Current employment data shows that there are over 10 million job openings but only 5.7 million unemployed workers; if every unemployed person in the country found a job, there would still be 4 million open jobs. This dataset from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s America Works Data Center identifies the trends on job openings, labor force participation, and quit rates, which provides for a quick understanding of the state of the workforce. The U.S. Chamber also has made available an interactive map tracking the worker shortage across the states, as well as an in-depth look at how the worker shortage is impacting different industries.

New America and Bloomberg teamed up five years ago to launch the Shift Commission on Work, Workers, and Technology, which engaged more than 100 leaders in business, technology, policy, and academia and surveyed over a thousand Americans to study and anticipate what the future of work in America would look like. The Shift Commission published a report that outlined four core scenarios that could play out in the next 10 to 20 years, each reflecting whether there will be more or less work and whether work will exist in the form of jobs or fragmented into "tasks." To mark the Shift Commission’s five-year anniversary, New America’s Center on Education and Labor and Bloomberg will host a webinar on February 21, 2023 from 12:00 p.m. to 2:00 p.m. ET which will include a reflective conversation with Shift Commissioners and other thought leaders about what the Commission got right, what it got wrong, and how the future of work can be shaped for the better.

The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act passed in 1996 replaced the Aid to Families with Dependent Children program with the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program. TANF imposed work requirements on participants who received benefits for a certain period of time and time limits on benefits that were paid with federal funds. Some evaluations conducted at that time, including the National Evaluation of Welfare-to-Work Strategies (NEWWS), found these new approaches led to some positive short-term effects for participants. This report is part of the From Theory to Practice project and presents findings from an analysis of 20-year outcomes and impacts of an employment-focused program offered to welfare recipients in Portland, Oregon in the 1990s as part of NEWWS. The findings described in the report represent some of the first available evidence on how individuals who previously received welfare fared in the labor market over the long term and on how sequence and cluster analyses can provide a richer picture of their trajectories and program impacts.

In recent years, many healthy marriage and relationship education (HMRE) programs serving couples with low incomes have offered participants economic stability services in addition to traditional HMRE programming focused on relationship skills. The Strengthening Relationship Education and Marriage Services (STREAMS) evaluation included an impact study of Empowering Families, an HMRE program with integrated economic stability services for couples with low incomes raising children together. The program was implemented by The Parenting Center, a community-based social services provider in Fort Worth, Texas. Empowering Families’ core service was an eight-session workshop that taught relationship skills integrated with content on employment and financial literacy. The program supplemented this workshop with one-on-one employment counseling and financial coaching services.

January is National Mentoring Month—an opportunity to recognize the dedicated mentors whose wisdom, guidance, and positive examples set new workers on a path to success, and to affirm the value of mentorship in the career trajectory of jobs-seekers and workers in our communities. This set of resources provides background information where one can learn more about mentoring and mentoring opportunities.

The Health Profession Opportunity Grants (HPOG) program offers education, training, support services, and employment assistance to prepare Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) recipients and other adults with low incomes for occupations in the healthcare field that pay well and are expected to either experience labor shortages or be in high demand. This HPOG 2.0 National Evaluation Implementation Study Report documents how 27 non-tribal HPOG 2.0 grantees designed and implemented their programs, including program contexts, administration, grant expenditures, training and support services, and employment assistance services. It also documents participant characteristics and their engagement in program services and training activities.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Food and Nutrition Service (FNS) is announcing a call for applications for the FY 2023 Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) E&T State Institute, which will take place on September 20 and 21, 2023 at the Westin Alexandria in Alexandria, Virginia. The Institute, “SNAP Mind the Gap: Building a Bridge from Vision to Outcomes in your SNAP E&T Program,” will provide an opportunity for State SNAP agencies to build a vision for their SNAP E&T program and begin developing a strategic plan to accomplish their long-term E&T goals. The goals of this year’s Institute will be for states to carefully review the status of their SNAP E&T program, to acknowledge what is working well, and to identify key program gaps and action steps that can be taken to achieve program goals. FNS will cover transportation, lodging, and per diem costs associated with participating in the SNAP E&T State Institute for all individuals from a State agency.

Applicants should submit a letter of interest to the SNAP to Skills Project, Office of Employment and Training, Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, Food and Nutrition Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture by 5 p.m. ET on February 10, 2023. Letters should be sent as a PDF or Word attachment to SNAPtoSkillsProject@seattlejobsinit.com.

Keeping track of key career and job information is an important activity for workforce system customers. CareerOneStop now offers user accounts to save career and job searches and share information with others. The U.S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration will host a webinar on January 25, 2023 from 1:00 p.m. to 2:30 p.m. ET which will go in-depth on the new user account functionality and demonstrate new How-to Guides that help customers find and use the best resources to reach their career and job goals.

The Agricultural Act of 2014 authorized $200 million for the development, implementation, and evaluation of pilot projects to test innovative strategies to reduce dependency on and increase employment among Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) participants. California, Delaware, Georgia, Kansas, Kentucky, Illinois, Mississippi, Vermont, Virginia, and Washington received grants in March 2015 and began implementing their pilots between January and April 2016. Resource materials in this post include a summary of findings from these 10 pilots and a set of four issue briefs. These issue briefs present cross-pilot findings that cover participation patterns in selected Employment and Training (E&T) activities, effectiveness of work-based learning, employment patterns after occupational skills training, and how sanctions affect participants in mandatory SNAP E&T programs.