For Immediate Release
Office of the Press Secretary
April 5, 2004
Better Training for Better Jobs
Today's Presidential Action
President Bush has an agenda for creating more jobs for America's
workers and ensuring that workers have the training and education they
need to compete for the best-paying, highest-growth jobs. Today, he
traveled to Charlotte, North Carolina to announce a new initiative to
provide America's workers with better training for better jobs.
America's growing economy is a changing economy, and some workers
need new skills to succeed. Today's economy is an innovation economy.
Two-thirds of America's economic growth in the 1990s resulted from the
introduction of new technologies - and 60% of the new jobs of the 21st
century require post-secondary education held by only one-third of
America's workforce. We need to close the skills gap in America. Not
enough workers are being trained quickly enough to take advantage of
many of the new jobs that are being created. The Federal government
provides state and local governments over $4 billion through the
Workforce Investment Act (WIA), but only 206,000 adults were trained
through these programs last year.
President Bush proposed significant reforms to Federal worker
training programs to double the number of workers receiving job
training, to ensure those programs work better for America's workers,
and to close the skills gap so we fill every high growth job with a
well-trained American worker. The President proposed:
- Providing $4 billion in Federal job training funds to the nation's
Governors with less federal red tape and more flexibility;
- Putting strict limits on overhead in major Federal job training
programs by closing loopholes and enforcing limits to ensure tax
dollars support training for workers who need it - reducing overhead
costs by an additional $300 million; and
- Giving workers more choices about their job training by increasing
the use of personal job training accounts called Innovation Training
Accounts (ITAs); and
- Training an additional 200,000 people for high-growth jobs through
programs run by community colleges, unions, and businesses.
Background: Making Federal Job Training Work Better for America's
Workers
The Problem: Currently, the Federal government spends almost $23
billion for more than 30 programs spread across 9 departments and
agencies. The result is a confusing hodgepodge of programs, some of
which have remained fundamentally unchanged for decades, and
administrative costs that prevent too many dollars from getting to the
workers who need training the most.
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