UI Profiling Update

In the early 1990s Kentucky developed and implemented a Worker Profiling and Reemployment Services (WPRS) system to allocate services to the newly unemployed and to track their progress towards reemployment. Changing economic conditions and new priorities in the late 1990s reduced the need for allocating services based on the profiles, and the system has since been used mostly for its tracking components. Further changes in procedures and improvements in technology have made even the tracking component of the system somewhat redundant. The need for a profiling system has not disappeared however. The states are still obligated under PL 103-152 to have and use such a system if it should become necessary to allocate or ration scarce services or resources such as funds for personal reemployment accounts. Since the original Kentucky system was developed there has been considerable research done (a not insignificant part of which was based on data generated by the Kentucky system) both academically and by U.S. and foreign governments on both the methods and effectiveness of profiling. Based on a quick survey of some of this research, it is quite possible that Kentucky's profiling system can be improved and simplified considerably. The University of Kentucky Center for Business and Economic Research (CBER) developed Kentucky's original statistical profiling model and the tracking system to utilize it and has since participated in some of the research on the results of the use of this system. CBER is offering again, in consultation with Unemployment Services and the U.S. DOL, to develop an updated (if appropriate) or redesigned Profiling System and to assist the state in integrating the results of this system into their CUITentoperating procedures and systems.