To provide information to State Workforce Agencies (SWAs) about the application of sequestration in Fiscal Year (FY) 2017, how the Department of Labor (Department) will apply sequestration to mandatory Unemployment Insurance (UI) programs and on delayed benefit payments from prior fiscal years, and the resulting administrative costs.

To ensure states are aware that: 1) the social security survivors and old age retirement annuities and the Federal civilian pensions annual cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) will increase for calendar year 2017, and 2) COLA information may be found on the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) Web site.

The Employment and Training Administration (ETA) announces the release and availability of the final report titled Evaluation of the GATE II Grants: Is Self-Employment Training Effective for Rural and Older Dislocated Workers?

The Employment and Training Administration (ETA) announces the release and availability of a final report, "Exhaustees of Extended Benefits Programs: Coping with the Aftermath of the Great Recession." This report examines the extent to which Unemployment Compensation (UC) recipients collected all benefits to which they were entitled ("exhausting" their benefits), in the context of the Great Recession and the extended potential duration of benefits, at that time; and assesses the outcomes for these individuals relative to other unemployed workers.

This Training and Employment Guidance Letter (TEGL) provides general guidance for the implementation of operational requirements under the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA) pertaining to the one-stop delivery system, branded nationally as the American Job Center network. Due to the broad scope of the one-stop delivery system, encompassing multiple programs administered by different Federal agencies, this guidance provides the primary components for understanding and implementing an integrated American Job Center network. Consistent with the requirement to promote increased public identification of the one-stop delivery system and the requirement for the use of a common identifier across the nation (WIOA sec. 121(e)(4)), the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL), in coordination with the U.S. Department of Education (ED), established the "American Job Center" network, a unifying name and brand that identifies online and in-person workforce development services as part of a single network of publicly-funded services. The use of the American Job Center network designation in this guidance establishes a framework for accentuating and implementing an integrated workforce delivery system. DOL and ED, in partnership with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) (collectively, the Departments), published the WIOA Joint Rule for Unified and Combined State Plans, Performance Accountability, and the One-Stop System Joint Provisions; Final Rule (Joint WIOA Final Rule) on August 19, 2016, in the Federal Register at 81 FR 55791. The Joint WIOA Final Rule, which became effective on October 18, 2016, can be found at: https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2016/08/19/2016-15977/workforce-innovation-and-opportunity-act-joint-rule-for-unified-and-combined-state-plans-performance.

The Employment and Training Administration (ETA) announces the release and availability of two papers from a study of states' use of Workforce Data Quality Initiative (WDQI) Databases to inform Consumer Report Card Systems and manage Eligible Training Provider Lists (ETPL).

This Training and Employment Guidance Letter (TEGL) provides guidance on the operating costs of the one-stop delivery system, which are comprised of infrastructure costs and additional costs (i.e., career services, shared operating costs, and shared services) in accordance with the requirements set forth in the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA) and its implementing regulations.

This Change 2 replaces and makes corrections to the previously issued Training and Employment Notice (TEN) 28-16 to inform the workforce system with examples, best practices, partnership models, and information on how to align resources available under the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA) to increase services to English Language Learners (ELL) with substantial cultural and language barriers to employment. It further provides information to the workforce system, including partner programs and entities that are jointly responsible for workforce and economic development, educational, and other human resource programs, about how to align their efforts to provide basic career services, individualized career services, and training services.

The Employment and Training Administration (ETA) announces the release and availability of three reports titled: 1) Green Jobs and Health Care (GJ-HC) Impact Evaluation: Findings from the Implementation Study of Four Training Programs for Unemployed and Disadvantaged Workers; 2) GJ-HC Impact Evaluation: Findings from the Impact Study of Four Training Programs for Unemployed and Disadvantaged Workers; and 3) GJ-HC Impact Evaluation: Special Topic Paper on Standard Error Estimation in Evaluations with No-Shows.

In addition, ETA announces the release of the GJ-HC Impact Evaluation public-use data files, available to researchers, practitioners, and other members of the public, and GJ-HC Impact Evaluation restricted-use data files, available to researchers authorized by ETA, for the purpose of conducting their own analyses with the data related to the evaluation.

To announce the release and availability of three issue briefs from the current evaluation of the Self-Employment Training (SET) demonstration. These briefs provide lessons learned and implementation issues faced as part of a project piloting self-employment assistance and training services for dislocated workers. The briefs include:

• Case Management for Self-Employment Success: Emerging Lessons from the Self-Employment Training Program;
• The Characteristics and Motivations of Participants in the Self-Employment Training Demonstration; and
• What Does $1,000 in Seed Capital Buy? Emerging Lessons from the SET Program's Offer of Micro-grants for Business Start-Ups.