The Employment and Training Administration
Summary
ETA runs the federal side of unemployment insurance, job training, and apprenticeship -- $10.25 billion and 1,305 federal staff in fiscal year 2025, about $29.98 per U.S. resident, overseeing a system that fielded 1.9 million average weekly UC claims and paid $37.7 billion in benefits to 5.4 million new beneficiaries, while Congress's enacted FY2026 budget rejected a White House request to shrink the agency by 240 positions and eliminate Job Corps and older-worker employment funding outright.
What is this organization?
What does it do?
ETA's reach is widest through unemployment insurance: in FY2025 the system it oversees fielded an average of 1.9 million weekly UC claims⧉, paid 5.4 million new beneficiaries an average $464 a week, and disbursed $37.7 billion in benefits -- financed by state employer payroll taxes under SUTA, not general revenue. ETA also runs Job Corps, a residential job-training program for young adults, and oversees the National Apprenticeship system under the National Apprenticeship Act of 1937.
What does it cost to run — money and people?
Congress enacted $10.25 billion in FY2025 discretionary budget authority for ETA⧉ -- $4.01 billion for State UI and Employment Service Operations, $3.90 billion for Training and Employment Services, $1.76 billion for Job Corps, $405 million for older-worker employment, and $173 million for ETA's own operations -- funding 1,305 federal staff. That's about $29.98 per U.S. resident. Enacted FY2026 funding, $10.37 billion⧉, rejected the administration's request to cut ETA to 1,082 by eliminating Job Corps and older-worker funding outright.
View data as table
| State UI & Employment Service Ops. | 4,012,150,000 | UI state administration, RESEA, Employment Service |
|---|---|---|
| Training and Employment Services | 3,898,587,000 | WIOA formula grants, apprenticeship, national reserve |
| Job Corps | 1,760,155,000 | Residential job training for young adults |
| Older Americans employment | 405,000,000 | Community Service Employment for Older Americans |
| ETA Program Administration | 172,915,000 | Federal staff who run ETA itself |
Why is it good for society?
frames unemployment compensation's two objectives⧉ plainly: "provide temporary partial wage replacement to involuntarily unemployed workers, and stabilize the economy during recessions." ETA's own budget documents credit its Reemployment Services and Eligibility Assessments program with reducing UI duration and "eliminating payments to ineligible individuals" -- a fraud check built into the benefit machinery itself. Absent that federal-state structure, the counterfactual isn't 53 well-run programs; it's the pre-1935 default: a lost job with no income floor.
- ETA's FY2025 enacted budget ($10.25B) splits roughly 39/61 between the UI and Employment Service account states depend on to run unemployment insurance ($4.01B) and combined job-training programs -- WIOA formula grants, apprenticeship, and Job Corps ($6.06B) -- though Training and Employment Services alone ($3.90B) is still smaller than the UI account.
- Congress's enacted FY2026 appropriation ($10.37B) increased ETA's funding rather than adopting the administration's FY2026 request, which would have cut the agency to 1,082 (down 240) and eliminated both Job Corps and Community Service Employment for Older Americans entirely.
Your handles.* Find your state's unemployment-insurance office and file or check a claim through CareerOneStop's Unemployment Benefits Finder (a -sponsored tool). Find your nearest workforce office through CareerOneStop's American Job Center locator. To register as an apprentice or sponsor a program, start at Apprenticeship.gov.
Sources(6) ▾
- U.S. Department of Labor, FY 2026 Department of Labor Budget in Brief -- Excerpts for Employment and Training Administration (ETA) (2025-05) — ETA's own FY2026 congressional budget justification excerpt -- gives FY2024 Actuals / FY2025 Enacted / FY2026 Request budget authority for each ETA account (Training and Employment Services, Job Corps, Community Service Employment for Older Americans, State Unemployment Insurance and Employment Service Operations, Program Administration) and ETA's total by year. Source for this entry's FY2025 KPI figures and the account-by-account chart. Direct dol.gov fetch returns HTTP 403 to automated clients; the Wayback capture above is the one-click original-document link. dol.gov · original document
- Congressional Research Service, Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education: FY2026 Appropriations (R48970) (2026-05-28) — 's Table 4 ('Detailed Appropriations') itemizes ETA's FY2024 Enacted, FY2025 Estimate, FY2026 Request, and FY2026 Enacted budget authority by account -- the source for this entry's FY2026-enacted delta context and independent cross-check of the FY2025 total computed from doc-eta-bib-fy2026. Direct congress.gov fetch returns HTTP 401/403 to automated clients; archive.org's Save Page Now service returned repeated 520 errors during this research session (one retry attempted, then abandoned per house policy) so no Wayback capture exists yet -- the EveryCRSReport.com mirror (a project that republishes 's own PDFs verbatim) is used as the one-click link instead and was fetched directly (HTTP 200). congress.gov · original document
- Congressional Research Service, The Fundamentals of Unemployment Compensation (IF10336) (2026-01-12) — 's standing explainer on the federal-state unemployment compensation system -- source for this entry's UI workload snapshot (weekly claims, new beneficiaries, benefits paid), the program's two statutory objectives (wage replacement + automatic stabilizer), and the Social Security Act/FUTA legal-basis citation. Direct congress.gov fetch returns HTTP 401/403 to automated clients; the Wayback capture above is the one-click original-document link. congress.gov · original document
- Office of the Federal Register (National Archives and Records Administration), Employment and Training Administration -- agency record (2026-07-16) — The Federal Register's own machine-readable agency registry entry for ETA -- gives the precise creation history (General Order No. 63, Aug. 25, 1954, as the Manpower Administration; renamed by Secretarial Order 14-75, Nov. 12, 1975) and ETA's current mission statement, quoted directly in this entry's identity paragraph. Fetched live at HTTP 200 (no 403 encountered); archive.org's Save Page Now was in an outage during this session so no Wayback capture was layered on top, but the live API URL is itself the one-click original-document link. federalregister.gov · original document
- National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), Records of the Employment and Training Administration [ETA] (Record Group 369) (2026-07-16) — 's official administrative-history finding aid for ETA's records -- independently corroborates the Federal Register's creation date and predecessor-agency chain, and states ETA's function in 's own words. Fetched live at HTTP 200 (no 403 encountered); archive.org's Save Page Now was in an outage during this session (one retry attempted, then abandoned) so no Wayback capture exists, but the live URL is itself the one-click original-document link. archives.gov · original document
- U.S. Census Bureau, U.S. Population Growth Slows Due to Historic Decline in Net International Migration (Vintage 2025 national population estimate) (2026-01-27) — The Census Bureau's own Vintage 2025 national population estimate release, giving the U.S. resident population as of July 1, 2025 -- the per-resident denominator for this entry's cost-per-person KPI, per better_metrics.md's sourced-denominator discipline. Same document already sealed in the Artemis index and reused by good-citizen-gao and good-citizen-dol-oig; reused here with its existing sealed capture and a fresh same-day Wayback capture. census.gov · original document
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The Employment and Training Administration began as the Manpower Administration, created inside the Labor Department by General Order No. 63⧉ on August 25, 1954, and renamed ETA by Secretary's Order 14-75⧉ on November 12, 1975. It "fulfills responsibilities assigned to the Secretary of Labor that relate to employment services, job training, and unemployment insurance." Its UI authority traces to Title III of the Social Security Act⧉, under which 53 separate state programs run "with U.S. Department of Labor () oversight."