ABSTRACT
This chapter provides a brief overview of the relationship between the workforce development system and its customers by focusing on the role of intermediaries that work as brokers between the two. In general, preliminary observations under the Workforce Investment Act (WIA) reflect a trend towards a market-based approach of increasing competition for delivering training and training-related services. The workforce development system, which initially comprised the public employment service (PES) and unemployment insurance (UI), later expanded in the 1960s with the addition of job training programs, including those for welfare recipients. Private sector employment agencies often use services of the PES to recruit prospective job candidates for employer clients. The WIA of 1998 amended the Wagner-Peyser Act to require the delivery of PES labor exchange services as part of the One-Stop delivery system. When UI was implemented in the United States, it was created as a social insurance program, with the provision of benefits administered exclusively by state agency merit-staffed employees.
