The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, formerly food stamps) currently reaches 45 million people, which is an increase of 69 percent since the current economic recession began. From the Urban Institute, this fact sheet discusses how SNAP caseloads and unemployment have increased both nationally and by State. Authors provide a map of the United States, which shows the concurrent increase in SNAP and unemployment across the country.

The National Poverty Center at the University of Michigan authored this policy brief, which offers lessons learned from New York City’s conditional cash transfer program, Opportunity NYC: Family Rewards. The program was targeted to six of New York’s highest poverty neighborhoods with high rates of intergenerational poverty and offered cash assistance to reduce immediate hardship, which was conditioned on efforts to support children in school, gain family health care, and support parents’ job training and skill building. The evaluation revealed that the program had short-term positive impacts for families experiencing intergenerational poverty.

This report from the Administration for Children and Families, Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation summarizes findings from a process and impact study of a Multi-Site Evaluation of Foster Youth Programs. Specifically focused on the Kern County site, impact findings are based on a two-year follow-up of youth who participated in a random assignment evaluation of the Independent Living—Employment Services Program (IL-ES). Results show few statistically significant findings between the control and the treatment group, suggesting that youth should be actively engaged in employment-based activities beyond the IL-ES program.

The U.S. Department of Labor (DOL), Employment and Training Administration (ETA), Office of Workforce Investment recently released Internet Links for State and Local Employment Projections. Employment projections can be used for career counseling, employment planning, training and education programs, and other planning purposes. The report includes a table with links to each state's main page, which includes projections of labor market information (LMI). The table also provides the Internet links to data of each state's, if applicable, long-term (10-year) and short-term (2-year) industry and occupation projections. At the end of the report, responsibilities of key stakeholders are explained. Links to background of the national employment projections are also included.

This brief was prepared by MDRC for the Administration for Children and Families’ Office of Planning, Research, and Evaluation. Authors present findings and lessons for policy and practice from a random assignment evaluation on five programs that provided earnings supplements. Focusing on the effects of such programs for single parents, findings show that these types of programs increase employment, income, and employment retention for participating families, but have limited effects on employment advancement.

From Lawrence Mead and Ron Haskins, through the Center on Children and Families at the Brookings Institution, this article analyzes why low-skilled men typically work in lower level positions and provide little support for their children. Authors argue for a program to tie child support with work requirements, which is an initiative that has previously been shown to increase employment. In particular, authors highlight the Noncustodial Parents Choices (NCP Choices) program in Texas as an example to build work enforcement into the child support system.

This report was authored through the National Skills Coalition and provides information on Michigan’s No Worker Left Behind Initiative. The Initiative refocused Michigan’s workforce development strategy from quickly placing workers into jobs to a system that focuses on long-term training for workers in areas with a high demand for certain skills. In the three years since the program’s inception, 150,000 Michigan workers have been trained to work in higher-demand industries. Authors offer the keys to success for this program for other states to use as a model for replication.

The National Skills Coalition authored this report as part of the Skills2Compete campaign, which focuses on identifying gaps in the skills of the workforce and the state’s training and education policies. In particular, middle skills jobs account for half of the current jobs in New York, which include jobs that require a high school diploma but not a four-year degree. This paper calls for attention to training people to fill middle skills jobs but also training people who are already in the workforce to fill these roles as well.

From the Institute for Research on Poverty, this Fast Focus is an overview of presentations given at the “Employment Prospects for Lower-Wage Workers: Easing the Implications of a Slow Recovery” conference in March 2011. Presentations focused on how the polarized labor market impacts workers across all levels, including income inequality, the use of work supports, and the well-being of displaced workers and their families.

From MDRC, this report discusses the implementation of an enhanced version of the Early Head Start (EHS) program. Authors provide an overview of challenges to implementation as well as short-term outcomes of the program on children and parents. Understanding that living in poverty can have profound effects on young children’s development and their prospects for the future, the enhanced EHS program was designed to provide formalized parental employment and educational services were implemented within EHS. This evaluation is part of the multi-site Enhanced Services for the Hard-to-Employ Demonstration and Evaluation Project, sponsored by the Administration for Children and Families and the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), with additional funding from the U.S. Department of Labor.