CEO Library

To systematically document key characteristics and features of American Job Centers (AJCs), Mathematica and its partners—Social Policy Research Associates, The George Washington University, and Capital Research Corporation—conducted the America Job Centers’ Institutional Analysis for the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL).

Earnings are a key outcome in evaluating the impact of job training and other employment- oriented assistance programs. Adequate and sustained earnings provide a reliable measure of success for these interventions and contribute to other positive outcomes as well. Accordingly, high quality data on the income earned from employment—including self-employment—are an essential component of any analysis that seeks to understand the consequences of participating in an employment-assistance program.

The compendium presents a summary of findings from the planning and implementation phases of the Linking to Employment Activities Pre-Release (LEAP) pilots, and includes 10 issue briefs organized around key themes that emerged during the evaluation of LEAP.

To help individuals successfully reenter society after time in jail, the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) awarded $10 million in grants to 20 local workforce development boards (LWDBs) in June 2015 for the Linking to Employment Activities Pre-Release (LEAP) initiative. Central to the LEAP initiative was creating jail-based American Job Centers (AJCs) with direct linkages to community-based AJCs. A complex array of factors including jail and local community characteristics influenced the development and operations of jail-based AJCs as well as the experiences and outcomes of participants.

Executive summary of the Developing American Job Centers in Jails: Implementation of the Linking to Employment Activities Pre-Release (LEAP) Grants Final Report.

The brief discusses how jail-based American Job Center (AJC) staff assessed inmates’ needs and goals, prepared employment and service plans, and delivered services to address participants’ barriers before their transition to the community and the workforce.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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)).

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

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

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)).

Synthesis Matrix to the Career Pathways Implementation Synthesis Report.

The rapid rise of career pathways strategies, including an emphasis on them in the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA), creates a need for more evidence on this approach. The U.S. Department of Labor (DOL), Chief Evaluation Office contracted with Abt Associates to conduct the Career Pathways Design Study, to develop evaluation design options that could address critical gaps in knowledge related to the approach, implementation, and success of career pathways strategies generally, and in early care and education (ECE) specifically.

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).

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.