This program highlight is from the Center on Law and Social Policy, and provides information on the Pennsylvania Keystone Education Yields Success (KEYS) program. The program assists parents receiving TANF or SNAP benefits who are in certificate or degree programs among Pennsylvania’s community colleges. Each participant receives career guidance and continued support from a student facilitator, in addition to help with mitigating transportation and child care barriers to attending class.

This innovative program highlight is from the Center on Law and Social Policy, and provides information on the Arkansas Career Pathways Initiative (CPI) program. CPI provides academic and support services for low-income, low-skill individuals to acquire the degrees and credentials necessary to secure a job. The program is funded with TANF dollars, and students are eligible for the program if they are adult caretakers of children under 21 and have incomes below 250 percent of the federal poverty line.

Joblinks Employment Transportation hosted a Webinar that provided information about partnerships between transportation providers and employers to develop solutions that provide job retention and stability for workers and employers alike.

From Chapin Hall at the University of Chicago, this report describes the results of a study using data to better understand the need for employment-related services and supports among youth in foster care and how a community-based employment training and job placement program in Chicago is serving this population. Authors describe the characteristics and placement of the foster youth in the program, and their participation in employment training activities as well as subsidized jobs.

The Employment Retention and Advancement (ERA) project was designed to evaluate and analyze employment retention and advancement models from around the country, and identify key strategies to best support families. From the Administration for Children and Families, Office of Planning, Research, and Evaluation, this report summarizes 12 models of employment retention and advancement from the evaluation and key strategies employed by these programs to best serve their participants.

From the Bureau of Labor Statistics, this press release provides data on the employment characteristics of families. Specifically, the share of families with an unemployed member rose from 7.8 percent in 2008 to 12.0 percent in 2009. Additionally, the proportion of families with an unemployed member in 2009 was at its highest level since 1994.

From the Institute for Research on Poverty and researchers at Columbia University, this article provides information on the status of low-income men. Since the mid-1970s, wages and labor force participation has been decreasing for young, lesser educated men. In this piece, authors examine how key income-security policy areas, including unemployment insurance, payroll taxes and the Earned Income Tax Credit, and child support enforcement, affect this population.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics released this report on the employment experience of youth. At age 22, women are more likely to be enrolled in college than men and are also more likely to have completed a bachelor’s degree. Among 22-year-olds not enrolled in college, men are also more likely than women to be employed in a civilian job or serving in the military.

On Wednesday, March 24, 2010, the United States Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families, Office of Family Assistance- Regions V and VII and the United States Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration- Region V hosted an interactive videoconference on the uses of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 to improve summer employment for youth and low-income Americans. In addition, representatives from Los Angeles County presented on the successful use of ARRA funds, their strong TANF-WIA partnership, providing real life examples of how TANF and WIA agencies can work together to serve low-income youth and families with ARRA funds. HHS and DOL officials were on hand to answer questions and facilitate peer to peer dialogue.

The Work Opportunity Tax Credit (WOTC) is a Federal tax credit incentive that the Congress provides to private-sector businesses for hiring individuals from twelve target groups who have consistently faced significant barriers to employment. The main objective of this program is to enable the targeted employees to gradually move from economic dependency into self-sufficiency as they earn a steady income and become contributing taxpayers, while the participating employers are compensated by being able to reduce their federal income tax liability.