What VTEPP Is

VTEPP is a legislative framework proposing a targeted jobs guarantee for Virginia, designed to provide employment pathways for individuals facing barriers to traditional labor markets. The program draws on decades of jobs guarantee research and policy diffusion literature — examining how state-level pilots have historically shaped national policy adoption — to build a Virginia-specific model grounded in both economic evidence and legislative feasibility.

How VTEPP Works

VTEPP establishes the Commonwealth as an employer of last resort for any Virginia resident, age 18 or older, who is willing to work but can't secure employment through the private market. There's no means test and no barrier-deservingness assessment — enrollment itself demonstrates willingness to work.

The program operates through a three-tier employer-of-record structure:

• Tier 1 — Direct Public Employment: placements with the Commonwealth or localities — parks maintenance, weatherization, eldercare support, tutoring, library staffing, and disaster response readiness. This tier includes an unconditional "pool assignment" backstop, guaranteeing a placement always exists.

• Tier 2 — Public Partners: placements with school divisions, public universities, and regional authorities under VTEPP wage terms.

• Tier 3 — Private & Nonprofit Employers: wage-reimbursed placements with anti-displacement protections, targeting industries with documented hiring shortages.

Participants earn the Virginia minimum wage plus $3/hour (indexed automatically — $18.00/hour by 2028), receive standard state-employee benefits, and are covered under standard W-2 employment. Participation runs on a 24+12 month structure: a 24-month base period with a possible 12-month extension for participants actively pursuing credentials, employer transition pipelines, or barrier resolution — capped at 36 months total, followed by a one-year reentry wait.

Every participant works with a dedicated job coach under a supported-employment framework — performance issues route to coaching and reassignment first, not discipline. VTEPP is designed to complement, not duplicate, existing Virginia workforce programs like G3 and VCCS credentialing.

Why Virginia, Why Now?

Virginia's labor market looks strong on the surface — a 3.7% unemployment rate, among the best in the country. But that headline number hides a deeper story. Labor force participation has been quietly declining, and Virginia's broader U-6 measure of underutilization — capturing the unemployed, the underemployed, and those who've stopped looking — runs roughly twice the headline rate. An estimated 40,000+ Virginians have been jobless long-term. And the gap is geographically uneven: some localities sit under 3% unemployment while others run above 10%, concentrated in Southside and Southwest Virginia, the Eastern Shore, and specific independent cities.

These Virginians don't disappear from the Commonwealth's ledger. The costs show up in unemployment insurance, Medicaid, SNAP, housing assistance, and lost tax revenue — diffuse, rarely counted as a single line item, but real. VTEPP's premise is straightforward: employment for these Virginians costs less than continued idleness, once the accounting is honest on both sides.

Veteran Provisions

VTEPP includes specific provisions for veterans, framed as an honoring of earned veterans' preference rather than as a separate accommodation track: expedited 7-day intake, military-to-civilian skill translation, priority placement pipelines into public safety, emergency management, and veteran-serving roles, and veteran-specific extension pathways — all without extending the program's 36-month cap.

Pilot & Path Forward

VTEPP is proposed for a three-region pilot — Hampton Roads, Richmond, and a Southside/Southwest Virginia region — scaling from roughly 200 participants in Year 1 to 900 by Year 3, with milestone-contingent funding giving the General Assembly an off-ramp at each budget cycle. Total estimated pilot cost across three years is approximately $90 million, with implementation led by Virginia Works.