Supporting Statement for FOA

Funding Opportunity Announcement

Youth Apprenticeship Readiness Grant Program

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 “Youth Apprenticeship Readiness Grant Program” Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA). The Department will announce the availability of approximately $42,500,000 in grant funds authorized by the Department of Defense and Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education Appropriations Act, 2019 and Continuing Appropriations Act, 2019 (Public Law 115-245, Division B, Title I).

DOL will competitively award grants to a youth apprenticeship partnership of public and private sector entities and include four types of entities, namely: education and training providers; workforce development system entities; organizations functioning as workforce and industry intermediaries; and state agencies. The purpose of this program is to support the development of new or the expansion of existing Registered Apprenticeship Programs (RAP) for youth. This also includes quality pre-apprenticeship programs that lead to a RAP. The partnership will directly engage educational entities, including traditional, alternative, and non-traditional schools, as well as programs that serve out-of-school youth, school boards, workforce boards, employers, workforce partners, and other apprenticeship intermediaries, to develop comprehensive approaches to establishing new apprenticeship models for youth or expanding existing apprenticeship programs for youth.

DOL expects to award approximately 15 to 20 grants ranging from $1 million to $5 million each to the lead applicant. This grant program will support the enrollment of youth (16-24 years, in-and-out of school) apprentices into new or existing RAP, and ensure that appropriate services such as childcare, transportation, and other support services that enable a participant’s participation in the program, are provided to improve youth apprentices’ prospects for success in the program. Within this population of youth, applicants may serve a wide range of individuals, such as in-school and out-of-school youth, youth who are employed or unemployed, youth ex-offenders, underrepresented populations (i.e., women, people of color, ex-offenders, and persons with disabilities), and other youth with barriers to employment including foster youth, parenting youth, homeless youth, and youth offenders/ex-offenders.

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 at least 80 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 90 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.

90 applications x 20 hours = 1,800 hours

The DOL uses the average hourly earnings in the professional and business services industry of $28.28 per hour to monetize this burden.  See The Employment Situation—February 2020, DOL, Bureau of Labor Statistics, https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/empsit.pdf at page 38.

1,800 hours x $28.28 = $50,904

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: 90 respondents, 90 responses, 1,800 hours, $0 other cost burden.

Supplemental Supporting Statement B: Statistical Methods

This information collection does not employ statistical methods.

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