On April 2, 2024, the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) announced the award of $10.5 million to fund the first year of four, five-year cooperative agreements aimed at developing strategies to assist youth and young adults with disabilities — particularly in underserved communities — in successfully transitioning into the workforce. This DOL news releasee announces that Connecticut DOL, Kansas Department of Commerce, Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development, and the New York DOL received the awards.

The application of lived experience to various aspects of program and policy development is ascendant in the social sector, but the evidence base hasn’t caught up. This Center for Behavioral Design and Social Justice report examines the benefits of including people with social service systems experience in designing, implementing and evaluating policies and programs. It highlights the role of “intersectional professionals” — individuals who have both personal and professional experience with the child welfare, juvenile justice and other human service systems.

More than half of community college students nationwide intend to pursue a four-year degree; however, in Texas only one in four community college students transfer to four-year institutions successfully. To improve transfer rates and, ultimately, bachelor’s degree attainment, the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board (THECB) launched the Texas Transfer Grant Pilot Program with money provided by the U.S. Department of Education’s Governor’s Emergency Education Relief Fund. MDRC evaluated the pilot program to build evidence about its efficacy and help inform future THECB decisions about the program. This brief provides findings about the pilot program’s impact on students’ enrollment and academic outcomes at Texas four-year institutions during the fall 2022 and spring 2023 semesters—two semesters after students initially received the fall 2022 transfer grant.

Work Success is a novel program for adults with low incomes. It combines intensive group and individual coaching with workshops on topics such as resume writing, job search strategies, and interviewing skills. The Office of Planning, Research, and Evaluation (OPRE) is sponsoring an evaluation of Work Success as part of the Next Generation of Enhanced Employment Strategies Project. Mathematica is conducting this evaluation to explore the program’s implementation and its impact on the well-being of study participants. This OPRE report describes the design and analysis plan for the impact study of Work Success. It discusses employment coaching and explains why Work Success is expected to affect participants’ employment and economic security.

While the financial security of U.S. households is frequently studied, comparatively little research focuses on the economics of American Indian and Alaska Native (AIAN) households specifically. The Center for Indian Country Development is helping to fill this gap with new analysis of a key annual survey of American households: the Federal Reserve’s Survey of Household Economics and Decision-making (SHED). This Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis resource highlights:

• Statistical techniques that enable an AIAN-focus;
• Results detailing AIAN respondents’ financial security; and
• Persistent barriers to economic opportunity for AIAN households.

In 2023, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine released a report on reducing intergenerational poverty. Jesse Rothstein, a member of the committee that developed the report, is on the Institute for Research on Poverty’s newest podcast episode to share the research and findings on several of the key drivers of intergenerational poverty. In this episode, Rothstein discusses policy approaches that may help to interrupt the poverty cycle and why that matters.

While there are many ways to structure direct cash programs, this EMPATH paper focuses on guaranteed income: monthly, no-strings-attached infusions of meaningful amounts of money. This paper shares highlights from interviews with eight social service organizations around the country that are implementing guaranteed income in tandem with an economic mobility coaching approach.

The Administration for Children and Families (ACF) promotes the economic and social well-being of children, families, and communities across the country. As part of their mission, ACF actively listens to and engages with those it serves to ensure the compassionate and effective delivery of human services. The ACF Parent Engagement Report summarizes recent listening sessions ACF held with parents and caregivers from diverse backgrounds who have a range of experiences with ACF programs. The report shares a glimpse into the insights that parents shared from each of these listening sessions and highlights a few examples of how ACF has been and continues to be responsive to their feedback and recommendations.

Case management is a service delivery approach in which staff meet with clients to provide direct, personalized one-on-one support to improve a comprehensive set of outcomes related to employment, education, housing, health, and public benefit receipt. This Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation resource describes the effectiveness of programs that were identified by the Pathways Clearinghouse as using case management as their primary service. It summarizes what we know about these programs and their impacts so Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) and other program administrators, policymakers, researchers, and the public can apply the evidence to their context and the questions that matter to them.

With digital literacy quickly becoming essential for success in most personal, civic, educational, and career pursuits, adult educators across the country are searching for guidance on what digital skills to teach. In a national landscape scan for the Digital Resilience in the American Workforce project, numerous stakeholders—including adult educators, employers, and workforce experts—identified a need for common definitions and frameworks for digital skills. This EdTech Center resource provides the requested definitions and a compilation of digital skill frameworks.