New Dashboards Offer Insight on State Workforce Services

Each year, our Employment and Training Administration provides oversight for programs authorized through theWorkforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA) to help workers across the U.S. access jobs and careers. Data collected from these programs can provide helpful context to states about who uses the services and their outcomes, as well as any barriers to accessing the services.

With that in mind, we recently shared the Workforce Services Dashboards.

Developed in response to President Biden's Executive Order On Advancing Racial Equity and Support for Underserved Communities Through the Federal Government, the dashboards provide detailed analyses of WIOA Titles I & III programs, outlining participant enrollment, services provided and outcomes after program exit.

Using Program Year 2022 data for WIOA Adult, Youth, National Dislocated Worker and Wagner-Peyser programs, the dashboards show individual state data and provide comparable national-level data for additional context.

By providing data breakdowns by demographics, Workforce Services Dashboards can help us begin to answer questions regarding equity and identify potential successes and challenges. Individual state data can be used to inform future policy decisions or leveraged to strengthen grant applications.

We encourage stakeholders to use the dashboards to study and understand a state's workforce system, but they should not be used as a scorecard or to grade a state's performance. Similarly, the data does not offer sufficient information to compare states because additional information - including external factors - would affect the comparison.

The dashboards are not prescriptive but can be a valuable tool for understanding disparities in services and outcomes across an individual state's demographic groups.

We're eager to see how stakeholders use these dashboards to improve equitable access to workforce systems. Share your ideas, questions and feedback on the Workforce Services Dashboards.

Lenita Jacobs-Simmons is the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Employment and Training.