For young people in the United States, whatever their backgrounds, one of the essential purposes of schooling should be to help them develop the knowledge, skills, and competence needed to search for and obtain work that they find at least reasonably satisfying. Our present educational system does precious little to introduce young people to the…

In the United States, we tend to assume that young people should become educated and then go to work, as though the two were entirely separate stages of life. This dichotomy blinds us to the fact that work itself can be a powerful means of education. Indeed, the workplace is where many young people become most engaged in learning high-level skills…

With funding from the Joyce and Lumina foundations, Jobs for the Future (JFF) launched Credentials that Work to help postsecondary institutions, regions, and states align their occupational training programs to changing market demands. This initiative incorporates innovations in real-time labor market information in guiding institutions to better…

At a time of sustained unemployment and sluggish job growth, students and policymakers are increasingly asking tough questions about postsecondary education and training outcomes. Do graduates find jobs? What are they paid? What will they earn in the future? Despite growing national interest in this information, good answers are not widely…

Governors are increasingly aware that the emerging economy will provide few well-paying jobs for workers who have not earned a postsecondary degree or a relevant workforce certificate. Fifty years ago, nearly 80 percent of all jobs required only a high school diploma or less and most paid a good wage. Fast-forward to data from 2013 and that number…

Labor market economists argue that it is difficult to fit occupations into a few skill categories, but most will agree that there are at least three. In this schema, high-skill occupations are those in the professional/technical and managerial categories. Low-skill occupations are in the traditional, in-person service and agricultural categories.…

America is daily bombarded with reminders about how rough current economic times are, particularly in workforce development. Headlines scream, "Highest unemployment rate in 26 years" and "Jobs not likely to recover to pre-recession levels until 2012." In such an environment, it is easy to lose sight of serious underlying conditions affecting the…

As the nation, bogged in recession, focuses on job creation and economic growth for relief, attention has turned to education as the key to building a workforce to fill current and future job needs. However, to the surprise of some, much of the discussion involves community colleges, rather than traditional four-year, degree-granting universities…

Dramatic changes in the labor market in the United States over the past 50 years have raised tremendous concern that many of the nation's youth are unprepared for the labor force. Policymakers and youth advocates are looking for strategies to improve the education system so that fewer youth drop out of high school and more have the skills and…

The community college environment is complex and dynamic, requiring constant monitoring. To ensure that workforce education, a core component of community colleges' missions, remains aligned with colleges' environments, responsive to employers' needs, suited to students' interests and abilities, and current in content and technology, it is…

This first of five annual reports focuses on employment and wages in energy and advanced manufacturing--related industries and on science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education indicators in the Appalachia Partnership Initiative (API) region. Together, these reports will capture trends over the next four years to (1) inform the…

This study explores the differences among California's counties and regions in their needs for new school-site administrators in the coming decade, as driven by a combination of projected administrator retirements and projected student enrollment changes. The projected need for new school-site administrators, based solely on these combined…

Eric Pickles, Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, has said his three priorities in office will be "localism, localism and localism". What does localism mean for local democracy and, with swingeing funding cuts in the offing, what can one do to ensure the relevance of adult learning to the localism agenda is…

Purpose: UK government strategies for higher education (HE) continue to emphasise the promotion and enhancement of students' employability skills and subsequent graduate opportunities. The purpose of this paper is to explore what this means for those HE learners already in work. Design/methodology/approach: The paper presents the findings of a…

This is a report of the first year of a three-year project entitled "Vocations: the link between post-compulsory education and the labour market." The project's aim is to research how pathways can be improved within education, within work, and between education and work. There are three strands in the project; the first strand is…