Wnited States Senate WASHINGTON, DC 20510 March 16, 2016 The Honorable Thad Cochran Chairman Senate Committee on Appropriations S-128 United States Capitol Washington, D.C. 20510 ‘The Honorable Roy Blunt Chairman Senate Committee on Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education and Related Agencies SD-135 United States Senate Washington, D.C. 20510 ‘The Honorable Barbara A. Mikulski Vice Chairwoman Senate Committee on Appropriations S-146A United States Capitol Washington, D.C. 20510 ‘The Honorable Patty Murray Ranking Member Senate Committee on Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education and Related Agencies SD-156 United States Senate Washington, D.C. 20510 Dear Chairman Cochran, Vice Chairwoman Mikulski, Chairman Blunt and Ranking Member Murray, We respectfully request that as you begin drafting the Fiscal Year (FY) 2017 Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies (Labor-HHS) appropriations bill, you provide full funding for the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), including $1.6 million in funding to add an annual supplement to the Current Population Survey (CPS) to capture data on contingent work arrangements and $3 million for a survey on employer training. We also ask that you include specifie language aimed at improving data collection and assessing the true impact of new employment trends. Collecting this data is critical to understanding overall trends in our workforce, both for workers more traditional full-time employment, and for workers in contingent arrangements. In addition, this data will help us better understand specific parts of our economy that are rapidly changing. In recent years, we have seen an explosion in new technology and on-demand platforms that allow individuals to monetize their time, skills, cars and spare rooms in ways that have fundamentally altered this sector of the American labor force. We need new and better information so we can understand the potential policy ramifications when workers, whether by personal choice or economic necessity, are making living with no connection to a single employer, or without access to the benefits, training and worker protections typically provided through traditional full-time employment. ‘The Department of Labor (DOL) has not run the Contingent Worker and Alternative Work Arrangement Supplement (CWS), a survey which measures the size and scope of the contingent workforce, since 2005. We appreciate your efforts to work with members of Congress duringlast year's appropriations process to boost funding for the BLS by $17 million for FY2016, and to include language directing BLS to increase data collection and reporting on new trends in employment. We were further pleased to see that DOL recently announced it will run the CWS for the first time in over ten years in 2017. We urge you to continue and build on these efforts. The Administration’s FY2017 budget proposal includes $1.6 million in funding to add an annual supplement to the CPS and capture data on contingent work and alternative work arrangements biennially. In addition, the last time BLS conducted a survey of employer-provided or employer-financed employee training was in September 1995—more than 20 years ago. Reinstating this survey will help fill gaps in our knowledge about our workforce training system by providing a reliable sense of the extent to which employers provide or sponsor formal job skills training. We are pleased that the Administration’s FY2017 budget proposal includes $3 million for the first year of activities for a survey of employer-provided training. We urge you to support the ‘Administration's request and consider including report language instructing BLS to include on- demand platforms in the survey's sample population. Finally, we respectfully request that you include language directing BLS to increase data collection and reporting on new trends in employment in the FY2017 Labor-HHS appropriations bill. This sort of data collection and analysis will take time, and continued, annual surveys will inform our long-term solutions to the unique policy needs of this economy. Thank you in advance for your consideration of these provisions. These programs are of critical importance in providing us important data as we craft policy for the future American workforce. Mk R Mune, Mark Warner Elizab}th Warren Sherrod Brown Edyipey J. Mar] United States Senator Unffed State; States Senator United States Senator Hl Gu 4 Mecha, ; Richard Blumenthal Christopher S. Murphy United States Senator United States SenatorKirsten Gillibrand United StatesSenator United States Senator Bernard Sanders ry Booker United States Senator United States ——, Barbara By vf Al Franken United States Senator United States Senator Chris Coons enjamin L. Cardin United States Senator United States Senator