Displaced Worker Voucher Program

closed

This pilot program, by utilizing a public bidding process, contracts out the services of private institutions, referred to as "retraining and placement agencies," to teach new skills to pre-defined groups of unemployed workers and place them in jobs. The main objective of this project is to test new innovations with private sector participation in addressing the needs of displaced workers, including the contracting out of all services of the displaced worker program and the testing of a novel incentive payment system which establishes payment to the private contractor based on placement and performance of its displaced worker clients. This project draws on lessons learned from the voucher system developed for the coal sector in Chile which was redesigned on the basis of an analysis prepared for the MIF/HRF project.