WIA mandates that performance measures be defined, tracked, and reported. The mandated measures include job placement rates, retention rates, and earnings gains. Community leaders and state officials may track additional measures that provide broader and earlier indicators of workforce system outcomes for businesses, and jobseekers, in order to evaluate economic and educational vitality, community opportunity, or other desired outcomes. For example, education or training achievement is highly correlated to future employment and is an early indicator of success, but it is rarely measured. Tracking such benchmarks can be particularly helpful for showing progress with hard-to-place populations, such as returning prisoners. (See Policy Statement 3, Incorporating Re-Entry into Organizations' Missions and Work Plans, for more on performance measures that provide incentives for workforce staff to assist released prisoners seeking employment.)

The process of determining local performance measures and performance outcomes should be transparent and readily available to the public. The performance results for each participating program should also be open for review, as businesses, workers, and jobseekers all need to know what services work. Further, taxpayers should be informed of the extent to which the expenditure of public funds yields outcomes beneficial to the community.

Providers and other partners that do not meet performance standards or advance the system's goals and objectives should receive technical assistance to improve their service delivery. If these organizations or individuals do not achieve better results, they should be sanctioned and ultimately dropped from the public workforce system. Funds should be tied to performance measurements which account for the particular challenges of working in different communities. Indeed, WIA permits job candidates to use training vouchers to select industry-recognized training or education programs that have been designated eligible training providers by local WIBs and the state because they have proven results.