Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act

President Barack Obama signed the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA) into law on July 22, 2014. WIOA is designed to help job seekers access employment, education, training, and support services to succeed in the labor market and to match employers with the skilled workers they need to compete in the global economy. Congress passed the Act by a wide bipartisan majority; it is the first legislative reform in 15 years of the public workforce system.

Every year the key programs that form the pillars of WIOA help tens of millions of job seekers and workers to connect to good jobs and acquire the skills and credentials needed to obtain them. The enactment of WIOA provides opportunity for reforms to ensure the American Job Center system is job-driven—responding to the needs of employers and preparing workers for jobs that are available now and in the future.

WIOA supersedes the Workforce Investment Act of 1998 and amends the Adult Education and Family Literacy Act, the Wagner-Peyser Act, and the Rehabilitation Act of 1973. In general, the Act takes effect on July 1, 2015, the first full program year after enactment, unless otherwise noted. 

Full text of WIOA

Recent Updates:

• Oregon has released "Guidance Related to the Flexibility and Innovative Uses of Layoff Aversion Funding During the Era of COVID-19."
• The Layoff Aversion Reporting Template can be found here.

• ​​Oregon’s 2020 to 2023 WIOA Combined State Plan is open for public comment from now until Wednesday, March 11, 2020 at 5:00 pm. By following this link you can read the draft and get all the details on how to submit your public comments.​

 

• The Office of Workforce Investments is applying for a waiver on the requirement to expend a minimum of 75 percent of funding on the Out of School Youth (OSY) population. Public comment on this proposed waiver was collected and reviewed for thirty (30) days, beginning February 7, 2020.
• Specifically, this waiver would lower the OSY minimum expenditure levels to 50 percent.
• The draft waiver can be found here (note: the public comment period has closed).

 

• Guidance and resources for local planning efforts have been updated on Oregon's Local/Regional Planning page.

 

• In October 2019, representatives from the US deportment of Labor (DOL) Employment and Training Administration (ETA) visited Oregon to present a "mini" version of their Strategies for Monitoring, Accountability, Risk-mitigation, and Transparency (SMART) Financial Training for ETA Grantees.
• DOL/ETA Oregon "mini-SMART 3.0 Training" materials and presentations are now available on our WIOA Conference and Training Resources page.​ 

 

• 2019 WIOA T-I Conference Materials are now available.

Final performance targets for WIOA title I & III programs

(On June 5, 2018, Oregon received notification of finalized, agreed-upon performance targets for Program Years 2018 and 2019. These targets replace the numbers proposed in Oregon's initial plan modification (above), and Appendix 1 of Oregon's WIOA state plan was modified to include these new targets.)