At Labor Confirmation Hearing, Murphy Highlights Successful Connecticut Long-Term Unemployment Program as Model for the Country

Press Release

U.S. Senator Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), a member of the U.S. Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, this week in an exchange with President Biden's nominee for Deputy Secretary of Labor, Julie Su, underscored the need to focus on the long-term unemployment population and highlighted the WorkPlace, a workforce development program in Connecticut as a model to build on.

"We have a workforce training agency in Connecticut called The WorkPlace that has been featured in national publications and national media because they have specifically attacked this issue of long-term unemployment with a program called Platform to Employment. And it recognizes the fact that, for folks that have been out of the workforce for a very long time for years, in some cases, there are all sorts of ancillary effects to that individual and to that family that have to be dealt with in order to get them back into the workforce," Murphy said.

In a question to Su, Murphy asked, "And I think we're going to be looking at a very large population of long-term unemployed once we finally turn the corner. Is this something that you looked at, specifically in a targeted way in California? Do you think it's worthwhile for the Department of Labor to think about this specific population of individuals who've been out of the workforce for a long time, frankly, right now don't even show up on our statistics, and look at programs like Platform to Employment and others that have had success in rooting people back into the workforce?"

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