newjerseynewsroom.com

BY HILDA L. SOLIS

COMMENTARY

This Labor Day, many Americans face hard times. The July 2010 figures indicate a 9.5 percent national unemployment rate, with a staggering 14.6 million Americans without jobs. In New Jersey, the unemployment rate stands at 9.7 percent for July, with nearly 440,000 people currently unemployed statewide.

This is unacceptable to the President and to me.

Many New Jerseyans are dealing with the day-to-day hardships of trying to provide for their families and for themselves without steady work and with limited or no income. But this administration is committed to helping you get back on your feet, and we will not rest until the whole country has recovered.

The Labor Department has invested $434.5 million dollars to help meet the needs of workers in New Jersey. That includes $92.8 million dollars made available through American Recovery and Reinvestment Act funds for career counseling, job training and job placement programs.

Two of these projects, the Department's Workforce Investment Act Adult and Dislocated Worker programs, are proving successful in New Jersey. As of June, 12,494 unemployed workers participated in Department-sponsored training in the last year. Of those who completed the programs, more than 80 percent found jobs.

Recovery Act funds also allowed my Department to serve more than 2.3 million workers through state employment-related services like the New Jersey One-Stop Career Centers. During the 2009 program year, the 24 centers across the state served 316,032 unemployed workers, of which 84,555 successfully found work.

This is a testament to the fact that job training is creating real progress in New Jersey and across our nation.

The jobs of the future are in high-growth industries, like energy efficiency and renewable energy generation. The administration's focus on transitioning to a clean energy economy will make the U.S. a world leader in clean energy, reduce our foreign dependence on oil, and create thousands of new jobs. As part of this, the Department of Labor invested $500 million dollars in 189 green jobs training programs to make careers in solar, wind, biofuels and other clean energy sources available to Americans throughout the country.

You're seeing a piece of that in New Jersey.

In January, we awarded the New Jersey Department of Labor and Workforce Development a $6 million dollar State Energy Sector Partnership and Training Grant to provide green job training to out-of-school youth, adults with limited basic skills, individuals with criminal histories, and individuals with disabilities located in Middlesex and Union counties. These workers are receiving technical and occupational skills necessary to obtain industry-recognized credentials in the green economy.

In that same month, the Garden State shared a multi-state, $5 million dollar Energy Training Partnership Grant, which was awarded to the International Transportation Learning Center, to provide training to minority workers that will lead them to job placements in "green" industries.

Though much progress has been made, there is still much more to be done. I am committed to doing all that I can to get American workers the skills needed to compete and secure employment in the 21st century workforce.

As we honor the contributions of American workers this Labor Day, I encourage your optimism about the future of our economy. We are a resilient nation, with some of the most driven and dedicated workers on the planet. And, "Good jobs for everyone" is more than a slogan at your U.S. Department of Labor — it's a deep and sincere commitment that we've made to those workers, in New Jersey and the nation as a whole.

Hilda L. Solis is the U.S. Secretary of Labor.