This report, released by the Workforce Data Quality Campaign, assesses the current landscape of employment data. It proposes technical enhancements to help agencies and institutions more effectively collect and share information, and provides policy recommendations to better inform students and other key stakeholders.

This resource guide from Jobs for the Future presents working models of successful employer engagement to help education and training providers secure and sustain strategic, long-term, and intensive partnerships with employers. It provides step-by-step tips for practitioners who provide workforce, career, and technical and adult education services.

From the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families, Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation, this guide features a collection of resources for TANF administrators and other practitioners on career exploration and assessment, career pathways and sector strategies, and labor market information. These resources may be helpful for those working with TANF recipients and low-income families in connecting their clients to jobs with wages that support self-sufficiency. There are four types of resources included in the guide: 

• Research Studies
• Technical Assistance Resources
• Client Assessments
• Data Sets Related To Education And Employment. (author abstract)

This study, completed by the Aspen Institute Workforce Strategies Initiative in 2015, explores whether individuals who obtain credentials work more and earn more over time than they would without such credentials. The study is the first to estimate the causal impact on earnings from obtaining a credential for low-income job seekers.

Youth transitioning out of foster care and into adulthood need many supports to navigate the challenges they face. Over the past three decades, federal child welfare policy has significantly increased the availability of those supports. In 1999, the Foster Care Independence Act amended Title IV-E of the Social Security Act to create the Chafee Foster Care Independence Program (the Chafee Program). This amendment doubled the maximum amount of funds potentially available to states for independent living services and gave states greater discretion over how they use those funds. More recently, a provision in the Fostering Connections to Success and Increasing Adoptions Act of 2008 gave states an option to extend eligibility for Title IV-E foster care for youth beyond age 18 until age 21. In states that have taken this option, young people can receive an additional three years of foster care support to prepare for the transition into adulthood.

ACF contracted with the Urban Institute and its partner Chapin Hall at the University of Chicago to plan for the next generation of evaluation activities funded by the Chafee Program. This brief focuses on employment programs. The brief reviews what we currently know about employment outcomes of youth formerly in foster care, considers the existing evidence on the effectiveness of employment programs, and concludes with issues for the field to consider as we move toward the next evaluation of the Chafee Program. (author abstract)

This presentation describes findings from Understanding the Dynamics of Disconnection From Employment and Assistance, a research project funded by the Office of Planning, Research & Evaluation (HHS/ACF/OPRE) to better understand how single mothers who are disconnected from both TANF and work get by and what their reasons for disconnection are.  Data was collected through in-depth interviews with 51 mothers; samples were drawn from existing longitudinal studies in Los Angeles, California and Southeast Michigan.

This presentation was given at the 2014 National Association of Welfare Research and Statistics (NAWRS) Annual Workshop.