The law was enacted to establish federal assistance programs to prepare youth and unskilled adults for entry into the labor force and to provide job training to economically disadvantaged and other individuals facing serious barriers to employment.
The stated goal of the JTPA is to target an economically disadvantaged population for job training assistance.
A final stipulation of JTPA is that no state is allowed to receive below a minimum of one quarter of one percent of the total allotment.
The results of the study conducted by Svorny clearly demonstrate the importance of a state's political power in influencing the votes of representatives (8).
Concerns were initially raised in 1985, which caused the United States Department of Labor to commission a research study in July 1985 to explore the problems with the current formula.
The study further showed that the main issues existed with regards to distributional equity, funding stability, data quality and formula simplicity.
The National JPTA study was designed to measure the impact of incremental services provided by the JTPA over time.
The sites do resemble the national system in some ways, such as labor market conditions and JTPA project performance.
In addition, the samples of individuals in the study were similar regarding age, work experience and ethnicity to those served nationally by the JTPA.
One criticism of the JTPA is summarized in a 1991 meeting of the Employment and Housing Subcommittee of the Committee on Government Operations focused on race and sex discrimination.
The 1988 Chicago Urban League report stated that African Americans were shown to consistently receive lower job placements and wages.
Cragg claims that measures in the Job Training Partnership Act lead to problems of "moral hazard" which stem from the use of performance incentives in government programs.
The Job Training Partnership Act offers a "pay-for-performance system" that focuses on a participant's earnings and a reduction on welfare dependency.
Cragg claims that participants may enroll who are capable of high post-training earnings without any actual training.