E C O N O M I C R E P O R T O F T H E P R E S I D E N T

the level of employer-provided training may still, for the reasons discussedabove, fall short of what is socially optimal. This is particularly true for lowerincome groups or those in industries experiencing increases in imports orother conditions associated with worker dislocation.These incentives to underinvest in employer-provided general trainingmay be particularly strong in the United States, where labor turnover is highand there is no national, standardized credentialing system for this type oftraining. U.S. companies invest roughly $60 billion a year on education,training, and upgrading skills, but this is modest relative to the challengeposed to the Nation by rapidly changing workplace demands.Government Training ProgramsGovernment training programs are aimed primarily at workers who havelost their jobs and are having difficulty finding new ones, or at those who areunemployed and disadvantaged and may lack the skills or experience to enterthe labor market without further preparation. Some employment and trainingprograms are designed specifically to help welfare recipients go to work.Typically, training programs include some form of remedial or vocationaleducation, subsidized employment to provide job experience, or guidance inhow to find a job.Modern U.S. training programs trace their history back to the mid-1960s.The 1964 Economic Opportunity Act created the Job Corps, which stilloperates today, currently providing training for disadvantaged youth at over100 urban and rural residential centers throughout the United States. Sinceits inception, the Job Corps has served more than 1.7 million young people.The Manpower Development and Training Act (MDTA) was enacted in1962 to retrain technologically dislocated workers, but the EconomicOpportunity Act of 1964 shifted its emphasis toward disadvantaged workers.In 1973 MDTA was replaced by the Comprehensive Employment andTraining Act (CETA). This program, which gave State and local governmentsthe authority to operate training programs with Federal grants, also had apublic service job creation component, which grew quite large in the late1970s. In an effort to shift more responsibility to the private sector, the JobTraining Partnership Act (JTPA) replaced CETA in 1982. JTPA eliminatedthe public service employment component of training and further decentralizedits administrative structure by giving primary responsibility for theprogram to State and local governments and the business community. Theprogram currently serves over a million economically disadvantaged personsannually and was until recently the principal training program for thedisadvantaged. JTPA is in the process of being replaced by the WorkplaceInvestment Act, discussed below.Chapter 4 | 159