How can federal programs support low-income and low-skilled individuals find and keep employment? Searching for a job is a universal experience for nearly all Americans, but for some low-income and low-skilled individuals, job search may be especially difficult. To support these individuals as they look for employment, many federal programs offer short-term and relatively low-intensity services, known as job search assistance. This brief describes an overarching framework for thinking about job search assistance programs, including an overview of service delivery methods, key program components, and the steps that make up the job search process. Abt Associates wrote this brief. (author abstract)

In April 2014, the Institute for Research on Poverty released a discussion paper that explores the receipt of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) among low-income households. The research is based on data from the first two waves of the Michigan Recession and Recovery Survey (MRRS), a panel survey of working-age adults in the Detroit Metropolitan Area. The study examined how low-income families in the Detroit Metropolitan Area combined SNAP with other forms of public assistance during the Great Recession and analyzed the relationship between the receipt of SNAP assistance and food shopping behaviors.

The Institute for Research on Poverty recently released a short report that provides an overview of the evidence on employment instability in the United States. The report also includes information about some opportunities and challenges facing policymakers and researchers interested in promoting employment stability in the current economic and political context.

This paper reviews the literature on the policy context of the HPOG program and the challenges and opportunities related to developing healthcare occupational training and support programs. It discusses the structure of the healthcare industry and trends in healthcare employment, implications of ACA for entry-level employment in healthcare, and resulting challenges and opportunities for training programs. (author overview)

The Health Profession Opportunity Grants (HPOG) Program, established by the Affordable Care Act of 2010, funds training programs in high-demand healthcare professions, targeted to Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) recipients and other low-income individuals. In 2010, the Administration for Children and Families of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services awarded 32 HPOG grantees in 23 states with five-year grants. This Annual Report provides an overview of HPOG grantees, characteristics of participants, activities in which participants were engaged, training and employment outcomes, and how grantee programs continued to evolve in the second year of the program. (author abstract)

There is longstanding interest among policy makers and program operators in finding ways to increase the skill levels of low-income individuals, improve their enrollment in and completion of post-secondary education, and improve their economic prospects. The career pathways approach is gaining steady acceptance as a promising strategy to address these challenges and improve post-secondary education and training for low-income and low-skilled adults.

This brief focuses on the Innovative Strategies for Increasing Self-Sufficiency project; a major national effort to evaluate the effectiveness of nine career pathways programs using an experimental design. It summarizes the framework used to describe the career pathways approach and the theory of change that guides the evaluation. It then describes the nine programs in the evaluation, and concludes with the study’s research questions and data sources. Later reports and briefs will present findings from the evaluation and will be posted on the project website. (author abstract)

The Brookings Institution recently released an interactive tool that takes a comprehensive look at the state of the job market for America's youth in the nation for each of the 100 largest U.S. metropolitan areas. Users are able to select a city from the dropdown menu and then view data about the specific employment rates, disconnected youth, race/ethnicity, education levels, and poverty status. Interested users are also able to download this information. The report also includes a number of strategies to reduce youth joblessness and labor force underutilization.

The Departments of Labor (DOL), Health and Human Services (DHHS), and Housing and Urban Development (HUD) have issued a letter to their respective customers encouraging partnerships among the network of state and local youth service and workforce development providers, human service agencies, and public housing agencies to develop summer jobs programs for needy and at-risk youth that provide employment, educational experiences, and essential skills such as financial literacy and time management.

This report describes the evaluation design for the HPOG National Implementation Evaluation. The design focuses on the 27 non-tribal HPOG grantees and addresses: how health professions training programs are being implemented; changes to the service delivery system associated with program implementation; individual-level outputs and outcomes; and what key components and factors appear necessary or seem likely to contribute to the success of the programs. The evaluation involves three related analyses: a Descriptive Implementation Study, a Systems Change Analysis, and an Outcome Study. The report was written as part of the HPOG Implementation, Systems and Outcome Project and the HPOG National Implementation Evaluation, which are both led by Abt Associates in partnership with the Urban Institute. (author abstract)

The Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation released the HPOG Annual Report to highlight information regarding the program after its second year of operation. The report provides an overview of HPOG grantees, characteristics of participants, activities in which participants were engaged, training and employment outcomes, and how grantee programs continued to evolve in the second year of the program. The report was developed as part of the HPOG Implementation, Systems, and Outcome Project, which is being led by Abt Associates in partnership with the Urban Institute.