For at least three decades, policymakers, researchers, and program operators have developed and studied strategies to improve employment outcomes for people who face serious obstacles to steady work. Interest in the hard-to-employ surged in the 1990s, when the strong economy, rising employment, and dramatic declines in the welfare caseload all combined to focus a spotlight on groups who had been left behind. For the first time on a large scale, welfare agencies began developing or brokering services for recipients with mental health conditions, substance abuse problems, disabilities, and other serious barriers to work. Parallel changes were occurring in other systems: Criminal justice officials began to focus on the daunting problems facing prisoners returning to their communities, and the rapid growth of disability programs led policymakers to look for ways to encourage work among beneficiaries.

By definition, the hard-to-employ need special assistance to find and keep jobs. Their characteristics — disabilities, unstable behavioral health problems, very low skills, criminal records — place them at the back of the queue in a competitive labor market. To succeed, they may need special training, assistance in accessing health services or searching for a job, or other services.

There are at least four compelling reasons to invest in improving the employment prospects of those who face serious barriers to steady work. First, from a taxpayer’s perspective, it is costly to support individuals who, with assistance, could work. And, in fact, Americans have demonstrated that they are typically willing to spend more in the short run to increase self-sufficiency in the long run. Second, there may be benefits for society when hard-to-employ people are able to work steadily — for example, beneficial effects on public safety, family structure, and child well-being. Third, many believe that the retirement of the baby boom generation will produce tighter labor markets in the not-too-distant future, making it critical to take the best advantage possible of our nation’s human resources. Finally, many of the hard-to-employ very much want to work, and most Americans strongly believe that all individuals deserve the opportunity to make the most of their skills and ambitions.

What Is Known About the Hard-to-Employ?

The challenges faced by the hard-to-employ are clear, even if the strategies for addressing them are less understood. The barriers that prevent individuals from working can be grouped into three broad — and sometimes overlapping — categories:

• Human capital deficits, including very low basic skills, limited English proficiency, and lack of work experience.
• Health problems, including disabilities, behavioral health conditions (depression, substance abuse), and chronic physical health problems (hypertension, obesity) that can affect employability.
• “Situational barriers,” a catch-all category that includes such problems as a lack of transportation and the need to care for a disabled dependent. One of the most important situational barriers, however, is a criminal record. Convicted felons are considered highly undesirable by employers and, in fact, are legally barred from many occupations in growing employment sectors.

 In addition, when considering potential intervention strategies, one must take into account the public systems that interact with the hard-to-employ. For example, work-focused programs for individuals with disabilities must address the conflicting messages of a disability insurance system that makes “permanent disability” an eligibility requirement but is also trying to encourage more employment. Prisoner reentry programs must keep considerations of public safety paramount. And efforts to promote employment through public health systems may be hindered by a philosophy that favors treatment over work.

Despite the broad policy interest in serving the hard-to-employ, knowledge about effective program strategies is relatively undeveloped. Other than for welfare recipients and people with serious mental illness, there have been few rigorous experimental evaluations, and many questions remain unanswered.

The Enhanced Services for the Hard-to-Employ Demonstration and Evaluation

MDRC’s Enhanced Services for the Hard-to-Employ Demonstration and Evaluation Project is 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, with additional funding from the U.S. Department of Labor. It is evaluating four diverse strategies designed to improve employment and other outcomes for low-income parents and others who face serious barriers to employment:

• A comprehensive employment program for ex-prisoners in New York City;
• A two-generation Early Head Start program in Kansas and in Missouri that provides enhanced self-sufficiency services and skills training to parents, in addition to high-quality child care;
• Two alternative employment strategies for long-term welfare recipients in Philadelphia: one that emphasizes services to assess and treat recipients’ barriers to employment and another that places them in paid transitional employment; and
• An intensive telephonic care management program for Medicaid recipients in Rhode Island who are experiencing serious depression.