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’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 intends to apply 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 will be 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 and public comments can be submitted to HECC_OWI_WORKFORCE_POLICY@oregon.gov .

 

• 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.​ 

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• The Office of Workforce Investments intends to apply for a waiver on the requirement to collect and report performance data on all students in programs on the state’s Eligible Training Provider List. Public comment on this proposed waiver will be collected and reviewed for thirty (30) days, beginning August 13, 2019.
• Specifically, this waiver would allow Oregon to report a “0” in the eligible training provider performance report for the nine data elements related to all individuals in training (data elements 120 through 128 on form EA 9171) for programs of study where the data is not currently available.
• The draft waiver can be found here and public comments can be submitted to EligibleTrainingProviderList@oregon.gov. [NOTE: The public comment period for this waiver request has closed.]
  
  
• 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.)