Audit Report

This report reflects the findings of the Office of Inspector General at the time that the audit report was issued. More current information may be available as a result of the resolution of this audit by the Department of Labor program agency and the auditee. For further information concerning the resolution of this report's findings, please contact the program agency.

Report Number:  06-98-002-03-340

Issue Date:  May 7, 1998

We performed an audit of the Job Training Partnership Act (JTPA) Title II-A program's efforts to serve the Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) population by evaluating services received and outcomes obtained for AFDC recipients who terminated from the JTPA program during the period July 1, 1995 through June 30, 1996.  Our purpose was to establish some benchmarks which could be used to evaluate future programs' -- both JTPA and Welfare-to-Work (WtW) -- progress in serving AFDC participants.

In summary, while JTPA provided occupational skills training to only 32,238 of 76,246 participants, the audit evidence shows that those participants who received occupational skills training had higher placement rates with employers, higher earnings in the year following JTPA termination, and were more attached to a single employer. Furthermore, while only a small percentage of those with math/reading skill deficiencies received nonoccupational skills training to address those needs, those who received such training had higher earnings than those who did not.

Services provided to AFDC recipients:

Of the 76,246 participants:

• 42,488 (56 percent) received JTPA-funded training

• 19,005 (25 percent) appeared to have received some type of training from other funding sources (e.g., JOBS, Pell grants)

• 14,753 (19 percent) received no training from any source

• 774 (5 percent) received some JTPA-funded supportive services
• 13,979 (18 percent) received only objective assessment

AFDC status:  52,238 participants (69 percent) were not receiving AFDC at the time of our audit fieldwork. However, the reason these participants' AFDC was stopped does not appear to be because of the participants' post-JTPA earnings: 15 percent had no earnings, and 44 percent had no earnings or earnings of less than $5,000 for the four quarters following termination from the JTPA program.

Earnings capacity:  For the four quarters following the quarter of JTPA program termination, 23 percent of all AFDC recipients had no earnings, 40 percent had no earnings or earned less than $2,500, and 54 percent had no earnings or earned less than $5,000. Participants who received JTPA-funded occupational skills training tended to have more earnings in the year following the quarter of termination from the JTPA program than those participants who received only nonoccupational training or objective assessment. Furthermore, participants who received nonoccupational skills training to address reading and math skills deficiencies earned more than those who did not receive the training.

Participants' attachment to the labor market: 2 9,875 participants (39 percent) had wages in all four quarters following JTPA program termination of which 19,685 (26 percent) had wages with only one or two employers. Of these 19,685 participants, 73.5 percent received occupational training.

Placement rates into unsubsidized employment: T he Service Delivery Areas (SDA) claimed placements for 38,364 participants (50 percent). We found 69 percent of the participants who received occupational skills training were placed, 39 percent of those who received only nonoccupational skills training were placed, and 4 percent of those who received no training were placed.

Characteristics of AFDC recipients:

The typical AFDC recipient enrolled in the JTPA program was an unemployed, single mother under 30 years of age with one dependent, little or no previous work history, a 12^th grade education or GED, and receiving between $250 and $500 per month in AFDC benefits.

The vast majority (76 percent) of JTPA's AFDC recipients had a high school diploma/GED education or higher, although the reading and math skills for these participants did not reflect the higher level of education; i.e., of the high school graduate/GED education level participants, 45 percent had math skills and 14 percent had reading skills below the 9^th grade level.

Further, 9 percent of the participants had no barriers, and 71 percent had two or fewer barriers to employment documented in the SPIR or SDAs' management information systems (MIS).

This report was informational in nature and did not include recommendations.

[Full Text of Report ]

  [ Return to Audit Reports ]                                      [ Return to Audit Reports (Text Only) ]