There is a longstanding debate about whether helping welfare recipients quickly find work or helping them to first obtain some basic education and training better improves their economic well-being. This brief contributes to the debate by presenting long-term findings from three sites in the seven-site National Evaluation of Welfare-to-Work…

WorkAdvance is a sectoral workforce development program designed to meet the needs of workers and employers alike. For unemployed and low-wage working adults, the program provides skills training in targeted sectors that have good-quality job openings with room for advancement within established career pathways. For employers in those sectors,…

In the past four decades, profound changes in the U.S. economy--including falling wages, widening inequality, and the polarization of jobs at the top and bottom of the education and wage distributions--have had dramatic implications for the labor-market fortunes of young adults. Only about half of young people ages 16 to 24 held jobs in 2014, and…

Between 2000 and 2003, the Employment Retention and Advancement (ERA) project identified and implemented a diverse set of innovative models designed to promote employment stability and wage or earnings progression among low-income individuals, mostly current or former welfare recipients. The project's goal was to determine which strategies could…

Succeeding in the labor market depends now more than ever on having the right education and training. This reality poses a particular challenge for out-of-school youth, who are no longer connected to institutions designed to provide them with training and connect them to good jobs. The Center for Employment Training (CET) in San Jose, California,…