Funds for training cut as job losses increase

Jack Bloom took finding work for granted. With more than seven years' experience in marketing and three jobs under his belt in Las Vegas, Bloom figured moving with his wife to Nashville and landing a new position would take a matter of weeks.

But with the job market tightening, those weeks mounted into months, and several interviews ended in rejection. The tough scramble meant that a decision made long ago to leave college before he'd earned a degree was finally beginning to catch up with him.

"I found that to be the selling point that everybody was looking for," he said.

So, Bloom decided to get retrained. He enrolled in a Web development class at Nashville State Community College, and two months later Bloom has already landed a job with Gaylord Opryland, in part drawing on his newly earned skills.

He expects to finish the program and earn certification in Web development this spring.

Labor experts and political leaders are stressing the need for workers to earn high-tech certifications like Bloom's to compete in the modern economy.

But as the nation deals with a recession and as unemployment rises, the state and local officials in charge of the federally funded programs that teach these skills are adjusting to cuts that have taken more than $10 million out of their budgets over the last three years.

The cuts have forced one of the two main job training organizations in Middle Tennessee to turn away some applicants, while the other has had to cut its grants and narrow its focus to just four fields.

Job training advocates hope the cuts turn out to be short-lived. President-elect Barack Obama said during the campaign that he would increase job training resources, and the worsening economy has led other Republican and Democratic politicians to call for more money.

"I think there is a consensus around here that we will do more about it," said John Spragens, a spokesman for U.S. Rep. Jim Cooper, D-Nashville.

But at least until the spring, when the next round of funding comes from Washington, officials say they are operating with dramatically reduced budgets, just as the state's unemployment rate has climbed over 7 percent for the first time in two decades.

"More people are needing services," said Susan Cowden, administrator of the work-force development division at the state Department of Labor and Workforce Development. "We should be ramping up to serve more, and this budget just won't allow that."

The cuts were made last spring after more than two years of debate in Washington between Congress and the U.S. Department of Labor over funding for the Workforce Development Act, a 10-year-old law meant to provide job training for out-of-work youth and adults.

State spreads spending

The Bush administration believed states were receiving too much money through the program, and they said it was redundant with other programs meant to help unemployed workers, including the Depression-era law that established the nation's unemployment office system.

Labor officials pointed out that many states, Tennessee included, were not spending all of their annual funding. They recommended that allocations to the states be cut and that states turn some of that money back over to the government, as a "matter of fiscal responsibility," a Labor Department spokeswoman said.

Tennessee had, in fact, been holding back some funds each year, but only because the federal granting cycle ran three years at a time, Cowden said. Officials believed they should always keep a reserve, so the department could keep funding at similar levels from year to year.

"I don't think we'd be prudent as users of funding if we got money for three years and spent it all in the first year," Cowden said.

State labor officials responded to the rescission, which in Tennessee amounted to returning more than $10 million to the federal treasury, by reducing funding to the 13 regional training providers that operate in the state.

In the state's ninth region — Davidson, Rutherford, Wilson and Trousdale counties — the cuts amounted to 22 percent of the job training budget for the current fiscal year. In the 10th region, which covers most of the rest of the Nashville metropolitan area, as well as several counties to the west, the cuts reduced the budget by 6 percent.

Enrollment frozen

Workforce Essentials, the nonprofit that runs training programs in the 10th region, responded to the cut by freezing enrollment late last spring until its new fiscal year began in July. The organization may have to take the same action again in 2009, although it expects many workers who are desperate for a job to skip training altogether.

"We're seeing more people who are entering the career center that just want another job," said Marla Rye, Workforce Essentials' executive director. "They don't want to go to school; they want to go to work."

In Nashville, the cuts meant reducing training grants from as much as $4,000 a person to a maximum of $2,000.

For people such as Bloom, whose wife has been steadily employed throughout his job search and whose six-month online training course cost a total of $2,175, the reduced funding hasn't had much of an impact.

But many other training courses can last as long as two years. The cost is often $10,000 or more.

"Some people can't do that when they're unemployed," said Connie Humphreys, career development manager at the Nashville Career Advancement Center.

Center narrows focus

Josh Hopper, a radiologic technology student at Meharry Medical College, is one beneficiary who is paying substantially more out of his pocket. Hopper's two-year course costs $9,000, and he has made up the difference with savings and income from a part-time job on campus.

Hopper, 22, also still lives at home, which helps keep his living expenses in check.

"So far I've been lucky," he said.

The cuts also have prompted the Nashville Career Advancement Center to narrow its focus. Gone are grants for cosmetology and legal services. Now, job seekers qualify for a grant only if their training fits into one of four fields identified by the Nashville Area Chamber of Commerce as having a high-growth potential in the coming decade: health care, information technology, construction and transportation/logistics.

The center also will not fund a program unless graduates receive some sort of certification that will be recognized by future employers.

But the cuts have not harmed the center's effectiveness. In its most recent quarter, the center reported that 94 percent of the people who earned certification found a job.

"What it actually helps us to do is help people as they do their career exploration, look not just at areas that sound good, but where there are career opportunities," Humphreys said.

Doing more with less

Rachel Gragg, director of federal policy for the Workforce Alliance, a national group that argues for job- training programs, said organizations across the country have narrowed their focus to cope with the funding cuts.

"Of course, you're going to try to figure out how to do more with less," she said. "If you want to call that efficiency, if you want to call that desperation, I think states have tried to take the money they have and stretch it."

How much further the money can be stretched is in question, Tennessee officials say. Workforce Essentials and the Nashville Career Advancement Center said they have seen a 20 percent increase in people seeking services this fall as layoffs mount.

"There will be some people that are not going to be trained that need it," Cowden said. "If we had more money, we would serve more people."

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