Stimulus offers modest boost to job training for older workers
Posted on 16 February 2009
Permanent URL of this article: http://retirementrevised.com/career/stimulus-offers-modest-boost-to-job-training-for-older-workers
The economic recovery bill to be signed this week by President Obama doesn’t really target much specific relief toward older Americans (details here), but it does include a modest boost to job training efforts for low income individuals. The bill adds $120 million to the Senior Community Service Employment program (SCSEP), the nation’s only workforce development initiative targeted to older adults. Here’s further background, via Richard Johnson, senior researcher at The Urban Institute:
This program helps workers ages 55 and older with incomes below 125 percent of the federal poverty level acquire job skills, provides training and other supportive services, and places participants in subsidized, part-time community services assignments.
SCSEP helps only a small share of the older adults who could use it, and that number won’t increase much under the stimulus proposal. The program now serves only about 80,000 adults, and the requested recovery funds would cover 24,000 more participants. For perspective, 1.4 million adults ages 55 and older were unemployed in December 2008 and more were underemployed. And that’s excluding the untold numbers who have given up looking for work. In sum, the sound workforce-development idea embodied in the stimulus proposal needs to be backed up by more funds for job training and employment services for older workers or few jobless seniors will find work.
SCSEP is administered through dozens of state and local government units and non-profit organizations, such asAARP, Easter Seals, Goodwill Industries and the National Urban League.
The program itself is administered through the federal Department of Labor; more information is available at the SCSEP website.
