单项选择题

In a massive makeover of the U. S. work force, hundreds of thousands of laid-off Americans arc undergoing federally subsidized retraining designed to provide them with the skills and education to land new jobs.
For some, it already feels like an exercise in futility.
"I’ve tried and tried (to find work) and it’s discouraging, "said Jama Eisman.49.of Elkhart. Indiana, a laid-off recreational vehicle worker and single morn who has been looking for a job — any job since she graduated from a six-month information technology program in early August.
While looking for work in economically battered northern Indiana is especially daunting. Eisman’s story underscores the high stakes riding on the retraining initiative for workers and for the nation.
Many thousands of laid-off workers have found work during the recession after being trained in new occupations. But thousands of others are finding it can be difficult to hit a moving target when jobs are still shifting and vanishing.
And the complexities of the sprawling retraining program go well beyond forecasting the job market.
Fundamental questions are being raised about retraining, even as it has quietly emerged as a linchpin in the federal government’s recession-fighting strategy. Chief among them=Do retooled workers fare better in their searches or land better jobs than those who spend their time hitting the bricks and knocking on doors
Like many other aspects of the retraining program, the answer is far from clear.
The Labor Department and other supporters say the effort is critical to help the U.S. pull out of the recession and produce a skilled work force capable of holding its own against foreign competition.
But critics say the retraining program, created by the 1998 Workforce Investment Act (WIA), is run by a tangled bureaucracy and actually makes little, if any, difference in helping laid-off workers reassemble their lives.
Labor Department data show that 258, 000 American workers have been retrained in the past two years under the WIA’s Dislocated Worker Program the main aid program under which workers return to school to pursue new careers.
Overall the program provided some type of service, ranging from career counseling to retraining, to 666, 313 jobless workers in fiscal 2008 — a 66 percent increase over the previous year.
Funding for the Dislocated Worker Program has been on a similarly steep ascent. Nearly $ 3 billion was budgeted for fiscal 2009.including extra funding for retraining included in President Barack Obama’s federal stimulus package.
Tens of thousands of other jobless Americans receive retraining benefits under the Trade Adjustment Assistance program, which helps workers who lost jobs due to global trade, or National Emergency Grants designed to help workers in a hard-hit region or industry.
"Workforce Investment Act training gets dislocated workers back into the work force more quickly than their peers who do not take part in such programs, "Jane Oates, assistant secretary of labor for employment and training, said in a statement provided to msnbc, com. "This fact does not, however, prevent us from striving to continuously improve publicly funded work force programs to maximize the return on these investments. "
The department also cites statistics indicating that retrained workers on average made 104 percent of their pre-training earnings in fiscal 2007, the most recent year for which figures are available.
But a study commissioned by the Labor Department and released without fanfare in December reached the opposite conclusion, finding that retraining does not significantly improve earning power.
Co-author Kenneth R. Troske, chairman of the Economics Department at the University of Kenlucky, said the discrepancy exists because the government compares the workers’ earnings immediately prior to entering retraining — after they have lost their jobs or suffered some other employment setback — to their paychecks after completing their courses and finding work. He and his fellow researchers. on the other hand, looked at how workers in 12 states who underwent retraining fared when compared with similar jobless workers who didn’t.
Their findings were disheartening. "Those who enter training experience large earnings losses relative to those who do not in their first two years after program entry, ’the study found.
In general, the WIA-funded program administered by her department has seen a huge surge in demand for training and other services, which also are provided to disadvantaged youth and adult workers. The program has grown more than sevenfold in three years, skyrocketing from 39.001 participants in fiscal 2006 to 296, 477 in fiscal 2008. As to the author, the story of Eisman tells us