The U.S. Department of Labor's Competency Model Clearinghouse (CMC) is an online resource that provides validated industry competency models that can be used as the basis of educational programs and curricula for a variety of industry sectors. The CMC also offers two tools designed to help businesses, educators, and workforce professionals achieve their talent development goals: the Build a Competency Model Tool and the Build a Career Ladder/Lattice Tool.

The Employment & Training Administration (ETA) have now made several of their most popular online tools available as mobile-optimized websites. These mobile tools will assist smartphone or tablet users locate American Job Centers, conduct online job searches, search for jobs for veterans, compare salaries for various occupations, and search for nearby job training providers. These changes are part of an ongoing effort to make workforce resources more accessible to a wider audience.

The Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation (OPRE) released a report titled "Job Search Assistance Programs: A Review of the Literature." The report reviews research related to the relative effectiveness of various job search methods and the components of job search assistance (JSA) programs. The report provides an overview of current Federal JSA programs and the existing literature related to JSA with a focus on low-income and disadvantaged workers and heads of households.

Promising occupations for at-risk youth provide sufficient compensation and could put them on a path to becoming independent adults. To identify promising occupations, this brief examined four key features: 1) median earnings level, 2) education and training pre-requisites, 3) projected growth in labor-market demand, and 4) potential for individual advancement. Based on these criteria, opportunities in two fields are highlighted – health care and construction.  A number of work-based learning and career pathway programs are also discussed, including ACF’s Health Profession Opportunity Grants program. This brief was written as part of ACF’s Youth Demonstration Development project being conducted by Mathematica Policy Research and the Chapin Hall Center for Children. (author abstract)

The Office of Family Assistance hosted a Webinar on August 28, 2012 to provide Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) agencies, workforce organizations, and other human services stakeholders with an overview of the strategies that can be used to provide low-income individuals with stackable credentials that will lead to long-term, sustainable employment. The Webinar featured information on what stackable credentials and career pathways are and how they can help low-income individuals achieve success. Presenters also provided information on methods for stackable credential/career pathways program design, as well as methods for integrating these components into transitional jobs and subsidized employment programs, and encouraged collaboration between government agencies and community partners to better serve TANF participants. Presenters included representatives from Heartland Human Care Services - Heartland Alliance, the Minnesota FastTRAC Initiative, the New York City Parks Opportunity Program (POP), and the Edmonds Community College HPOG program - Creating Access to Careers in Healthcare (CATCH).

The Institute of Research on Poverty (IRP) hosted Mr. Bryan Sykes, a sociologist at DePaul University, to talk about some of the barriers that former inmates encounter when trying to find work, as well as how the costs of incarceration disproportionately affect young African American men. He also talks about his work on off-the-books labor and how former inmates still face heavy discrimination to the informal economy.

The United States Department of Labor (DOL) released an article addressing the steady gains that have occurred across different sectors of the economy for the past three years. The Jobs Report marks 34 straight months of private sector job growth, which have added close to 5.8 million jobs to the economy. To close off 2012, December finished a strong year of consistent growth with an average increase of around 160,000 private sector jobs per month.

The Employment and Training Administration (ETA) issued Training and Employment Notice (TEN) No. 14-12, "Receiving Ticket to Work Payments as an Employment Network." The purpose of this TEN is to announce a streamlined process for the American Job Centers, State workforce agencies, and workforce investment boards to become Employment Networks (ENs) under the Social Security Administration's (SSA) Ticket to Work (TTW) Program. The following are a few highlights from the EN Payment Agreement: 1) it simplifies and reduces paperwork for public workforce entities to become EN's, 2) it permits the use of an Individual Employment Plan to receive payment as EN's, 3) it provides two options for payments, and 4) it permits the use of electronic tools.

One of the aims of the Minnesota Child Care Choices study is to explore the factors that influence child care stability and parents’ employment outcomes. This Research Brief looks at the work experiences of parents in the study and the connections between child care and work. In particular, this Research Brief explores how problems with child care affect—and in some cases disrupt—parents’ work.

While the entire sample consists of 323 parents, this brief focuses on a few different sub-samples. The first is the group of respondents who report working for pay in the past week (N=136). The second is the group of respondents who are considered to be labor force participants (N=282). The last group is respondents who report experiencing problems with their child care over the past four months that have caused them to make alternative child care arrangements, regardless of employment or labor force participation status in the week leading up to the survey (N=102). (author abstract)

Out of work, no diploma and struggling in poverty just three years ago, Quinton Sanders now has a full-time career in the medical field thanks to the Affordable Care Act's Health Profession Opportunity Grants program.