CEO Library

Career pathways approaches to workforce development offer articulated education and training steps between occupations in an industry sector, combined with support services, to enable individuals to enter and exit at various levels and to advance over time to higher skills, recognized credentials, and better jobs with higher pay. The U.S.

The rapid rise of career pathways strategies nationally, including an emphasis on them in the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA), creates a critical need for sound evidence that shows what works well, why, under what circumstances and for whom. The WIOA legislation requires the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) to “conduct a multistate study to develop, implement, and build upon career advancement models and practices for low-wage health care providers or providers of early education and child care” (29 U.S. Code § 3224(b)(4)(I)).

Appendix to the Career Pathways Evaluation Design Options Report that provides evaluation and data source exhibits.

The brief describes Linking to Employment Activities Pre-Release (LEAP) participants’ experiences, their impressions of the staff they encountered, and their suggestions for improvement, based on data from 18 pre-release and 9 post-release focus groups. Of the 3,110 LEAP participants enrolled as of June 2017, 104 attended the focus groups.

To inform future research on career pathways approaches, the U.S. Department of Labor’s (DOL) Chief Evaluation Office contracted with Abt Associates to understand the state of the field and develop evaluation design options. Abt conducted knowledge development by scanning career pathways studies and initiatives implemented as of February 2017 and consulting with 44 experts, then created a menu of evaluation design options to answer priority research questions. The brief gives a short overview of the project’s four reports.

Synthesis Matrix to the Career Pathways Implementation Synthesis Report.

Reentering the community is a challenging transition for justice-involved individuals who often face numerous barriers in restarting their lives outside of jail. It is similarly challenging for service providers who aid them during this transition—recently released individuals become difficult to contact once outside, are spread over a larger geographic area, and face competing demands on their time.

Synthesis Matrix to the Career Pathways Research and Evaluation Synthesis Report.

The Linking to Employment Activities Pre-release (LEAP) grants sought to create a stronger linkage between pre- and post-release employment services for justice-involved individuals. Case management—coordinating services for and working directly with clients—is an important aspect of that linkage. In the LEAP sites, interactions with case managers played a role in shaping participants’ experiences with employment services in the jail, and their engagement.

The Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA) requires the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) to “conduct a multistate study to develop, implement, and build upon career advancement models and practices for low-wage healthcare providers or providers of early education and child care” (29 U.S. Code § 3224(b)(4)(I)).

As economic conditions change and the research literature evolves, there is a need to assess current best practices for serving today’s youth and consider how they could inform the Job Corps program.

People with disabilities experience significantly lower levels of labor force participation than people without disabilities in the United States. Despite the focus on work promotion among this population, comparatively less is known about the factors promoting job retention among contemporary cohorts of young workers with disabilities. This study utilizes data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 (NLSY97) to examine the following: How do job characteristics differ by disability status?

Job Corps, a program administered by the U.S. Department of Labor’s (DOL) Employment and Training Administration (ETA), is the nation’s largest and most comprehensive residential education and job training program for at-risk youth. Originally established by the Economic Opportunity Act of 1964, the program currently operates under the provisions of the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA), which was enacted in 2014. Studies of Job Corps have found promising results especially for older youth (Schochet et al. 2001).

Alternative Work Arrangements (AWAs) are contract forms commonly associated with less attachment, lower wages, and fewer worker benefits. Even though AWAs are theoretically cheaper for firms, they continue to account for only 10% of employment. The researcher explores why AWAs are not more widely used, given their purported economic benefit for firms. Legal rules suggest that while AWAs have lower fixed costs of employment, they may be less productive than standard employment and likely attract lower-type workers.

Research indicates that individuals of different races, ethnic backgrounds, and class origins tend to differ in their unemployment rates. We know less, however, about whether these differences result from the different groups’ unequal risks of entering or exiting unemployment, and even less about how economic fluctuations moderate the ethnoracial and class-origin gaps in the long term risks of transitioning into and out of unemployment.

Job Corps, a program administered by the U.S. Department of Labor’s (DOL) Employment and Training Administration (ETA), is the nation’s largest and most comprehensive residential education and job training program for at-risk youth. Originally established by the Economic Opportunity Act of 1964, the program currently operates under the provisions of the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA), which Congress enacted in 2014.

It has been a generation since the last systematic examination of Native socio-economic well-being. Since then, several important developments have proliferated across Indian country, including Indian gaming, energy projects, expanded social and health services, new forms of tribal governance, and the advent of tribal colleges.

The report examines the employer-based voluntary retirement system and explores a variety of potential changes through a three-part analysis:

This study includes a systematic review of existing evidence on the intersection of the opioid epidemic and workers’ compensation programs administered by public and private payers. The study will analyze existing evidence and identify innovative interventions and initiatives that may be relevant to the Federal Employees’ Compensation Act (FECA) client/customer population, and will develop research and evaluation design options for generating new evidence in the field.

The U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) has contracted with IMPAQ International and ideas to learn about the customer experience in American Job Centers (AJCs), and to identify ways to improve that experience. Developing an understanding about how job seekers and employer customers perceive their AJC experience, and then maximizing what makes a positive experience, should lead to improved outcomes in employment and other areas. As part of this exploratory study, the research team conducted a literature scan in fall 2015 on related key topics.

In 2018, the Chief Evaluation Office (CEO) funded Mathematica Policy Research to conduct Data on Earnings: A Review of Resources for Research under the Administrative Data Research and Analysis portfolio of studies. This secondary data review describes data sources on wages and earnings that may be used by researchers who wish to incorporate reports of earned income in their analyses but original data collection is not feasible.

In September 2015, the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) contracted with IMPAQ International and its partner ideas to conduct an exploratory study of the customer experience at American Job Centers (AJCs). The purpose of this study is threefold: 1) to learn more about the customer experience in AJCs, 2) to highlight promising practices in those AJCs, and 3) to produce a set of behavioral science-based strategies that could enhance the AJC customer experience.

The state-Federal system of Unemployment Insurance (UI) programs has existed for 80 years. The programs in the states are financed by employer payroll taxes paid into state trust fund accounts maintained at the U.S. Treasury. These accounts are the source for benefit payments made to eligible unemployed workers.

As investors increasingly consider environmental, social, and governance (ESG) factors when selecting and managing investments, questions about ESG’s relevance to retirement investing have grown commensurately. With this growth comes greater interest to understand if and to what extent ESG investing might affect American workers' retirement prospects.