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While
many welfare recipients are entering the labor market,
evidence shows that many of them have difficulty finding
quality jobs or moving up in the labor force. Most people
who leave welfare for work earn low wages-generally higher
than the minimum wage but below the poverty level-and
most do not receive an increase in wages despite years
of work.[1]
Moreover, most recipients find jobs that lack important
benefits, such as paid sick days and health insurance.[2]
Research indicates that various strategies may have to
be undertaken to promote job placement, retention, and
advancement, with different factors being more important
for one goal than another.[3]
While few job advancement strategies have been rigorously
evaluated, research and experience suggest lessons in
the three areas discussed below. It is important to note
that in spite of job advancement policies, it is likely
that many low-income individuals will continue to work
at low-wage jobs. If poverty reduction is a goal, then
other policies such as wage supplements may also be needed.
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Emphasizing
Job Advancement and "Better Jobs"
Through Program Practices |
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Many
"work first" programs focus primarily on job placement
issues and increasingly on job retention efforts. However,
strategies to promote advancement and better jobs require
separate and distinct efforts and program practices. |
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Begin
before the first job. Encourage job-seekers to
target their search in order to find "better" jobs-that
is, jobs that pay more than the minimum wage and offer
full-time hours, opportunities for advancement, and employee
benefits such as health insurance and pension plans. Research
suggests that workers who start out in better jobs are
more likely to keep working and to experience wage growth
and career progression than those whose first jobs do
not have the above characteristics.[4] |
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Help
program participants develop career plans. Career
development and planning is a critical element in advancement
efforts. Participants should develop a step-by-step long-term
career plan that reflects both their interests and labor
market needs. Career development typically includes opportunities
for individuals to assess their own interests and skills
and to explore various occupations by hearing employers
talk about what they are looking for in workers, by visiting
worksites, and through job-shadowing and internships. |
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Maintain
contact. Stay in regular contact with workers as
they move up their career ladder. Try to build your services
into the regular workday so as not to disrupt the job.
For example, career advisors in Moving Up, an employment
program operated by New York's Vocational Foundation,
Inc., routinely take workers to a "business lunch" during
their normal midday break. |
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Prioritize
services. In order to make your program most cost-effective,
consider targeting it to those workers who are most likely
to lose their jobs or have difficulty advancing. Although
it can be hard to identify those who are most at risk,
evidence suggests that individuals with low education
and skill levels, little to no work history, and barriers
such as depression, family difficulties, and other personal
problems are likely to have less success in employment
than those who do not have such barriers.[5]
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Address
support service needs. Ensure that workers have
access to appropriate support services, such as child
care, health insurance, and transportation assistance,
to allow them to sustain employment. Research has shown
that many individuals who qualify for such assistance
do not receive it.[6]
It may be necessary to enhance efforts to inform workers
about the existence of these services, including providing
information well before individuals find jobs, training
staff about the nature of the benefits and how they can
be accessed, and involving community agencies in disseminating
information |
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Ensure
that staff evaluations reflect performance in this area.
Consider basing your staff's performance evaluation on
participant out-comes, such as the quality of the initial
job placement, the number of participants employed at
various milestones (for example, 6 months, 12 months),
or wage progression. This approach has proved successful
at Moving Up, where participant outcomes count significantly
in staff's performance appraisals, and salary increases
are likewise tied partly to job performance measures.[7]
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Developing
Education and Training Options for Working Families |
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Because
many welfare recipients are likely to have low skill levels,
it is unlikely that they will be able to advance to better
jobs unless they gain additional skills. In the current
economic and policy environment, where work is both available
and strongly encouraged, strategies that help individuals
combine work and training are particularly important.
Experience indicates that eliciting low-income workers’
participation in education and training will be difficult
for several reasons. First, many low-income workers are
trying to balance both work and family needs. Second,
some of them have had poor experiences in prior education
programs and will be reluctant to try again. Third, to
many individuals, it may seem overwhelming to arrange
child care and transportation for these activities, which
will often occur in the evenings and on weekends. In addition,
most community colleges and other educational institutions
are not accustomed to serving this population of workers,
and in the past these institutions’ outreach campaigns
were not targeted to the welfare-eligible population.
As discussed below, reaching this population will require
partnership and coordination between the key education
and training providers—such as adult education programs,
technical colleges, or community-based organizations—and
welfare-to-work programs. |
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Improve
awareness of the value of education and training programs
for low-income individuals. Simply offering
training programs is not enough — these programs need
to develop an aggressive outreach strategy. Building on
private sector marketing strategies, for example, other
types of programs have undertaken direct mailings to TANF
recipients and advertising in local newspapers, at appropriate
events, on buses, or in public assistance offices. Programs
also need to share with prospective participants information
about available support services and financial assistance
in order to attract low-income families. Some training
programs have used former students as recruiters in the
belief that potential students may relate better to their
peers than to college staff. |
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Provide
incentives for participation. Some training
programs have found that coupons for free movies, haircuts,
the zoo, or similarly inexpensive items can motivate people
to continue participating in education and training programs.
Other programs provide financial payments or gift certificates
to encourage individuals to participate on a regular basis
and complete their programs. |
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Encourage
programs that offer credentials or credits.
To promote long-term advancement, training should
end in a recognized credential (such as an occupational
certificate or an industry skill standard), should offer
transferable credits, or should be part of a continuum
in a longer-term degree program. |
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Identify
programs with flexible scheduling. Programs
should include more flexible scheduling of classes to
meet the needs of working individuals, such as offering
classes on weekends and evenings and holding classes at
alternative sites such as major employers. |
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Condense
programs or divide them into “chunks.” Make
programs shorter and more intensive, and offer them during
weekends or evening hours to accommodate working individuals.
It may also help to break training programs into short
modules of perhaps 35 to 40 hours each — with each module
building toward a credential. A single module can be completed
in one week by people who can take time off or on a series
of Saturdays for those who cannot. Students can progress
to the next module in an open-entry/exit format when the
time is convenient to them. |
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Focus
on career pathways. A promising wage progression
and career advancement strategy is to link short-term
training to career pathways and longer-term education
and training options that eventually lead to a certificate
or two- or four-year degree. Programs need to clearly
illustrate the relationship between each level of training
and the employment options to which they lead. |
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Encourage
“bridge” programs. Bridge training can open
the door to better jobs for those without a high school
diploma, especially those whose skills are below the eighth-grade
level or whose English proficiency is limited.[8]
These programs can help prepare students with very low
skill levels to enter vocational training by helping them
make more informed choices about training options, helping
them to master “soft” skills (such as choosing appropriate
clothes for an interview), and previewing the job and
educational skills needed to succeed in the program |
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Offer
tutoring. Tutoring services can improve
the effectiveness of the training offered and can ensure
that more participants access and complete courses designed
to upgrade their skills.
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Building
Linkages with Employers |
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A strong
relationship between program staff and employers is important
to making a good match between program participants and
jobs. While formal labor market information can help,
continuous interaction with local employers is key to
hearing about job openings and understanding in detail
which skills are required for which jobs. |
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Identify,
develop, and promote career ladders within and between
companies. For some workers, developing
career ladders both within companies and from job to job
is an important advancement strategy. In order to help
workers understand potential career ladders, program staff
need to develop an in-depth knowledge of labor market
needs including which employers and industries offer career
ladders, the kinds of skills and credentials needed for
advancement, and how career ladders can be developed across
employers. |
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Develope
employer-provided postemployment skills upgrading.
Employers may be willing to provide input into training
design, to allow training at the worksite, or to grant
release time for training. Employers are more likely to
be interested relates directly to carrying out job responsibilities.
Small employers are willing to grant release time in some
cases if the training can be offered to all employees
— not just low-income parents. |
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Consider
pursuing a sectoral strategy. In some localities,
a number of recent initiatives to promote access to better
jobs have taken a sectoral approach, focusing on a cluster
of employers in one part of the local labor market. Sectoral
approaches allow localities to respond to the common workforce
needs of a number of employers, rather than developing
narrow, customized training programs for just one employer.
A sectoral approach makes training more affordable for
employers as well, because many entry-level jobs are common
to many different types of employers, so training costs
can be shared. Employers may also see joint training endeavors
as less risky than individual efforts because their competitors
will share the investment. For example, some localities
have used this approach in cooperation with the electronics
industry, nursing home associations, food service industry,
retail employers, and the banking industry. |
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More
information on this topic |
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Notes |
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1. |
Loprest,
1999; Cancian and Meyer, 2000. |
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2. |
Strawn
and Martinson, 2000; Rangarajan, Schochet, and Chu, 1998;
Moffitt and Slade, 1997. |
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^ Back to top |
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No. 5, September 2001
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Karin Martinson,
a consultant to MDRC and a lead researcher in the Employment
Retention and Advancement evaluation, has over 15 years
of experience as a researcher and policy analyst on a
range of issues related to low-income families. She was
formerly a senior policy analyst at the Office of the
Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation at DHHS
and a researcher at MDRC, playing a lead role on several
evaluations of welfare-to-work programs.
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QFF#5
Answer 
