The UI program was established by Title III of the Social Security Act in 1935 and is a key component in ensuring the financial security of America’s workforce. The program, which is administered by the states with oversight from Labor’s Employment and Training Administration (ETA), provides temporary cash benefits to workers who lose their jobs through no fault of their own. Today UI coverage is nearly universal, extending to almost all wage and salaried workers. To help claimants become reemployed, employment and training assistance is provided through a number of federal programs, including Wagner-Peyser Employment Service, WIA Adult, WIA Dislocated Worker, and TAA programs. The UI program is funded by federal and state taxes levied on employers. The states collect the portion of the tax needed to pay UI benefits, while the federal tax finances state and federal administrative costs and other related federal costs. Labor holds these funds in trust on behalf of the states in the Unemployment Trust Fund. In fiscal year 2004, Congress authorized about $2.6 billion to states to administer their programs. Labor is responsible for overseeing the UI program to ensure that the states operate an effective and efficient UI program. Labor is also responsible for monitoring state operations and procedures, providing technical assistance and training, as well as analyzing UI program data to diagnose potential problems. Although Labor provides oversight and guidance to ensure that each state operates its program consistent with federal guidelines, the federal-state structure of UI places primary responsibility for administering the program on the states. The states have wide latitude to administer their UI programs in a manner that best suits their needs within these guidelines. States establish initial eligibility requirements to determine which unemployed workers are qualified to start collecting UI benefits. These requirements seek to ensure that an unemployed worker has had sufficient employment experience to qualify for UI benefits (known as the monetary eligibility requirements), and to determine whether the worker lost the job through no fault of his or her own (the nonmonetary eligibility requirements). State claims representatives are responsible for determining each claimant’s initial eligibility for UI benefits by gathering and (when possible) verifying important information, such as identity, employment history, why the claimants is no longer working, and other sources of income the claimant may have. Once the claim has been submitted for processing, the state sends forms to the claimant’s employer(s) requesting them to verify the claimant’s wages and the reason the claimant is no longer working. If the individual’s claim for UI is approved, the state then determines the amount of UI benefits, depending on the individual’s earnings during the period upon which the claim is based and other factors. In general, most states are expected to provide the first benefits to the claimant within 21 days of the date the state determined that the claimant was entitled to benefits. In order to remain eligible for benefits on a continuing basis, claimants must also demonstrate that they are able to work and available for work and are still unemployed. Claimants must submit this certification of continuing eligibility—by mail, telephone, or Internet, depending on the state—throughout the benefit period. This practice is usually done weekly or biweekly. States may continue to monitor claimant eligibility through an eligibility review program, in which certain claimants are periodically contacted to review their eligibility for benefits, work search activities, and reemployment needs. Typically, the maximum duration of benefits is 26 weeks. In November 1993, Congress enacted legislation amending the Social Security Act to require that each state establish a Worker Profiling and Reemployment Services (WPRS) system and implement a process typically referred to as claimant profiling. The claimant profiling process uses a statistical model or characteristics screen to identify claimants who are likely to exhaust their UI benefits before finding work. Claimants identified through this process are then referred to reemployment services while they are still early in their claim. For profiled claimants, participation in designated reemployment services becomes an additional requirement for continuing eligibility for UI benefits. To assist states in implementing WPRS, Labor developed a prototype model for determining the probability that claimants will exhaust their benefits based on a set of five claimant characteristics: education, job tenure, industry, occupation, and the local unemployment rate. While some states have included only these five variables in their profiling models, others have used this prototype as a benchmark and have included additional variables, such as the claimant’s pre-unemployment earnings, weekly benefit amount, UI wage replacement rate, potential duration of UI benefits, delay in filing, and the ratio of quarterly earnings to earnings in the base year. Reemployment services for UI claimants are usually delivered by a range of federally funded employment and training programs, often through consolidated service delivery structures called one-stop centers. When it was passed in 1998, the WIA began requiring that about 17 federal employment and training programs, including UI, provide services through the one-stop system. WIA allows local areas considerable flexibility in how these programs provide services through the system, so the degree of connection throughout the one-stop system between UI and other workforce programs can vary widely by state and local area. Among the many federal workforce programs that may provide reemployment services to UI claimants, four programs funded by Labor are most likely to serve UI claimants: Employment Service, WIA Adult program, WIA Dislocated Worker program, and TAA. All four of these are required to be part of the one-stop system, and each has its own performance reporting requirements. Employment Service. The Employment Service was created in 1933 by the Wagner-Peyser Act, making labor exchange services—that link job seekers with job opportunities—universally available to employers and job seekers alike without charges or conditions. Historically, many states colocated local Employment Service and UI offices so that when UI claimants applied for benefits at Employment Service offices, they would be exposed to employment services. Today, states’ labor exchanges typically involve online databases where job seekers can look for work and apply for jobs, and where employers can post jobs and recruit employees. In addition, Employment Service offers a range of services to job seekers, including job search assistance, job referral, placement assistance, assessment, counseling, and testing. Employment Service also offers a number of services to employers, including taking job orders, recruitment, screening, referrals of job seekers, assisting with job restructuring, and helping employers manage layoffs. WIA Adult and WIA Dislocated Worker Programs. When WIA was enacted in 1998, it replaced the Job Training Partnership Act (JTPA) programs for economically disadvantaged adults and youth and for dislocated workers with three new programs—WIA Adult, Dislocated Worker, and Youth— that provide a broader range of services to the general public, no longer using income to determine eligibility for all program services. WIA programs provide for three tiers, or levels, of service for adults and dislocated workers: core, intensive, and training. Core services include basic services such as job searches and labor market information. These activities may be self-service or require some staff assistance. Intensive services include such activities as comprehensive assessment and case management—activities that require greater staff involvement. Training services include such activities as occupational skills or on-the-job training. Labor’s guidance provides for monitoring and tracking of performance for the adult and dislocated worker programs to begin when job seekers receive core services that require significant staff assistance. WIA currently excludes job seekers who receive core services that are self-service and informational in nature from being included in the performance measures. Trade Adjustment Assistance. To assist workers who are laid off as a result of international trade, the Trade Expansion Act of 1962 created the Trade Adjustment Assistance program. Historically, the primary benefits available through the program have been extended income support and training. Participants are generally entitled to income support, but the amount of funds available for training is limited by statute. Congress has amended the TAA program a number of times since its inception. Amendments to the TAA program in the TAA Reform Act of 2002 extended income support to 78 weeks after exhausting UI benefits (plus 26 more weeks if participating in and completing remedial training) and added new health coverage assistance and wage insurance benefits for older workers. To promote reemployment through the one-stop system, Congress appropriated $35 million a year beginning in 2001 for Reemployment Services Grants specifically to provide reemployment services for UI claimants. Each year Labor has provided a minimum of $215,000 to each state, with the remainder of the $35 million distributed according to the share of each state’s first payments to UI claimants in the previous fiscal year. These funds are authorized under Wagner-Peyser, and services are generally delivered by state Employment Service staff. Labor issued guidance to the states to use the funds to enhance the quality and quantity of services that UI claimants receive within the one-stop system, encouraging states to use the funds to provide direct services to UI claimants. Nearly all states accept most initial UI claims remotely by telephone, Internet, or both. Even though claimants filing remotely no longer have face-to-face contact with UI staff at the time the claim is filed, all states told us they have found ways to provide information on eligibility requirements and reemployment services to individuals filing initial claims, often beginning at the time the claim is filed. Most states told us that the shift to remote claims did not diminish their ability to provide information on reemployment services to claimants and, in some cases, had improved customer service and helped ensure that claimants received consistent information. Forty-four states accept initial claims for unemployment insurance by telephone or the Internet, based on our telephone interviews with state officials. Of these states, 29 use both remote filing methods, while 10 accept claims only over the telephone and 5 take them only by Internet (see fig. 1). In most states with telephone claims, claimants speak with customer service representatives, although in 6 states claimants may use an automated voice response system to complete their claim.