The authors of these five essays explore the extent to which young people from socioeconomically disadvantaged backgrounds achieve steady, decent-paying employment by their early thirties. Using multivariate analysis, they identify factors predicting membership to four different earnings groups. Factors associated with membership in one or both of the higher-earning groups include higher education, military service, union membership, job-related training, and working in a non-service sector occupation at age 25. Factors associated with belonging to a lower-earning group include incarceration, work-limiting health conditions, and prolonged unemployment.

Through an analysis of the largest public datasets on U.S. occupational roles, skills, wages, and workers, this report discusses research findings of a study which identifies a talent pool of 71 million workers who are Skilled Through Alternative Routes (STARs). Its findings conclude that low-wage does not equate to low skill, STARs represent a vast overlooked pool of talent, and STARs have different trajectories to increase wages.

This white paper highlights several important trends in the labor market that continue to affect the nature of work. Based on these trends, it presents potential research topics in program areas that include job search and career counseling, education and training, and support for workers who have lost their jobs or work outside the traditional employer-employee model.

How did the COVID-19 pandemic impact the childcare workforce? This brief analyzes Illinois employment data through 2020 to gain insights on the impact of the global pandemic on childcare workers, who historically have received low wages and experienced high burnout rates. The brief noted that the lowest paid-workers were most likely to experience employment disruptions in 2020, and 42% of workers in the pandemic cohort received unemployment insurance in 2020, compared to less than 3% of the pre-pandemic cohort.

According to Gallup, the gig labor economy is different from the traditional full-time job market in that it includes independent contractors, online platform workers, contract firm workers, on-call workers and temporary workers. This article briefly answers the following questions about the gig economy: What is the gig economy? How popular is the gig economy? Why is gig work trending? Will the gig economy grow? How does the gig economy benefit employers?

Stable employment helps build a solid foundation for youth as they enter adulthood. Some youth involved in the justice system—especially for serious offenses—may face increased barriers to finding and securing employment. This blogpost features the results from a national scan of workforce programs that identify strategies that may help overcome these challenges. The research identifies common features of quality community-based workforce development programs that serve youth and young adults with criminal or juvenile records. The scan also notes common program offerings, promising practices, and marks of a supportive infrastructure. The information collected helps identify the kinds of organizational structures, partnerships and collaboration that are essential to helping young people with records succeed in the workforce.

The Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation (ASPE) convened an interagency workgroup of key HHS experts in overdose prevention and substance use disorders to develop a new strategy to address the evolving nature of the broadened overdose crisis. The Overdose Prevention Strategy includes four priority areas: 

1) Primary prevention, 2)  Harm reduction, 3) Evidence-based treatment, 4) Recovery support

This issue brief discusses the Strategy in greater detail, including the objectives under each priority area, associated activities, and guiding principles. 

For additional resources, see the PeerTA Resource Library for reports, research-to-practice briefs, toolkits, fact/tip sheets, and stakeholder resources as well as webinars that address the overdose crisis, substance use, and related supportive services.

The pressures that mothers of young children have faced over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic have been well documented. While inequities persist in many aspects of women’s lives, some of the stickier problems for women stem from the difficult choices they face in reconciling competing demands on their time. This report reviews trends in women’s labor force participation and document how mothers of children under age 13 have changed how they spend their time. In this set of economic facts, we detail some of the ways in which work, time, and caregiving have changed for mothers with young children from before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic through 2020 until early 2021. This report relies on Federal data and the Survey of Mothers with Young Children.

Women experiencing poverty are more likely to face intimate partner violence (IPV), poor health, and stigma, and IPV survivors are overrepresented among those participating in TANF. This research article explores the impact of TANF on women’s wellbeing through in-depth, semi-structured interviews during the COVID-19 pandemic with 13 women who had TANF experience in three U.S. states. The article concludes with findings to demonstrate how increasing TANF cash benefits and other cash transfers for those experiencing poverty, adopting solely state funded TANF programs, increasing funding for TANF administration, addressing TANF stigma and racialized narratives, and allowing optional child support participation or a larger “pass-through” of child support are important steps toward making TANF more protective against IPV.

This bulletin for child welfare professionals overviews the foundational elements of the family engagement approach and offers strategies and promising practices for implementing it. While the resource is intended to provide information for frontline caseworkers who directly engage families, it also provides information about family engagement at the system, program, and community levels, as best practices are grounded in these higher levels of the child welfare system.