Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP): Employment and Training Program Monitoring, Oversight and Reporting Measures

<RULE> DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE <SUBAGY>Food and Nutrition Service</SUBAGY> <CFR>7 CFR Parts 271 and 273</CFR> <DEPDOC>[FNS-2016-0037]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 0584-AE33</RIN> <SUBJECT>Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP): Employment and Training Program Monitoring, Oversight and Reporting Measures</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Food and Nutrition Service (FNS), USDA. <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Final rule. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> The final rule implements the employment and training (E&T) provisions of the Agricultural Act of 2014. This section provided the Department additional oversight authority of State agencies' administration of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) E&T program; required the Department to develop reporting measures and required State agencies to report outcome data to the Department. It also required the Department to monitor and assess State agencies' effectiveness of E&T programs and provided the Department with the authority to require State agencies to make improvements to their programs as necessary. Finally, State agencies are required to submit reports on the impact of certain E&T components, and in certain States, the E&T services provided to able-bodied adults without dependents (ABAWDs). The final rule will strengthen the E&T program through the collection of information to determine the overall effectiveness of the E&T program in reaching the goal of assisting participants in obtaining the skills necessary to obtain and retain employment. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> <E T="03">Effective date:</E> This rule will become effective January 17, 2025. <E T="03">Implementation date:</E> State agencies must implement all provisions of this rule no later than October 1, 2025. </EFFDATE> <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Marcie Foster, Food and Nutrition Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture, 1320 Braddock Place, 5th Floor, Alexandria, VA 22314, <E T="03">Marcie.Foster@usda.gov.</E> Phone: (703) 305-2930. </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">List of Acronyms or Abbreviations Used in This Supplementary Discussion</HD> In the discussion of the provisions in this rule, the following acronyms or abbreviations stand in for certain words or phrases: <GPOTABLE COLS="2" OPTS="L2,tp0,i1" CDEF="s200,r50"> <TTITLE> </TTITLE> <CHED H="1">Phrase</CHED> <CHED H="1">Acronym, abbreviation or symbol</CHED> <ROW> <ENT I="01">Able-bodied Adults without Dependents</ENT> <ENT>ABAWDs</ENT> </ROW> <ROW> <ENT I="01">Code of Federal Regulations</ENT> <ENT>CFR</ENT> </ROW> <ROW> <ENT I="01">Employment and Training</ENT> <ENT>E&T</ENT> </ROW> <ROW> <ENT I="01">Federal Register</ENT> <ENT I="01">Food and Nutrition Act of 2008, as amended</ENT> <ENT>The Act</ENT> </ROW> <ROW> <ENT I="01">Food and Nutrition Service</ENT> <ENT>FNS</ENT> </ROW> <ROW> <ENT I="01">Secretary of the U.S. Department of Agriculture</ENT> <ENT>Secretary</ENT> </ROW> <ROW> <ENT I="01">Section (when referring to Federal Regulations)</ENT> <ENT>§ </ENT> </ROW> <ROW> <ENT I="01">Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program</ENT> <ENT>SNAP</ENT> </ROW> <ROW> <ENT I="01">U.S. Department of Agriculture</ENT> <ENT>The Department</ENT> </ROW> <ROW> <ENT I="01">U.S. Department of Labor</ENT> <ENT>DOL</ENT> </ROW> <ROW> <ENT I="01">Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act</ENT> <ENT>WIOA</ENT> </ROW> </GPOTABLE> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Summary Overview</HD> The final rule implements the E&T provisions of section 4022(a)(2) of the Agricultural Act of 2014 (Pub. L. 113-79). The Department published an interim final rule (IFR) on March 24, 2016 (81 FR 15613), that became effective May 23, 2016, and received 43 comments, 36 of which were substantive. After the release of the IFR the Department conducted various activities to provide guidance to State agencies on the implementation of the reporting measures. These activities included release of an implementation memo, two-part series of questions and answers and a webinar. <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>  Interim rule: SNAP Employment and Training Program Monitoring, Oversight and Reporting Measures ( <E T="03">https://www.fns.usda.gov/snap/fr-032416</E> ). </FTNT> The final rule incorporates changes from the interim final rule that includes specifying the information the Department will use in assessing the effectiveness of State's E&T programs; adding educational reporting measures for attainment of a credential or certificate and measurable skill gains; reporting of employment and earnings measures and educational measures by distinct participant characteristics, such as by race and/or ethnicity; and adding reporting measures for States operating mandatory E&T programs. The final rule also changes the due date of the State agency's submission of the E&T Annual Report from January 1 to April 15. The final rule establishes information sources that the Food and Nutrition Service (FNS) will use for assessing the effectiveness of E&T programs in preparing E&T participants for employment, including skill attainment and employment retention. The rule specifies the authority of FNS to require a State agency to modify its SNAP E&T State Plan to improve outcomes if determined through an assessment that the E&T outcomes are inadequate. The final rule requires State agencies to identify an outcome reporting measure for every component that is designed to serve at least 100 participants a year in annual E&T State Plan. The final rule also requires State agencies to submit an E&T Annual Report by April 15 each year that contains the following: • Employment and earnings reporting measures that consist of four consecutive quarters of data from the two previous Federal Fiscal Years (FFY); • Educational reporting measures that consist of data from the FFY ending the preceding September 30th; • Employment and earnings reporting measures and educational reporting measures for each of the seven (7) participant characteristics; • States that serve mandatory E&T participants will report on the number of SNAP participants required to participate in E&T and referred to E&T and the number and percentage of SNAP participants that were deemed ineligible for SNAP benefits due to failure to comply with E&T requirements; • Number and percentage of E&T participants for the FFY ending the preceding September 30th by nine (9) participant characteristics; • Component measures identified in the States' E&T State Plan for components that are designed to serve at least 100 participants a year; and • States that have committed to offering at-risk ABAWDs, defined as an able-bodied adult without dependents who are at risk of losing SNAP eligibility due to time-limited participation, a slot in a qualifying activity and received an additional allocation of funds will report on: ○ The monthly average number of individuals in the State who meet the conditions of an at-risk ABAWD: ○ The number of individuals the State offers a position in a work program or workfare program; ○ The monthly average number of individuals who participate in such programs; and ○ A description of the types of employment and training programs the State agency offered to at-risk ABAWDs and the availability of those programs throughout the State. The final rule specifies that State agencies may be required to submit the E&T Annual Report in a standardized format specified by FNS. The final rule will also reinstate regulatory language in 7 CFR 273.24(a) for the definition of a workfare program for the purposes of meeting the ABAWD work requirement. This definition was inadvertently removed during a prior rulemaking. The Department would note that this final rule does not address any changes to ABAWD work requirements as a result of the Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2023 (Pub. L. 118-5). Those changes will be addressed through separate rulemaking. The Department discusses the changes from the interim final rule, as well as a summary of comments and explanation of each of the final regulatory changes in more detail below. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Summary of Changes From Interim Final Rule</HD> • The interim final rule codified the authority of FNS to require a State agency to modify its E&T State Plan to improve outcomes. The final rule includes language that specifies the information sources that FNS will utilize in assessing the effectiveness of a State's E&T program. • The interim final rule specified a January 1 due date for State agencies' submission of the E&T Annual Report. The final rule changes that due date to April 15. • The interim final rule established a reporting measure for the completion of an educational, training, work experience or on-the-job training component. The final rule removes and replaces this measure with two educational measures aligned with Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (Pub. L. 113-128) (WIOA) programs, for attainment of a credential or certificate, and measurable skill gains. • The interim final rule required State agencies to disaggregate each of the reporting measures by four (4) key participant characteristics, <E T="03">e.g.,</E> of the 100 E&T participants in unsubsidized employment in the second quarter after completion of participation in E&T, 90 had the characteristic of a mandatory E&T participant. The final rule modifies this disaggregation by requiring the reporting of the employment, earnings, and educational measures for each of the key participant characteristics, <E T="03">e.g.,</E> of the 90 mandatory E&T participants who completed participation in E&T, 60 mandatory E&T participants are in unsubsidized employment in the second quarter after completion of participation in E&T. The final rule also ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 163k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━