The findings of this report underscore how far we have to go to meet the President's and Governors' National Goal for the Year 2000, that "every American will be literate and will possess the knowledge and skills necessary to compete in a global economy...." This comprehensive literacy assessment--dealing with prose, document, and quantitative tasks--provides results that profile a national sample of nearly 20 million participants in the U.S. Department of Labor programs that target people who are unemployed and seeking work or those in search of better jobs. The programs comprise by far the largest component of Labor's Employment and Training Administration activities.