The Clearinghouse for Labor Evaluation and Research (CLEAR) of the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) has been the agency’s flagship clearinghouse for the past 10 years with a mission to make labor research more accessible for use in decision-making. The CLEAR team conducts independent systematic reviews designed to identify and summarize high quality labor-related evaluation and research studies, answer “what works?” questions, and support evidence-based decision making on labor policies and programs.

In recognition of its 10-year milestone, the Department’s Chief Evaluation Office will be conducting a series of three webinars which are designed to introduce or refresh stakeholders on what CLEAR is and how to use it. The second webinar in this series, How to Use CLEAR for Decision-Making, will be held on November 16, 2022 from 1:30 p.m. to 3:00 p.m. ET. Following a presentation from DOL’s Chief Evaluation Office, participants will learn more about the different ways CLEAR summarizes information and hear from a panel of workforce leaders on how they use CLEAR.

This year celebrates the 85th anniversary of the passing of the National Apprenticeship Act of 1937, which established the Registered Apprenticeship Program. To celebrate National Apprenticeship Week, the Center for Advancing Policy on Employment for Youth (CAPE-Youth) will host a webinar on November 15, 2022 at 4:00 p.m. ET with apprenticeship intermediaries, which are organizations with the capacity, expertise, and network to help businesses successfully create, launch, and expand apprenticeship programs. During the webinar, these organizations will explore the evolution of apprenticeship in general, and for people with disabilities specifically. The webinar will provide a brief overview of inclusive apprenticeships and feature speakers from three to four apprenticeship intermediaries who will discuss their advancement efforts and best practices to ensure apprenticeships are inclusive of youth and young adults with disabilities.

Employment service providers looking to replicate evidence-based interventions will likely face challenges in determining how to implement the most important elements, or core components, of those interventions. In the absence of quantitative data on core components for an intervention, employment service providers can use qualitative strategies to carefully determine how to implement an intervention. This brief explores those strategies, providing guidance that may be useful to employment service providers and other human services agency staff who want to replicate evidence-based interventions.

Service providers, policymakers, and researchers need to know how likely specific interventions are to improve employment and related outcomes if implemented in a particular setting with clients. In practice, most employment interventions offer a combination of services that are designed to improve labor market outcomes (e.g., employment, earnings, education and training, and public benefit receipt). The Pathways to Work Evidence Clearinghouse has undertaken a series of research syntheses to explore what one can learn by looking across all the data the Pathways Clearinghouse has collected. This report uses an approach that synthesizes relationships across multiple studies to provide new evidence on the likelihood that specific interventions will improve labor market outcomes and which combinations of services are most likely to be effective for different groups of people.

Largely due to the opioid crisis, the federal government has increased its focus on and funding for programs that address both treatment and employment outcomes for people with substance use disorder (SUD). Programs that combine employment services with SUD treatment or recovery efforts aim to achieve the dual goals of sustaining recovery and improving economic well-being. This report documents five programs that combine SUD treatment and recovery services with employment services. It also offers recommendations for those already implementing similar programs or interested in developing them.

The Aspen Institute’s Financial Security Program’s two-part Financial Resilience series will highlight the foundational role benefits play in supporting household financial resilience, elevate the insights and work of benefit leaders, and discuss the opportunities for scale and innovations needed in public benefits and workplace benefits. Part 2 of this webinar series, Modernizing Workplace Benefits to Support Financial Resilience, will take place on November 17, 2022 from 2:00 p.m. to 3:00 p.m. EDT. This webinar will highlight a new framework for financial resilience which showcases the importance of workplace benefits in holistically supporting households to manage and mitigate the impact of financial shocks. Speakers will explore commitments by private sector leaders to support workers’ financial resilience and elevate the benefit innovators: investors, benefit providers and administrators, employees, and fintech. These innovators are currently leading the way to modernize workplace benefits and scale innovations to ensure all workers and their families are financially resilient. The first webinar occurred on October 13, 2022.

The U.S. Department of Labor’s Clearinghouse for Labor and Evaluation and Research (CLEAR) has been the agency’s flagship clearinghouse for the past 10 years with a mission to make labor research more accessible for use in decision-making. The CLEAR team conducts independent systematic reviews designed to identify and summarize high quality labor-related evaluation and research studies, answer “what works?” questions, and support evidence-based decision making on labor policies and programs.

In recognition of its 10-year milestone, the Department’s Chief Evaluation Officer will be conducting a series of three webinars which are designed to introduce or refresh stakeholders on what CLEAR is and how to use it. The first webinar in this series, CLEAR 101: An Introduction to CLEAR, will be held on October 25, 2002 from 2:00 p.m. to 3:00 p.m. Webinar panelists will guide participants to learn CLEAR fundamentals and how to navigate CLEAR’s website and information. Subsequent webinars will be held on November 16, 2022 and December 13, 2022; updates will appear in upcoming PeerTA newsletters.

Healthy marriage and relationship education (HMRE) programs aim to support the well-being of families by teaching them skills to improve communication and conflict management, how to recognize the characteristics of healthy romantic relationships, and how to strengthen existing relationships. HMRE programs may pair a relationship skills curriculum with other services, such as individualized job development or instruction on financial planning, that aim to promote economic stability or content on parenting skills. This Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation brief describes typical patterns of participation in three programs that were part of the Strengthening Relationship Education and Marriage Services (STREAMS) evaluation, a large multisite evaluation conducted from 2015 to 2022 to identify strategies for improving the delivery and effectiveness of healthy marriage and relationship education programs. The brief identifies distinct patterns of participation in each of these programs and provides profiles of the clients who participate in these distinct ways.

Soft skills, also known as “noncognitive,” “employability,” “baseline,” or “twenty-first-century” skills, are the capabilities and habits that affect social-emotional abilities related to communication, social interactions, and problem-solving. This blogpost covers findings from a series of interviews with employers to gauge how they perceive the value and authority of soft-skills credentials and to learn what could increase their utility and credibility. Additionally, the blogpost notes that employers made clear that they value work and academic experiences that relate to candidates’ skills more than they value soft-skills credentials.

Engaging job seekers in apprenticeship has a multitude of barriers to overcome depending on the community. For instance, younger generations may not be interested because it is seen as a long-term effort to receive monetary rewards. Others who are not English speaking may find apprenticeship daunting. The National Association of Workforce Development Professionals will host a webinar session on October 26, 2022 from 1:00 p.m. to 1:30 p.m. CT to provide tools and information on how to address job seeker barriers to apprenticeship. Speakers include staff from West Michigan Works.