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.

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.

MDRC released a report discussing how Career Academics can build college and career exploration programs. MDRC and Bloom Associates developed and piloted a program to help Career Academics, a popular high school reform, build college and career exploration programs for their students. This report presents three key findings and the lessons learned from its implementation in 18 academies in California, Florida, and Georgia.

In 2012, the Institute for Research on Poverty (IRP) launched a major research initiative designed to enhance understanding of how policies and programs can build economic self-sufficiency by increasing employment, wages, labor market skills, and earnings. It is one of three such integrated research projects that extend over three-year periods with a range of activities that are focused on topics related to three themes identified by IRP as key trends in poverty and policy: Economic Self-Sufficiency, Family Change and Poverty, and the Intergenerational Transmission of Poverty.

WorkforceOne held a Webinar presentation walking through the CareerOneStop online center. CareerOneStop is a suite of tools to help job seekers explore careers, investigate salary and benefit information, research education and training opportunities, plan a job search and browse job sites, write and improve resumes and cover letters, prepare for a job interview, and search for jobs. In addition, the CareerOneStop Web site provides links to workforce and labor market information Web sites that contain local information resources and tools.

This toolkit is a step-by-step guide to designing and implementing employee learning and career advancement projects for frontline workers. Created by Jobs for the Future, the toolkit is a guidebook for job-site practitioners of workforce development: human resources managers, staff developers, and others responsible for employee learning through union-based programs, community colleges, technical schools, and community-based organizations. The toolkit is organized to serve newcomers to work-based earning and those with prior experience but seeking to learn more. It is also a resource for those seeking effective models on specific topics, such as designing curricula based on work objectives or training supervisors to coach or mentor frontline workers. While these resources and examples originate in health care, they are readily adaptable to other work settings and occupations.

The United States Department of Labor's Office of Disability Employment Policy, in collaboration with the U.S. Department of Defense's Office of Diversity Management and Equal Opportunity, launched the 2013 Workforce Recruitment Program (WRP) database, a recruitment resource for employers seeking a diverse workforce that includes employees with disabilities. The database contains profiles of postsecondary students and recent graduates with disabilities, including veterans, representing a wide variety of academic backgrounds and degree levels. More than 20 federal government agencies regularly utilize the WRP as a recruiting source, with more than 6,500 students obtaining federal employment since 1995.