Assistance program
Work Opportunity Tax Credit Program (WOTC)
$171.4 Million committed in FY2018–FY2026
- Agency
- Employment and Training Administration, Labor, Department of
- Assistance
- Formula Grants
- CFDA number
- 17.271
- What it does
- This federal tax credit was designed to help individuals from certain targeted groups who consistently face significant barriers to employment move from economic dependency to self-sufficiency. Businesses are encouraged to hire targeted group members in order to claim the tax credit against wages paid to eligible new hire(s) during their first year of employment. WOTC joins other workforce programs that incentivize workplace diversity and facilitate access to good jobs for American workers.
- Who benefits
- Beneficiaries are all employers seeking to hire members of WOTC targeted groups, and members of those targeted groups seeking employment. The ten different targeted groups have statutory definitions (Public Law 104-188, as amended) with specific eligibility requirements that must be verified by the State Workforce Agency (SWA) before a WOTC certification can be issued to an employer. Participating employers and/or their authorized representatives must submit their certification requests to the appropriate SWA using IRS Form 8850 and ETA Form 9061/9062 within 28 calendar days of the new hire's start date. IRS Form 8850 should be submitted with ETA Form 9061/9062, and any required supporting documentation to prove targeted group eligibility.
- Who applies
- States (not individuals), the District of Columbia, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and Puerto Rico. The "designated local agency," also known as the State Workforce Agency (SWA), is the designated state employment security agency (established in accordance with the Wagner-Peyser Act of June 6, 1933, as amended (29 U.S.C. 49–49n)) authorized to administer the WOTC.
- Authorized by
- WOTC is authorized until December 31, 2025 (Section 113 of Title III, Division EE of P.L. 116-260 -- Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2021).
- Program site
- https://www.dol.gov/agencies/eta/wotc ↗
Committed by fiscal year
* FY2026 is year-to-date — the fiscal year is still in progress, so its total is still filling in. The striped band and dashed line mark that provisional stretch.
Top recipients
By dollars committed.
How to read these numbers
- Committed through this program
Money committed under this assistance listing (its CFDA program), counted in the year each action happened.
- How it's paid
Most programs pay out one way — a grant, or a direct payment to individuals; the flow bar only appears when a program genuinely mixes types.
- Some recipients aren't itemized
For entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare, the government reports one aggregate instead of naming tens of millions of people, so the recipient roster isn't part of the public record.
- Awards, counted once
An award count is the number of distinct awards with at least one action that year — each counted once, however many times it was amended.
- The colored bars
Every bar on this page splits by how the money moves:
Direct payments