Utah jobs program goes broke

The growing ranks of the unemployed already have drained this year's budget of a state-administered program that provides new-job training to people whose old professions may not return when the recession ends.

Employment counselors at the Utah Department of Workforce Services were informed last week that enrollment in a job-training program funded through the federal Workforce Investment Act (WIA) was being suspended for the rest of the fiscal year, which ends June 30, 2010.

"It is a big blow," said Karen Silver, an advocate with the Salt Lake Community Action Program (CAP). "A lot of people who are unemployed had been going to Workforce Services to beef up their education and training so they can compete better in the job market when it turns around.

"A lot of people who are unemployed -- or about to become unemployed -- are not going to have that option," she added.

As Utah's unemployment rate has climbed to 6.2 percent, so many jobless people enlisted in the program that this fiscal year's WIA budget was used up in less than five months, said department spokesman Curt Stewart.

In October 2008, he noted, WIA funding was being used to provide training to 2,263 people. By this October, the cumulative number was up to 6,409, with a 62 percent increase in adult training and a 76 percent jump among dislocated workers. The youth program grew less, 37 percent.

Of the total, 2,155 got training with an infusion of $6.9 million

in federal stimulus money from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. Without that money, retraining prospects would have been bleak because the state's share of WIA funding had slipped from $14.3 million in 2006-07 to $6.3 million this year because of the souring economy.

The WIA funds allowed participants to develop job skills through classes offered at community colleges, vocational training institutes or proprietary schools.

"They come into the office and say, 'I know how to do this [skill].' Our counselors will tell them, 'It might be a good idea for you to look into this [training] course,' " Stewart said. "The counselors assess the [unemployed person's] skills and interests, and decide how best they can be trained to meet their goals for employment. Some people have a skill set that is somewhat obsolete. We encourage them to go into jobs of the future."

But not all can now.

"We have people in the pipeline [to get training], but their paperwork is not complete. Those are the folks this is affecting most," said Stewart, although he was uncertain how many people were impacted. "But there is nothing we can do. We don't have the money."

He said WIA funding has been used up prematurely before, citing two occasions in the past half-dozen years in which training was suspended because of money shortages.

The department still has ongoing training efforts, such as those through the Family Employment Program, Stewart added. Funded through the federal Department of Health and Human Services, that program provides financial assistance and job services to unemployed parents who have dependent children living in their homes.

mikeg@sltrib.com