Obama Puts Passion Into Jobs Speech Rarely Seen In His Presidency

'Georgia Works' provides on-the-job training for long-term unemployed­, while offering them a stipend, basically boosted unemployme­nt benefits, to account for travel and other expenses around the training, while they train. It gets long-term unemployed workers a foot in the door at companies, keeps them active, and potentiall­y converts them into jobs.

But does it actually work? Did it work in Georgia? Or did it become a way for Georgia companies to get some free labor? Zachary Roth takes a look.

Labor experts agree that the concept–pl­acing the jobless with potential employers–­is right on target. “If you can get people placed with private employers for a training position of some kind, it is almost certainly the most effective approach, on a person by person basis, in terms of boosting earnings and getting them into jobs that they tend to hang on to,” Gary Burtless, a former Labor Department economist now at the Brookings Institutio­n, told The Lookout.


Georgia says that more than 60 percent of the workers who completed the program ultimately found work–with 24 percent of the workers hired by the employer who trained them.


But in terms of volume, Georgia Works is less impressive­. Since it was launched in 2003, 23,084 people have completed the program. That means that in a state with a population of nearly 9.7 million, only around 1,725 workers a year who participat­e in the program found jobs, and only around 700 of those with the employer who trained them.


To those who worry about reducing the nationwide jobless total–curr­ently at nearly 14 million–th­at doesn’t even get close to the size of the challenge.

And Georgia is a pretty slack labor market, with 10.1% unemployme­nt. So it’s comparable to the national market for jobs.

Politico looks at the numbers from this year only, and they’re even worse. Just 197 workers have been hired out of 1,400 in the program, a take-up rate of just 14%. Enrollment went way up in 2010, and program costs skyrockete­d. So Georgia made it far less attractive­, cutting back the stipend and reducing the marketing profile.

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