On Friday, the Department of Labor’s Employment and Training Administration (ETA) confirmed that they “…came to the conclusion that the benefits of AJB no longer outweigh the costs of operating and maintaining this system, as the market has evolved to the point where a Federally-sponsored electronic labor exchange is no longer necessary.”
This confirms the post 5th Best Site for Active Job Search – America’s Job Bank, in which I said “This post is a tip of the hat to an old friend on life support. For the past few years, the leadership within ETA has made it clear that AJB’s days are numbered; so it comes as no surprise that the Associated Press reported on Friday that in the 2007 federal budget proposed by President Bush, 141 programs will be cut or eliminated – including America’s Job Bank. Projected savings are $15 million per year.”
AJB has been on a maintenance-only budget for the past two years, so the service has failed to keep up with innovations in private-sector job boards. Even so, the site is still heavily used by employers and jobseekers. As of today, AJB reports over 2 million jobs available – all posted to AJB, since AJB does no spidering of content on other sites.
From the day AJB was founded in 1995, it has been national in scope, free to all, void of spam, and committed to the highest standards of confidentiality. Perhaps, as ETA has concluded, the benefits no longer outweigh the costs – but there are no other job boards operating today that can make the same claims regarding scope, cost, spam and confidentiality.
As a business owner I’m not a fan of publicly subsidized services competing in commercial markets; but I also believe that society benefits when all have access to basic services without regard to income. While this may sound contradictory, it’s not, at least for me.
In every market there are niches that are not profitable, in dollars and cents, yet which are important for social reasons. In these cases, government can provide the service, contract for the service, or force private firms to provide the service via regulation. Personally, I believe contracting for the service makes the most sense – as ETA has done with AJB from day one.
We have public roads and toll roads, the Postal Service and FedEx, police and private security, public parks and private parks – what if all of the publicly subsidized options were eliminated? Would low-cost or free options still exist? Can you name a single for-profit business that makes decisions based primarily on social impacts?
Government isn’t efficient, and it’s not always effective, but it can operate programs for social good without regard to profit or loss. America’s Job Bank has been a shining example; and I feel poorer for the loss.
Per ETA, “The phase out will occur over the next year and a half, with June 30, 2007, being the final date the Web site and its associated system will be available.”
Thanx for the post which is very interesting from a european point of view. In France, where I live, the leading job site, anpe.fr, is the equivalent of AJB.
Could you please indicate your source ? I didn't find anything on that event elsewhere and I would like to investigate a little bit about this.
Posted by: Yannick | March 21, 2006 at 07:15 AM
Hi Yannick. Thanks for the comment!
You can find a number of documents on the National Association of State Workforce Agencies (NASWA) web site. Here's a link:
http://www.workforceatm.org/articles/template.cfm?results_art_filename=ajbinfo.htm
Bob
Posted by: Bob Wilson | March 21, 2006 at 08:01 AM
That's great, thank you !
Keep on blogging like this, your thoughts are very interesting to me !
Posted by: Yannick | March 21, 2006 at 08:11 AM