A central focus of MDRC’s research agenda is to identify effective strategies to help low-income youth and adults escape poverty by achieving success in the labor market. MDRC is studying programs that assist the working poor to retain employment and move up to better-paying jobs, improve employment prospects for people with serious obstacles to work, and enable low-income young adults to acquire the skills and credentials that will prepare them for better jobs. Five examples:

National Work Advancement and Support Center (WASC) Demonstration

Low-wage workers comprise a large segment of the U.S. workforce: A quarter of workers earn $9.46 or less an hour, and fully half earn less than $14.15 an hour. What does it take to help people who hold low-wage jobs climb the economic ladder, while simultaneously meeting labor market demand and employer needs for more skilled workers?

Funded by the U.S. Department of Labor, the Ford Foundation, and other federal agencies and foundations, MDRC’s Work Advancement and Support Center (WASC) demonstration is testing an innovative strategy for low-wage and dislocated workers in One-Stop Centers, created by the federal Workforce Investment Act of 1998. WASC employs a two-part approach: services to help workers keep their jobs or find better ones; and simplified access to programs intended to provide financial support to low-income workers (such as child care subsidies, food stamps, Medicaid, and the Earned Income Tax Credit) as they work toward advancement. One-Stops in Bridgeport, Connecticut; Dayton, Ohio; Fort Worth, Texas; and San Diego, California, are research sites in the demonstration.

While results from MDRC’s evaluation of the WASC program are still two years away, a report on the launching of the initiative was released earlier this year and a report describing implementation lessons will be published in early 2007.

Employment Retention and Advancement Project

In the wake of welfare reform in the 1990s, millions of low-income parents replaced the receipt of public cash assistance with income from employment. But what strategies will help the new workforce entrants find more stable jobs, advance in the labor market, and achieve long-term self-sufficiency?

Funded by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the U.S. Department of Labor, MDRC’s Employment Retention and Advancement (ERA) project is the most comprehensive effort thus far to discover what approaches help welfare recipients and other low-income people stay steadily employed and advance in their jobs. Launched in 1999 and slated to end in 2009, the ERA research project includes more than 45,000 individuals in 15 different programs in eight states. The programs serve a variety of populations, including current and former welfare recipients and low-wage workers without a welfare history. MDRC is testing three basic types of interventions:

• Advancement programs that focus on helping low-wage workers move into better jobs by offering services such as career counseling and education and training;
• Placement and retention programs that aim to help participants, mostly “hard-to-employ” people such as welfare recipients with disabilities or substance abuse problems, find and hold jobs; and
• “Mixed goals” programs, targeted primarily to welfare recipients who are searching for jobs, that focus on job placement, retention, and advancement.

Enhanced Services for the Hard-to-Employ

In the post-welfare reform world, an important policy question has taken new prominence: how to improve employment prospects for the millions of Americans facing serious obstacles to steady work? These individuals, including long-term welfare recipients, people with disabilities, those with health or behavioral health problems, and ex-prisoners, often become enmeshed in costly public assistance and enforcement systems, and many find themselves living in poverty, outside the mainstream in a society that prizes work and self-sufficiency.

In the Enhanced Services for the Hard-to-Employ Demonstration and Evaluation Project, sponsored by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the U.S. Department of Labor, and foundations, MDRC and its partners (the Urban Institute and the Lewin Group) are developing and evaluating a diverse set of strategies designed to improve employment and other outcomes for low-income people who face serious barriers to employment:

• Alternative employment strategies for hard-to-employ welfare recipients in Philadelphia
• A comprehensive employment program for former prisoners in New York City
• An intensive telephonic case management and jobs services program for parents with undiagnosed mental illness in Rhode Island
• A two-generation program for Early Head Start parents and their children in Kansas and Missouri

Career Academies

Graduating from high school ready for the worlds of work and college is the key to better economic opportunity. Yet, high school dropout rates remain stubbornly high — estimated at 29 percent nationally and even higher for African-American and Hispanic students. And too many students who do manage to graduate aren’t prepared either for the labor market or postsecondary education.

Career Academies were first developed some 35 years ago with the aim of restructuring large high schools into small learning communities, establishing partnerships with local employers to provide work-based learning opportunities to students, and creating pathways between high school and further education and the workplace. Since then, the Career Academy approach has taken root in an estimated 3,000 high schools across the country.

Funded by a consortium of public and private funders, MDRC has been conducting a random assignment evaluation of Career Academies in nine high schools in eight states since 1993. MDRC’s research has shown that young men who participate in Career Academy programs have higher earnings than their non-Academy peers four years after their expected graduation from high school, and that these earnings gains were accomplished without impeding access to higher education. These findings on Career Academies are also summarized in a seven-minute video. 

Opening Doors

In today's economy, more than ever before, graduating from high school and obtaining a postsecondary credential are the keys to better economic opportunity. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, six of the nation's 10 fastest growing occupations between 2004 and 2014 will be filled by workers with at least a two-year degree.

Community colleges, which are more accessible and affordable than other postsecondary institutions, offer low-income people a unique opportunity to improve their prospects in the labor market and in life. In fact, community colleges enroll nearly half of all college students in the United States — over 11 million nationwide. Unfortunately, however, nearly half of students who begin at community colleges do not earn a credential from any college or university within six years.

Funded by Lumina Foundation for Education and a group of foundations and government agencies, Opening Doors is a demonstration project seeking to identify interventions that increase retention and achievement among low-income students. MDRC is evaluating programs in six community colleges that are experimenting with combinations of instructional innovations (including small leaning communities), supplementary financial aid, and student services. The early results are encouraging. Students in learning communities at Kingsborough Community College in Brooklyn, New York, improved course and test pass rates, particularly in English. Students who received performance-based scholarships at two community colleges in New Orleans were more likely to enroll full time, passed more courses, earned more credits, and were more likely to stay in school.

For more information on these and other MDRC research projects aimed at success in the labor market, visit the home pages of our policy areas: K-12 Education, Young Adults and Postsecondary Education, Family Well-Being and Children's Development, Low-Wage Workers and Communities, and Health and Barriers to Employment.