Stimulus Hopes Dashed: Job Retraining Doesn’t Work
President Obama’s Porkulus plan will direct $1.4 billion into job retraining and other services for people who have lost their jobs. Given the ever growing number of people who now fit that description, some might be inclined to question whether even that huge amount of money is enough. But it turns out the question is moot, since available evidence indicates that job retraining, much like the President’s “stimulus” plan as a whole, doesn’t actually work.
In Michigan, where the unemployment rate in May was 14.1 percent, the nation’s highest, 78,000 people are enrolled in the state’s No Worker Left Behind program and 7,800 are on the waiting list…
Nonetheless, a little-noticed study the Labor Department released several months ago found that the benefits of the biggest federal job training program were “small or nonexistent” for laid-off workers. It showed little difference in earnings and the chances of being rehired between laid-off people who had been retrained and those who