Insane amounts of stress; NJDOL idiots comes as no surprise

[DontSayBanana]

Well, as a couple of you guys found already, I was laid off as of the 27th. Back on the old board, I'd mentioned I was looking at going into court reporting.

So the NJ Dept. of Labor sends counselors down a few weeks before a mass layoff to pre-register employees with unemployment and to talk about retraining for new careers. The guy tells us to be eligible for NJT (New Jersey Training), the school has to be a public school in New Jersey, and the program you're entering has to be in demand, as recognized by the Commissioner of Labor and Workforce Development.

I'd already been talking to a school in Philadelphia, Orleans Tech, about their program, and from the criteria they gave, I figured they weren't eligible.

I go to the One Stop office today; since there's so much time before the start of the semester, I figure maybe I'll see if NJ can make a better counter-offer on what to do about school; my backups are mostly in the field of communications. I plow through the testing, they tell me I've got scores to back up going into any field I felt like, and I follow their instructions for looking up approved schools and programs.

Court reporting shows up on the list, a "Y" for "in demand, CIP code 22.0303 under legal support. Then I go to the other site, where you actually look up authorized training providers, and I find Orleans Technical Institute, Philadelphia, PA given "out-of-state approval" by the Commissioner, eligible for WIA funds.

If this is the kind of organization NJ shows in developing and managing its workforce, it's no wonder that unemployment has been getting hit hard.

[KRonn]

I thought they said that it has to be a school in NJ?! But your PA school is approved. They need to give better instructions up front, so people can know to look out of state in case the school they need is elsewhere than NJ.

[DontSayBanana]

I thought they said that it has to be a school in NJ?! But your PA school is approved. They need to give better instructions up front, so people can know to look out of state in case the school they need is elsewhere than NJ.

They forgot to mention that an exception for approval can be granted by the Commissioner of Labor and Workforce Development to adequately accredited schools in border portions of PA, DE, and NY.

Here's the proof: http://www.njtrainingsystems.org/Program/Default.aspx?ProgramID=33329

D'oh!