(1) The general assembly hereby finds and declares: (a) Transitional jobs have proven to be an effective policy response to stubbornly high unemployment rates and the difficulties that many smaller employers face in filling job vacancies and expanding job opportunities. Transitional jobs have helped to: (I) Stabilize individuals and families with earned income; (II) Stimulate local economies through wages paid; (III) Contribute to the economic health of employers; (IV) Provide unemployed and underemployed adults an opportunity to experientially learn, model, and practice successful workplace behaviors that will help them to get and keep unsubsidized employment; (V) Build work histories and references for participants to more easily move into unsubsidized and stable employment; (VI) Address barriers to work that have kept the unemployed and underemployed out of the regular labor market; and (VII) Reduce recidivism and public costs. (b) Colorado has already demonstrated the value of transitional jobs through its successful HIRE Colorado initiative. Operated with federal funds from October 2009 through September 2010, HIRE Colorado provided transitional jobs to over one thousand seven hundred unemployed Coloradans, enabling them to do productive, wage-paying work for local governments, nonprofit agencies, and for-profit employers. According to data from the Colorado department of human services, HIRE Colorado helped nearly seventy-five percent of its participants to move into unsubsidized employment. In states whose transitional jobs programs focused on those with the most acute job search challenges, nearly fifty percent, an unusually high success rate for such a population, moved into unsubsidized work. (c) While nationally unemployment is falling slowly and although Colorado's unemployment rate is better than the national average, Coloradans still face difficulty in finding full-time jobs. According to a recent analysis, nearly two hundred thousand Coloradans are "officially" unemployed, but there are fewer than seventy-five thousand job openings. At the same time that unemployed and underemployed Coloradans struggle to find employment in the face of this job shortage, many employers have found it difficult to fill the job vacancies they do have. Transitional jobs are part of the solution to both unemployment and unfilled job vacancies. (d) The department anticipates further increasing the number of counties served by the transitional jobs program, focusing on rural areas and small- and medium-sized counties.
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