Senator METZENBAUM. What does that amount to in people? Ms. ALLEN. It's 156,000 people.

On March 10, DOL issued a recalculation of the estimated service years associated with the proposed youth initiative. These estimates differ from those quoted on March 5 because they exclude the number of service years attributable to YIEPP for purposes of comparability with the new youth initiative. The revised estimates of service years project an increase of 40,000 in fiscal year 1981 which would mean an increase of 217,000 persons served. The increases for 1982, when the program is fully implemented, are expected to be 133,000 service years or an additional 516,000 persons served.

Senator METZENBAUM. Let me just say, Mr. Secretary, that I have tremendous respect for you as the Secretary of Labor, and I have great respect for our President, and I was one of those who applauded enthusiastically when he talked about our commitment to our young people and that that would be one exception in the budget.

I am frank to say to you that both the rumor mill, the media, and the facts of this proposal, leave the issue quite wanting as I see it, because at the very best, at the very, very best, if we don't make any cutbacks in the Young Adult Conservation Corps or we don't make any cuts in the summer youth program, at the very best we're talking about having some impact almost 18 months from now. I think the challenges call for much more urgent measures than that, and in much greater dimensions.

I don't think the budget and the current proposals measure up to that which the American people were led to believe by our President. I would hope the administration would see fit, with all this budget cutting that is being talked about, to actually go back and take another look at this. I think it's too little, and far too late. Secretary MARSHALL. Well, let me say, Senator, that I do believe that we have made a major commitment, that this administration increased spending for youth by $1.6 billion, and we increased spending for the disadvantaged in our employment training programs, from $2.2 billion in 1976, when we came in, to about $9 billion now. Much of that was achieved through greater targeting of our programs. There are about 2 million young people who now participate in these DOL programs, and by the time we get this program fully implemented, it will be 2.5 million young people approximately which will be about half of the target population that we're trying to serve. That is a very high penetration in that population.

I don't know of any program that I have been associated withand I started studying these programs back in the 1950's and 1960's-that will serve as many of the young people as this one will.

Now, what we have tried to do-I think it's important to keep the whole thing in perspective, that when we came in, we passed the first comprehensive youth program in the history of the country with the help of the Congress. Then that caused a significant increase in participation in the program. In fact, almost all of the gains in black teenage employment in the United States have been in our program since we got started. It was the first time during

the decade of the 1970's that black male teenage employment increased at all. So we were able to reverse the trend.

Now, simultaneously, what we tried to do initially was to take those programs with demonstrated effectiveness and expand them as fast as we could. The Job Corps, for example, is one of the best programs we have for serving severely disadvantaged young people. We are in the process of doubling the size of the Job Corps because of that. In some other areas we weren't sure what worked and what kinds of things we could do. We therefore called that act in 1977 the Youth Employment and Demonstration Project Act, and we have learned a lot from that. So what we are proposing here is that we build on what we have learned, that we add $2 billion to a $4 billion program, which is not insignificant.

In fact, I hope that you and your colleagues can get us at least that much, because the concern I have is that we might not even be able to get that amount for this very important program. That's the reason we proceed very cautiously, to try to build on the knowledge base that we put together from the Youth Employment and Demonstration Projects Act.

We found that there were a number of problems in making it possible for the most disadvantaged young people to participate, and that is what we intend to target our resources on.

It's not the whole youth universe, because there are a lot of young people who will not need help in getting into the mainstream of the American economy, but there is a group of people who are severely disadvantaged who will need that help. If we can concentrate these resources on their problems, we think we can make a significant impact with this program on the solution to that problem.

Now, the kinds of things that we learned, that we are trying to build with this program, are not all things that necessarily require more money. There are things that require program redesign. We learned, for example, that one of the real obstacles in getting young people into the work force was basic education. Many young people had come through the schools who were not functionally literate. So part of what we propose to do here is to correct that, to see to it that that becomes a component of the youth effort.

We also learned from employers that too many of our programs were unstructured, without any success criteria or performance standards, and therefore it was difficult to know-when people got out of the program, what they had learned and what they were prepared to do. So a second part of what we propose is to correct that by having benchmarks clearly defined so that young people can get tested on those aspects of the program and when they came out would know-and the employers would know-what they had learned.

Another feature that we think is very important is the need to improve the linkages between this program and other programs which have sizable amounts of money in them already. Through that linkage process-for example, we can leverage the education system, which has a lot of money in it. We think the linkages between public employment training systems, the private sector, and the school system needs to be improved, and by using these funds we can leverage much larger funds at the State and local

level, as well as in other Federal programs. The whole package we're putting together, therefore, can have a significant impact on the employment problems of the young who are seriously disadvantaged.

Senator METZENBAUM. Thank you, Mr. Marshall.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Senator NELSON. Just one more question to pursue the point raised by Senator Metzenbaum. I realize that no decisions have been made, or apparently have not been made on cuts in the President's budget. But in any event, the speculation is that if there is to be a significant cut that some of it is going to have to come from CETA programs

Secretary MARSHALL. That's right.

Senator NELSON. I would think there would be no avoiding that, as a matter of fact. If there was to be a $10 billion cut, some of that would have to come from CETA.

I'm assuming then from what you say, that your posture would be that cuts would not come specifically from youth-targeted programs, but from public service employment. But one out of three of those jobs, I believe, is still a youth job. So if you cut $1 billion or $12 billion out of public service employment, one-third of those jobs eliminated would be jobs that are presently held by youth, even though that isn't a targeted program. Is that correct?

Secretary MARSHALL. That's right. I think if you cut the CETA system generally, or public service employment, there is no doubt that some young people would be cut out of that part of the program as well.

Senator NELSON. But in your figures of an increase in net employment of 450,000, do you include a contemplation of any cut in CETA, or is this without any cut?

Secretary MARSHALL. It's without any cut.

Senator, it is well that we here included both of the things I'm talking about today, because the proposal that we make for the work and training opportunities program, which is our welfare reform jobs program, would add a net of 400,000 jobs in addition to these that we're talking about, and many of the participants in the welfare reform programs would be young people. So we need to put that into our calculations, as well.

Senator NELSON. Go ahead. I don't know where you were atSecretary MARSHALL. Well, I kind of got off that. I think I can conclude by saying that actually I made most of the points that I think needed to be made in my testimony about the youth_program. If you would like for me to summarize the part of the statement before we talk about the Work and Training Opportunities Act, or the welfare reform jobs program, I would be glad to do that, or I can continue to answer questions about the youth program, as you see fit.

Senator NELSON. Well, maybe you could finish the youth program. I regret to say that I didn't have an opportunity to read your statement before I came. But could you summarize for us what this new initiative program contemplates doing and how you contemplate doing it?

Secretary MARSHALL. The main thing it contemplates doing is, first, to introduce a system of benchmarking. The Labor Depart

ment's program will concentrate mainly on older, out-of-school youth. The Department of Education's program would concentrate on inschool youth. We would try to improve the linkages between education and the labor market through programs providing incentives for people to cooperate. We think the benchmarks are very important in establishing success criteria for the program for young people, as I mentioned to Senator Metzenbaum, because one of the complaints we got from employers was that when people, young people, came through our employment training programs it was not clear what they had been able to do.

We also intend to provide more intensive services to young people, to try to do more to overcome the serious disadvantages they have, and to concentrate this intensive treatment on the most severely disadvantaged young people.

We also think it's important to provide performance benchmarks for the deliverers of services, so that we can judge their perform

ance.

Senator NELSON. Now, your part of the program will address the problems of out-of-school youth under age 24, is that it?

Secretary MARSHALL. Under 21. The major emphasis of our program is on out-of-school youth, but we also have a sizable inschool program as well.

Senator NELSON. What exactly do you propose doing for out-ofschool youth that is not being done under any program now? Secretary MARSHALL. I think the thing we propose to do is to have much better coordination now between the basic education, or computation and reading skill program, and the job. We have learned from our programs that on-the-job training plus academic training provides much more for young people. We have to be sure they have the necessary educational background in order to be able to absorb the training. That is an important difference.

The other main difference is that we intend to do more benchmarking than we do now, so that when a young person comes through the program with a certificate, we will know what that young person has learned, that the services provided for young people will be much more intensive than they have been before. We will also try to consolidate some of the programs to ease the management burden at the local level. To provide for better coordination with education there will be two kinds of incentives—one for better program performance by the prime sponsors, and the deliverers of services generally, and second, incentives to improve the linkage between the employment and training activities and the school system or the educational activities.

The other thing we will try to do, of course, is to concentrate these funds on the most distressed areas, as well as the most distressed people.

Senator NELSON. But what exactly are you going to be doing with these out-of-school youth?

Secretary MARSHALL. Well, the exact things we will do will be, first, to try to see to it that the young people get better basic education.

Senator NELSON. Well, what are you going to do? Are you going to recruit some young people and set up special classes?

Secretary MARSHALL. We already have the school system and the prime sponsors will be encouraged to coordinate their activities with the school system, but they can also provide educational facilities in community-based organizations and elsewhere in the local community in order to get the high school equivalency.

For example, if young people have dropped out of school, it might make more sense in the local community to create special facilities rather than sending them back into the same schools from which they dropped out. So the prime sponsors would be able to make that determination in cooperation with the local education authorities and decide where it would be best to provide that kind of education, just as we will try to do everything we can to get young people into the private-sector programs. We have a new privatesector initiative under CETA, as you know, and we want to coordinate that activity more with our youth program as well, so that onthe-job training opportunities could be provided by the regular private-sector employers in that local labor market.

As you know, we have got the private industry councils set up now in over 450 local labor markets, and we hope to improve the linkages between the youth program, the private-industry councils, and the school system, so that a plan can be developed at the local level that will best meet the needs of the young people for education as well as training.

In addition to on-the-job training, there will be institutional, classroom training as well.

Senator NELSON. But you're not going to handle the education aspect of it; the inschool aspect is not

Secretary MARSHALL. We will have an inschool program. Let me let Ms. Allen describe in some detail what we have in mind with the Labor Department's part of inschool activities.

Ms. ALLEN. Senator, we simply have education linkages specified throughout the bill. Most generally, we require that all work experience for school-age youth, whether they are currently in or out of school, must be linked with educational programs designed to provide acquisition of basic skills and basic education. That's a general program requirement.

We also stipulate that prime sponsors in areas which include target schools funded under the companion Department of Education Youth Employment and Training Act must allocate sufficient funds from their basic grant to make adequate part-time work experience opportunities available for youth in the target schools. That insures that youth in those schools can have part-time work experience as part of a combined program of education and work experience.

În addition to those general features, we earmark approximately $145 million for education incentive grants, to finance programs developed cooperatively with the local education agency.

I would note that this amount isn't itself larger than the dollar value of the current YETP 22-percent set-aside. Essentially, we have replaced the 22-percent set-aside by an incentive structure which as the Secretary noted we think is a better way to encourage joint planning between the prime sponsor and the local education agency, and hence, improve the quality of the linkage programs which currently exist, in addition to expanding them.