Those identified as most likely to need comprehensive employment services would be among the first to be selected for an employer-based voucher program, which offers vouchers to employers to hire and train workers. Efforts to improve the new welfare would involve streamlining existing programs and ultimately creating new institutional structures. Congress, to some extent, has already begun this process with its recent passage of the Workforce Development Act. Consolidated workforce development works in much the same way as the new welfare. States submit to a national governing board their plans for providing many of the same types of services that are to be provided under the new welfare and the unemployment insurance reforms.
Workforce development involves considerable emphasis on training.
And to the extent that welfare recipients will, under the new welfare, be required to participate in education and training programs, the new welfare effectively moves in the same direction. Just as the new welfare returns welfare policy to the states under a uniform set of federal regulations, so, too, does the new law on workforce development. The question is, therefore, why are workforce development, welfare reform, and unemployment insurance operated as separate entities. If the goal of the new welfare is to end dependency and foster a greater work ethic, then it needs to be tied more closely with existing policy aimed at developing the workforce. Not only would this lead to greater efficiency in the delivery of public services, but it would also end the stigma now attached to welfare.