The Obama Administration released a new job skills report to coincide with the signing of the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act on Tuesday. The report reviewed federal employment and training programs to make them more job-driven and relevant to the expanding fields of technology and health care, and the act will reform the nation's job training programs.

The review was announced in Obama's 2014 State of the Union Address. According to the report the federal government spends $17 billion on employment and training programs a year, compared to U.S. employers who spend 25 times that on training, $450 billion.

Vice President Joe Biden worked with Secretary of Labor Tom Perez and Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker and Secretary of Education Arne Duncan on the report with review from Cabinet secretaries and discussions with state officials, business leaders and community workforce experts.

The 76 page report, "Ready to Work: Job-Driven Training and American Opportunity," is being released as President Obama signs the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act, which will help improve business engagement and accountability across federally funded training programs.

For the review, Biden's team identified three problems: Employers said they could not find skilled workers to hire for in-demand jobs in order to grow their businesses; education and training programs were not matching the needs of changing industries; and Americans needed more information about what training programs would help them secure jobs now and in the future.

Federal training programs are used every year by 21 million Americans, which include veterans, recently laid-off and longer term unemployed workers, youth and adults lacking basic skills, Americans with disabilities and those seeking new skills. Some of the innovative plans -- some of which already have begun -- are as follows:

  • Competitive grants of $950 million job driven industry partnership providing job training programs for youth, long-term unemployed and displaced workers
  • Expanding Apprenticeships by making $100 million available to high-growth industries
  • Using a job checklist to ensure that job training funds are leading to successful practices

The report identified that American youth and adults lacking basic skills make up a significant part of the U.S. labor forced. U.S. adults between the ages of 16 and 65, 36 million have low literacy skills, and 62 million have low numeracy skills.

The report identified those lower-skilled Americans as one-third under the age of 35, one-third are immigrants, more than half are black or Latino and two-thirds of the young population, ages 16-24, are young men. Lacking those skills makes it difficult to get promoted no matter how reliable or motivated a worker might be. And according to the report, "The current federally funded adult education system reaches fewer than 2 million adults each year."

To solve this problem, the report says the Department of Education "will require States to address how to incorporate 'employability skills' development in the $564 million Adult Education program, which provides basic education and English literacy skills to 1.7 million out-of-school youth and adults every year."