This paper has been prepared to assist the United States Department of Labor to explore new approaches to evaluating and measuring the performance of employment and training activities for youth. As one of several tools for evaluating success of local youth training programs, "benchmarking" provides a system for measuring the development of those trained with Comprehensive Employment and Training Act (CETA) funds. The paper consists of five sections. Section 1 contains definitions and a discussion of the terms and concepts involved in any consideration of benchmarking. Section 2 provides a historical overview of the development of competency measures in the secondary education and vocational education systems, along with the Consolidated Youth Employment Program (CYEP) experience with benchmarking. In section 3, a number of issues that should be considered before a benchmarking system is designed are discussed, and the importance of developing benchmarks in conjunction with local employers is emphasized. Section 4 focuses on the problems that could be encountered in implementing a benchmarking system. The final section contains a brief listing of the qualities one would expect to find in an exemplary benchmarking system. (A large portion of the research on which this paper is based was generated as part of the "knowledge development" program of the recent youth experimental and demonstration efforts.) (KC)