Local Workforce Agency Forced to Close on Fridays

SUNNYVALE, Calif. – NOVA, an award-winning local workforce development organization, announced today that due to budget constraints, all of its services for job seekers and the business community will be shut down every Friday through the end of June.

NOVA is funded entirely through federal, state and foundation grants, with the primary resources coming from the Workforce Investment Act (WIA). The City of Sunnyvale administers NOVA on behalf of a consortium of seven northern Santa Clara County cities: Cupertino, Los Altos, Milpitas, Mountain View, Palo Alto, Santa Clara and Sunnyvale. On December 26, 2007, President Bush signed PL 110-161, concurring with Congress to rescind $300 million from WIA funding for this year and last year. These funds had by and large already been obligated to the state and local areas, and NOVA had planned for almost 100 percent of its funds to be spent this fiscal year. While the exact amount to be taken back from NOVA is not yet known, the potential amount of the rescission and the little time left in the fiscal year to make adjustments has forced the agency to take action.

According to NOVA director Mike Curran, the funding cuts couldn’t happen at a worse time. Due to globalization, advanced technology deployment and a weakening economy, local layoffs have been steadily increasing. One objective indicator of the trend is Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) activity. WARN notifications are filed in the event of mass worker layoff and include the number of individuals affected. The number of employees being laid off by companies in NOVA’s area increased from 1,686 in 2005 to 3,969 in 2007. 2008 continues the trend with 833 individuals slated for layoff in the NOVA region reported in January alone. NOVA has seen a corresponding increase in the number of “dislocated workers” coming in for job search assistance.

Due to arcane funding formulas, overall there is a decreasing amount of federal funding available to the State of California. This means there’s less to allocate among California’s 49 local workforce investment areas, including NOVA, and in fact the agency’s WIA funding has declined by 45 percent over the past three years. NOVA and many of its fellow workforce areas were already stretched thin even before the rescissions were announced. Curran frames this as a call for transformational change in how we develop our local talent pool, and muses that his organization’s Friday closures may demonstrate that the resources we have taken for granted could disappear if there is not a change in federal workforce policy and investment.

For more information on NOVA’s services for job seekers and businesses and closure details, visit NOVA’s Web site at www.novaworks.org.

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