White House Announces Grants To Help Long-Term Unemployed

Career College Central summary:

To help the long-term unemployed attain the skills they need to find good-paying jobs, the Obama administration will award grants to scale up innovative partnerships among employers and non-profits, including community colleges. The White House last week held an event to raise awareness about long-term unemployment and to ask some of the country’s largest employers to get involved in helping to prepare those individuals for available jobs. To foster that collaboration between public and private sectors, administration officials announced the $150 million Ready to Work program, which will be administered through the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL). It will look at partnerships that use effective or promising strategies, such as job-placement assistance, financial counseling, paid internships and registered apprenticeships.
At the American Association of Community Colleges' (AACC) Workforce Development Institute last week in St. Petersburg, Fla., DOL officials cited the importance of getting the long-term unemployed trained and back into the workforce. “We have a need for serious partnerships” to leverage resources, said Eric Seleznow, acting assistant secretary of labor for employment and training, noting that the quality of such partnerships is uneven across the country.
DOL will tap its existing H-1B funds for the grants and will announce a solicitation for applications later this month. Awards will be made by mid-year. The announcement of the new federal grants came two days after AACC and the Walmart Foundation announced a new $4 million job training initiative targeting middle-skill jobs.

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