29 U.S.C. § 49b — Duties of Secretary

(a) Assistance to State public employment service offices — The Secretary helps coordinate state public employment service offices nationwide and makes them more useful, by setting minimum efficiency standards, helping offices handle local problems, making their paperwork and statistics consistent across states, publishing job-opportunity and other useful information, and running a system that lets labor move between states. (b) Provision of unemployment compensation information — The Secretary must make sure state unemployment insurance and employment offices, when asked, share certain information from their files with specific government agencies — an agency running welfare programs under part A of title IV of the Social Security Act, an agency handling child-support enforcement under part D of that Act, or a state agency running the SNAP (food stamp) program. When asked, they must (and are legally allowed to) share, about a named individual: (1) whether that person is getting, has gotten, or has applied for unemployment compensation, and how much; (2) that person's most recent home address; and (3) whether that person has turned down a job offer, and if so, details about the job and its pay and terms. (c) Public labor exchange services — The Secretary must: (1) help build and coordinate a nationwide system of public job-matching services offered through states' one-stop customer service systems; (2) help develop ways to keep improving that system so private employers are satisfied and job seekers' needs are met, and share best practices; (3) make sure people eligible for unemployment compensation get reemployment services and other required activities; and (4) work with state agencies to help their staff grow professionally and advance their careers, so they can better provide career guidance, find job openings (including reaching out to small and medium employers), train other workforce staff, and develop new ways to combine counseling with technology. (d) Colocation of employment service offices and one-stop centers — To improve services, avoid duplicated work, and coordinate better — including making sure underserved areas statewide have access to services under section 49f(a) — each state's employment service offices must be located together with its one-stop centers. (e) Development of national electronic tools — The Secretary, working with the states, may help states build national online tools that improve people's access to workforce information, through the one-stop delivery systems described in section 3151(e) of this title and through any other delivery systems the Secretary thinks are appropriate.