NFJP Career Services and Training Grant Program Supporting Statement

Funding Opportunity Announcement

The National Farmworker Jobs Program (NFJP)

Career Services and Training Grants Reopening for Select Service Areas

Supplemental Justification

Supplemental Supporting Statement A: Justification

This request seeks OMB approval under the Paperwork Reduction Act for the unique information collection requirements in the National Farmworker Jobs Program (NFJP) Career Services and Training Grants Reopening for Select Service Areas. The Employment and Training Administration (ETA), U.S. Department of Labor announced the availability of approximately $91,351,000 in grant funds authorized by the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA) Section 167 for Migrant and Seasonal Farmworker Programs, also known as the National Farmworker Jobs Program (NFJP). Of the approximately $91,351,000 available for NFJP grants, the Department intended to award approximately $85,229,000 for Career Services and Training Grants to fund an estimated 52 grants. However, for the April 2020 Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) (FOA-ETA-20-08) the Department did not receive competitive applications for certain NFJP service areas. With this new FOA (FOA-ETA-20-08-A), the Department intends to award approximately $3,555,619 for an estimated six to eight NFJP Career Services and Training grants in Connecticut and Rhode Island (a combined service area), Hawaii, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Maine, and key counties in the Central Coast, South Coast, and desert agricultural regions of California.

Under this FOA, DOL will award Career Services and Training grants through a competitive process to organizations providing career services, training services, youth services, related assistance services, and housing assistance to eligible migrant and seasonal farmworkers and their dependents only in the service areas specified above. Through the provision of these services, grantees will work toward the goals of NFJP: to help farmworkers and their dependents acquire necessary skills to either stabilize or advance in their agricultural jobs or obtain employment in new industries or occupations.

Applications will include the following information collections: 1) Form SF-424 “Application for Federal Assistance,” separately cleared under OMB control number 4040-0004, 2) Project Budget, 3) Project Narrative, and 4) Attachments to the Project Narrative.

Electronic availability:

This grant solicitation is available on the grants.gov website. Based on past DOL experience, the Department anticipates that 100 percent of responses will be submitted electronically.

Small Entities:

This information collection will not have a significant impact on a substantial number of small entities.

Assurances of confidentiality:

These grant solicitations do not offer applicants assurances of confidentiality.

Special circumstances:

This FOA implicates no special circumstances.

Burden:

Based on past experience, the DOL expects to receive approximately 10 applications from an equal number of respondents.  The ETA estimates public reporting burden for the information collection to average 20 hours per response for reviewing instructions, searching existing data sources, gathering and maintaining needed data, and completing and reviewing the collection of information.

10 applications x 20 hours = 200 hours

The DOL uses the average hourly earnings in the professional and business services industry of $35.19 per hour to monetize this burden.  See The Employment Situation—October 2020, DOL, Bureau of Labor Statistics, https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/empsit.pdf  at page 36.

200 hours x $35.19 = $7038

The DOL associates no other burden costs with this information collection. In addition to the application, each grantee will be required to submit quarterly financial, performance, and narrative reports to the ETA. Those information collection requirements will be cleared under a separate control number.

Total burden: 10 respondents, 10 responses, 200 hours, $0 other cost burden.

Supplemental Supporting Statement B: Statistical Methods

This information collection does not employ statistical methods.

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