This brief examines how California is aligning education and training opportunities for people who are currently or formerly incarcerated. It is the first report in our series "Reconnecting Justice in the States," which will explore coordinated justice, education, and workforce policy and practice at the state level. It is part of…

Programs of study are the most recent in a series of federal efforts to create a more transparent and rational system for school-to-work transition for all youth. The current article places this construct in the context of today's labor market and the new focus on college and career readiness for all students. It then provides evidence indicating…

This bibliography summarizes recent research on the structure and effectiveness of workforce development programs. While the term "workforce development" can mean many things, this document focuses on programs to help low-skill, low-wage and displaced workers increase their employment and earnings, as well as labor market trends that…

We study how the employment effects of enterprise zones vary with their location, implementation, and administration, based on evidence from California. We use new establishment-level data and geographic mapping methods, coupled with a survey of enterprise zone administrators. Overall, the evidence indicates that enterprise zones do not increase…

This paper examines labor market conditions and public employment policies in the United States during what some are calling the Great Recession. We document the dramatic labor market changes that rapidly unfolded when the rate of gross domestic product growth turned negative, from the end of 2007 through early 2009. The paper reviews the…

Over the past several years, a number of new programs, policies, and initiatives designed to promote the employment of people with disabilities have been implemented by state and federal agencies, and are being evaluated to greater and lesser degrees. The purpose of this report is to provide a review of the recent evaluation activities being…

The challenges facing youth who are disconnected from the nation's employment and education systems are expansive. In today's labor market, opportunities for employment at a living wage, and ultimately self-sufficiency, are dismal for those who lack the higher level of skills demanded by employers. The twenty-first century labor market is…

The General Accounting Office (GAO) reviewed the labor market links and vocational training performance of the Job Corps, which is an employment and training program aimed at providing severely disadvantaged youth with a comprehensive array of services in residential settings. Data were collected from the following: interviews with Job Corps…

Conference addresses and summaries of group discussion are included in these proceedings of a symposium held to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the U.S. Employment Service and to explore its future role. The first item is a research report, "The Potential Impact of the Employment Service on the Economy," by Charles Holt, followed by…

This paper evaluates the effect of Federal resettlement policy on Southeast Asian refugee women's employment training programs and describes the extent to which this training contributed to the refugees' economic mobility and acculturation. The report is divided into three major sections. Part 1 introduces the study by discussing its background,…

The feasibility of large-scale, countercyclical public job-creation was assessed. Focus was on how many job-creating activities could be undertaken as well as the job-creation potential and costs of these activities. Data was collected through field visits made to Washington-based federal government and national organizations and to twenty-four…

The Employment Service (ES) was established by the Wagner-Peyser Act of 1933. The act established a nationwide network of state-operated, federally financed employment service offices to match workers to jobs. The following services are performed by the ES: employment counseling, special assistance to target populations, the "work test"…

The book represents an effort to assess the performance, structure, and direction of the Job Bank Program of the Public Employment Service, a program meant to improve the functioning of the labor market information system in the United States. The research had three goals: to assess the relative goal achievement of job banks; to determine its…

The report consists of three parts: "The Design of a Federal Employment Program to Counter Recession"; "The Design of a Federal Employment Program in a Strategy to Raise Low Earnings"; and "The Design of a Guaranteed Job Opportunity as a Part of Welfare Reform". In Part 1, an Anti-Recession Program (ARP) is proposed. ARP is an automatically…

Reasons for the failure of the Manpower Development and Training Act (MDTA) of 1962 to meet its major objective of alleviating skills shortages are recorded and analyzed. The lack of skills shortages was admitted to be the main reason for the shortcomings in performance, although the term "skills shortage" had yet to be defined and…