Having unemployed parents in early and late childhood creates long-lasting negative impacts on people’s quality of life. This study uses qualitative interviews on well-being and three decades of German panel data to conclude that having unemployed parents in childhood (0-5 years old) and adolescence (11-15 years old) creates a modest but psychologically and economically significant impact on reported well-being later in life. However, effects vary by gender, and some children with unemployed parents experience positive consequences like higher parental investment. Overall, though, stressors and burdens of responsibility on children of unemployed parents provide another reason to focus on lowering barriers to employment for job-seeking adults.

This report describes how a new smartphone-based application, DadTime, was developed jointly by fathers and the nonprofit MDRC to encourage attendance and participation in the Just Beginning parenting program. The app both provides reminders to attend Just Beginning sessions and reiterates techniques learned in the sessions through interactive tools. The study asked for feedback and used concrete suggestions, like allowing fathers to set the time of day of notifications, using more icons and emojis, and asking parents how they felt when they opened the app, to tailor the application. Overall, the new version of DadTime will hopefully increase user engagement and participation in the Just Beginning intervention.

This blog post from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services is part of the "Self-Sufficiency Series: Solutions from the Field" and highlights a West Virginian program that aims to teach at-risk youth about the “success sequence” path from school to work through marriage and family in a positive and non-judgmental way. Project T.H.I.N.K. discusses healthy relationships and provides resources to inform participants about the transition to adulthood, which can help them avoid early pregnancies, overcome poverty traps, understand what being a parent might be like, and ultimately lay a foundation for a successful and mobile future. The project especially tries to avoid shaming or nagging and works to understand the situations of all participants, whether they already have children or not.

This paper summarizes 40 years of randomized controlled trials (RCT) field experiments on programs and interventions in the unemployment insurance (UI) system to mitigate work disincentives and to help laborers reenter the job market. It is well known that unemployment insurance discourages people from quickly finding a new job if they are unemployed. However, interventions like reemployment bonuses, stronger work-search requirements, and job search assistance significantly decrease time spent without a job while being cost-effective. Hiring incentives for employers and removing the work test, on the other hand, are ineffective. The numerous experiments in the paper can offer strategies for combatting UI’s moral hazard to lower the time people spend unemployed.

Re-employment services (RES) are crucial to connect unemployed works with current job market opportunities to help both the worker and the local and national economies. This page highlights many resources and presentations that support reemployment and can help program administrators implement reemployment strategies. They highlight one Department of Labor tool, the Worker Profiling and Reemployment Services system, which profiles those on unemployment insurance (UI) to identify those likely to need RES or who may use up their UI benefits. State and local entities can use this system, in conjunction with other resources listed on this page, to help fill labor needs in growing markets and decrease unemployment.