economy, health care is one industry that not only continues to grow but o ers opportunities orworkers to move up into better paying careers. In New York, health care organizations have added more than 85,000 jobs since the beginning o the decade.

Responding to this need, SBS ocused two new programs on providing training and job placement services or healthcare workers: The frst was a series o specialized training courses and the second a new Work orce1 Career Centerdedicated to the health care sector.

Ever since the Work orce Investment Act was signed into law in 1998, WIA unds or work orce training courses havebeen disbursed through Individual Training Grants alone. But with changes to WIA rules in the Recovery Act, theWork orce Investment Board was able to contract with CUNY to create three training courses or health care workers:a cohort training course or unemployed jobseekers looking to move into careers as EMTs or registered nurses; apilot program to help licensed practical nurses become registered nurses and advance in their careers; and a scholarsprogram that helps de ray the costs o urther training as a nurse or 65 current CUNY students.

All three training programs have had better than average retention rates, but the cohort program, which has by ar thelargest enrollment, targets the most challenging population. Still, the program has had a retention rate that outpacestypical training programs, a result that CUNY attributes in large part to pre-training e orts and support services likemandatory study halls and individual meetings with case managers. 15 Upon graduation, the program placed 195students in a job in the frst year, with an average median wage o $15 per hour.

Y ar 1 ou ( rai i i i i )

sPeciALized heALTh cARe TRAining

Training Enrollees In Training or Completed Retention/Completion RateEMT 60 58 97%LPN 65 46 71%

LPN to RN 20 19 95%Medical O fce 26 25 96%Medical O fce or English Lan-guage Learners

25 19 76%

Paramedic 30 23 77%PCT: Primary Care Training 26 23 88%PTA: Patient Care Assistant 13 9 69%RN/ National Council LicensureExamination Prep or EnglishLanguage Learners

20 20 100%

Total 285 242 85%


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ARRA unding:$2.1 millionPrimary Agency: Parks Department/HRA/SBS/DCYS/DOE

The Parks Opportunity Program (POP) is one o the largest transitional employment programs in the country.Transitional employment o ers wel are recipients who need a lot o assistance in fnding a frst job with short-term,publicly subsidized jobs at a real-world work site along with support services.

Funded through the Human Resources Administration (HRA) by the State O fce o Temporary and Disability Assistance,POP was created in 2001. Over six to 12 months, participants in the POP program maintain parks and playgroundsthroughout the city while simultaneously receiving employment services, classroom training and career counseling.Since its inception, the Parks Opportunity Program has helped nearly 12,000 New Yorkers transition rom wel areto work. The city notes that graduates placed in employment earn $10.44 an hour, 44 percent more than the stateminimum wage, and the average salary earned by trainees placed in the private sector climbs each year.

Two new POP programsPOP Sparks and POP Connectwere created with ARRA unds (two other programs, POPEducation Horticulture and POP Weatherization, also received Recovery Act unds through other outlets). The originalPOP program was a partnership between the Parks Department and HRA, but with these two new ARRA- undedprograms, SBS, CUNY and the Department o Education also became involved.

The one-year POP Sparks program provides electrical training through City Tech, CUNYs College o Technology,and places participants at a variety o employers such as the Port Authority, Metro-North Railroad and Con Edison.Over six months, the 18-to-24 year-olds in POP Connect receive work readiness training, basic skills/GED instruction,occupational training, placement services and, once they land at a job, 12 additional months o ollow up services.Because o ARRA, 31 participants took part in POP sparks and 400 participants in POP connect.

PARks oPPoRTuniTY PRogRAm

ARRA unding:$1.8 million 16Primary Agency: Department of EducationEvery year, the New York Department o Educations O fce o Adult and Continuing Education enrolls about 40,000low-income adults ages 21 and older in training courses. With the addition o ARRA unds, DOE supported over 300slots in training programs in the auto mechanic, culinary, nursing and computer felds. In addition, program sta beganto work with SBS to provide job placement services through Work orce1 Career Centers.

With ARRA unds, the auto program prepared 74 students to be auto mechanics with a ocus on steering andsuspension systems, brakes, and engine per ormance; the culinary program prepared 21 students in culinary bakingand kitchen equipment operations; and the IC3 (Internet and Computing Core Certifcation) course prepared 53students or the industry-recognized IC3 certifcation.

The largest o the programs, with 160 students unded through ARRA, was the Licensed Practical Nurse Program, a10-month, ull-time program divided into academic, skills development and clinical components.

AduLT And conTinuing educATion

ARRA WIA unding:$800,000Primary Agency: Department of Small Business Services/FDNY/Department of Cultural Affairs

SBS also unded two small programs with the Fire Department o New York to train EMTs and the Department o Cultural A airs to train art handlers. 77 EMTs were trained in a 12-week intensive course and 15 art handlers weretrained.

fdnY And dcA occuPATionAL TRAinings


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2

ARRA unding:$1.6 millionPrimary Agency: Department of Small Business Services/Center for Economic Opportunity

Advance at Work was a pilot program designed to help working poor individuals earning less than $14 per hour withtraining, career coaching, and promotion assistance to get better jobs. ARRA unding kept the program going or twoyears beyond an initial end date in 2008. But with ARRA unds now exhausted, the program was orced to close thisspring.

Advance at Work evolved rom a Seedco program launched in 2006. Program participants would meet with a careercoach to identi y trans erable skills and devise a strategy or moving out o their current positions. They would alsoreceive counseling on how to be promoted, how to rewrite a resume to market onesel , and how to access publicbenefts such as the Earned Income Tax Credit.

Based on a study conducted by the Center or Economic Opportunity, participants in Advance at Work were 3.5 timesmore likely to be placed in jobs than participants in other placement programs. In addition, they would work a greaternumber o hours in those jobs and earn on average $.50 more per hour. Many o the programs clients were workerswho had ound their current jobs through a Work orce1 Career Center and were in ormed about Advance at Work withan automated telephone call that checks in with clients a ter their placement.

Seedcos Francine Delgado says that its a real shame the unds arent there to continue the program. With someintensive case management support and coaching around advancement this hard to serve population was able toachieve a better income and more sel -su fciency.

AdvAnce AT woRk

Full amount allocated: $1.8 millionARRA WIA Funding:$1.26 millionPrimary Agency: Department of Small Business Services/CUNY

In 2005, the NYC Work orce Innovation Fund, a joint venture o the City o New York and the NYC Work orce Funders,a philanthropic collaborative, ormed the NYC Sector Initiative. The City and private unders jointly unded the SectorInitiative, a our-year demonstration o sector employment projects in health care and biotechnology. [SBS] learnedabout sector-based employment strategies through that initiative and decided that it was a good way to program alot o their ongoing adult training programs, says Patricia Jenny, the program director or community developmentand the environment at the New York Community Trust. SBS established the frst sector- ocused Work orce 1 Center ocused on the transportation sector in Queens inJune 2008, allowing Center sta to build a deep understanding and connection to a specifc local industry with astrong potential to provide well-paying jobs. Since then, it has served 200 businesses and placed or promoted 3,500individuals.

A center ocused on the health care sector was supposed to ollow soon a ter but was put on hold a ter ederal budgetcuts. With ARRA unding, SBS and La Guardia Community College went ahead with those plans. The Center identifesthe hiring needs o New York-area hospitals, residential care acilities and ambulatory care centers, and providesparticipants with training and placement services to meet those needs.

In addition to $1.3 million in ARRA unds, the Work orce 1 Healthcare Career Center received $820,000 rom theCenter or Economic Opportunity in its frst year. It had 229 placements in the health care felds in its frst year, andis now being unded through WIA.

woRkfoRce1 secToR cAReeR cenTeR


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The End of an ARRA

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