Wagner-Peyser Act

Labor Exchange Services for UI Claimants

Claimants may be selected to attend the mandatory PREP program if they are profiled as most likely to exhaust benefits prior to returning to work. Selection to attend a PREP appointment provides claimants with an orientation of the career center to include services available and an initial assessment to determine additional needs. The RESEA program allows LWDBs to elect to participate in this program instead of the PREP program. For LWDBs who elect to participate in the RESEA program, claimants selected for reemployment services in these areas receive an intensive one-on-one session with career center staff. During the one-on-one session, claimants receive an orientation, initial assessment, specific labor market information, and development of an employability plan and are scheduled for additional reemployment services. Claimants not profiled and scheduled to attend PREP or RESEA are offered the full array of Wagner-Peyser career services depending on the claimant’s request and other needs. Career services may be scheduled in the management information system requiring the claimant to fulfill his or her obligation to actively pursue employment. Failure to comply with scheduled services may be communicated to the RA program for referral to an adjudicator to conduct fact-finding.

Claimants are one priority population supported by Florida’s Wagner-Peyser funds. Florida’s automated processes allow RA claimants to receive reemployment services quickly and seamlessly. Upon filing an initial claim in the RA reporting system, various data points are collected from the claimant’s application and transmitted into Employ Florida to create a basic Wagner-Peyser application. The claimant is sent an introductory welcome message that provides helpful resources about services in the system they may use in their job search. Every week, characteristics collected from the RA claims application (including, but not limited to, the number of jobs the claimant had over a certain period; the claimant’s job tenure and wages; the industry from which the claimant was laid off and the time of year the layoff occurred; the availability of comparable jobs in the area, etc.) is processed through a regression model to obtain a profiling coefficient.

The coefficient value determines the claimants’ likelihood of exhausting RA benefits prior to returning to work. This is used to determine which mandatory reemployment program the claimant is assigned to attend. Upon assignment of the coefficient, the claimant is transmitted into a pool used to assign the claimant to the state’s Worker Profiling and Reemployment Services (WPRS) program, or the RESEA program. This automated pool collection and event assignment typically occurs every Saturday.

Every Monday, LWDB staff are responsible for viewing the number of claimants in their respective pools and creating events accommodating as many claimants as possible. LWDBs operate PREP or RESEA, but never operate both programs simultaneously. DEO sets the goals of the number of claimants to schedule and complete each year for each LWDB operating the RESEA program. These goals are used to determine how many claimants will be scheduled each week from their respective pools. LWDBs operating the PREP program typically schedule their full pool but have no predetermined numbers to complete. Every Monday night, based on the number of claimants each LWDB determines to schedule, the automated process uses those numbers to populate events. Once events are populated, Employ Florida automatically generates letters for the LWDB to send to the claimant. Staff prints and mails these letters to the claimants at least two weeks in advance of their scheduled appointments.