Black entrepreneurs face persistent systemic barriers to starting, maintaining, and growing businesses. Education, training, and workforce development organizations can be a source of support. This Urban Institute brief investigates how organizations within this space support Black business owners and help remove structural barriers.

HireAbility Vermont, Vermont’s state agency meant to help those with disabilities prepare for, obtain, and maintain meaningful careers, designed Vermont Career Advancement Project (VCAP) to address barriers to employment and encourage enrollment in training programs for high-wage occupations. VCAP will train more people for career pathways by connecting participants with programs and educational opportunities that result in a credential, postsecondary degree, or higher-paid job. This Mathematica brief describes how VCAP connects people with disabilities with opportunities for career training.

In 2023, the Department of Labor (DOL) launched the Youth Employment Works strategy to set a clear vision for young people in the workforce system and its public and private sector partners. This work is urgent and necessary to promote high quality career pathways for young workers to ensure they are prepared and empowered to engage in a dynamic labor market full of opportunities. This DOL resource lays out a roadmap for how they are aligning their programs and funds to advance this vision. The resource highlights additional links that provide guidance outlining promising practices for partnership and service delivery through the youth workforce system as well as the national Call to Action on Youth Employment.

The five-year initiative New Skills for Youth (NSFY) aimed to transform career readiness education and bridge the skills gap by supporting innovative strategies in 10 states across the United States. This Advance CTE report shares the successes and challenges of sustaining the work beyond the conclusion of the NSFY initiative, and through a global pandemic, in six of the states: Kentucky, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Ohio, Rhode Island, and Wisconsin. From the experiences of each of these states, the resource presents specific recommendations and action steps for state and local leaders on how to sustain career pathways for long-term success.

Most good jobs—those that provide a living wage—require some form of career-connected postsecondary education and training. And by 2027, 70% of jobs will require education or training beyond high school. The Department of Education (ED) is committed to working with state and local leaders to ensure every student has an onramp to college and to good jobs by reimagining how the nation’s high schools prepare all students to succeed and by providing students with accelerated and innovative opportunities to earn college credits and gain real-world professional experiences. 

This webpage, developed by Youth.gov and ED, describes ED’s strategies for ensuring every student has an onramp to college and to good jobs that provide a living wage. The webpage highlights programs and initiatives that focus on:

• Career success
• Dual enrollment
• Work-based learning
• Workforce credentials
• Career advising and navigation

The rise of higher education costs, greater visibility of successful individuals who have not completed degrees, advances in diverse education models like apprenticeships, and the growth of entrepreneurship have shown that earning a degree is not the only pathway. Despite these trends, there is still a persistent emphasis on funneling students toward traditional degree programs. This Jobs for the Future resource advocates for destigmatizing diverse education and training options, fostering educator-employer collaboration to create multiple skill-building avenues, and empowering individuals’ unique pathways to success.

Improving alignment between human services and family needs and goals has been a key area of focus for many state and local human services programs. Family advisory councils offer a unique opportunity to facilitate meaningful engagement with families served by public programs; gain family input on policies and practices that affect them; and ultimately, to help develop programs and policies that serve families successfully and equitably. In a National Association for Welfare Research and Statistics (NAWRS) virtual workshop, panelists will discuss their experiences developing, launching, and sustaining family advisory councils in policy and research. This virtual workshop is being hosted by the Institute for Research on Poverty on August 20, 2024 from 1:00 p.m. to 2:30 p.m. ET.

This Center for American Progress issue brief highlights resources that states can access to work toward closing the digital divide and promotes proactively addressing technological advancements to strengthen educational technology, ultimately increasing college and career readiness.

Owning a small business that employs others or being self-employed is an important avenue to economic empowerment for many people. This is particularly true for people with disabilities who may benefit from greater access, freedom and flexibility at work. This Department of Labor resource compares new Annual Business Survey data with existing statistics from the Current Population Survey, the primary source of labor-force statistics in the United States. This resource includes analysis of disabled business owners and self-employed workers to investigate differences by industry and age and trace changes over time.

Addressing childhood poverty poses a significant and multifaceted challenge, and is particularly pronounced in Puerto Rico, where high rates of poverty intertwine with systemic factors to contribute to elevated rates of underemployment and food insecurity. Two-generation (2Gen) approaches aim to address these complex challenges by recognizing the interconnectedness of family dynamics, neighborhood contexts, and child outcomes. This Urban Institute report is accompanied with an executive summary that assesses the effectiveness of Vimenti, an integrated service center and school for families in Puerto Rico that provides a variety of family services using a 2Gen approach.