Department of Labor

Department of Labor

Our mission: To foster, promote, and develop the welfare of the wage earners, job seekers, and retirees of the United States; improve working conditions; advance opportunities for profitable employment; and assure work-related benefits and rights.
Our plan for this 2013 fiscal year is to put Americans back to work. It was being naively assumed that Americans fiscal woes would end with the New Year, and an era of prosperity, affluence and serenity would appear. But in reality, we are going to continue to be saddled with soaring unemployment rates, escalating federal debt and a bickering congress that will not bring much change in the 2013-2014 year Some 8.5 million people are collecting unemployment insurance, including 4.8 million receiving federal benefits. So how do we get Americans back into work? Our department has put forth a $12 million dollar budget proposal to do just that. This plan includes special training and employment opportunities for those who are jobless, displaced workers and those communities that are defenseless and vulnerable. It is time that the government gives back to its community instead of taking. Our plan advocates that unemployed workers have to be made more competitive and more appealing to business through training and employment programs. It allocates a budget of $6 million to be spent on such programs that would be targeted at preparing workers to work in places that where high paying salaries and growth prospects are high. Why let inexperienced individuals try and get a job that they wont last long in. Our plan gives the opportunity to prepare people to get into jobs that will last them their whole lives. This may seem like a lot of money spent, but it is being spent on programs that will last forever because fixing unemployment is not going to happen overnight. This budget will put money towards useful programs to help the growth of our economy and the people in it. Many people don't even have the commitment or motivation to look for a job anymore because of the extended length of unemployment. Many people collecting these benefits don’t even look for work until their benefits run out, and this is a terrible drain on the economy and has become a crutch to unmotivated and untrained individuals. This has to change. And with our programs it will. Plus we need to offer employers incentives to hire individuals from our training programs. By shortening the length of unemployment benefits individuals receive by just four weeks, the money saved can go to an incentive plan to companies who hire the retrained workers, such as a $1000 bonus for each employee hired. This will motivate businesses to start hiring again. The labor plan also seeks to allocate a portion of the budget to provide income to the individuals while they are training to help support them and their families until they are hired.