If some of these people had been working for the last year and a half they could have on the job training, which is sufficient for most positions.
That being said it was a bad idea to pay people not to work. Half of any job’s requirement is to show up on time and work for eight hours. If someone hasn’t done this in going on eighteen months that simple habit has been lost—momentum or lack thereof is the key.
The gov’t doesn’t want to solve the problem. In the late 1960’s, the Manpower Development and Training Act (MDTA) provided federal funds for programs to retrain unemployed people. Trenton (Newark??) was seeing abandoned properties as people fled to the suburbs. They created a program where the city let the trade unions repair the properties provided they took on apprentice workers from the unemployment pool. The city gave them funds for materials and the house to fix. When the project was finished, the city sold the houses to low income groups and used those funds to rehab the next set of houses. It was a win-win because the unions got new members, the unemployed got skilled jobs with good pay, and the city got to put the rehabbed houses on the tax roles. It was so successful, the Feds stepped in and killed the MDTA. No explanation given.