Since the mid-1990s, job-training and employment programs for low-income people have begun to emphasize not only program development and implementation, but also reform of the "system" of labor market, employers, training providers, and helping agencies. In 1995, the Annie E. Casey Foundation, which launched the Jobs Initiative in 6 metropolitan areas Denver, Milwaukee, New Orleans, Philadelphia, St. Louis, and Seattle developed and promoted the use of a 26-page "framework" for labor market systems reform for the 6 job sites. The framework described these four essential characteristics of labor market systems (labor markets are large, complex and dynamic; change requires transforming the "drivers" or underlying forces that influence people and organizations; use "leverage points" to create, change or strengthen "drivers"; and innovators must identify and mobilize their "assets for change") and suggested strategic initiatives for reform. The framework was woven into an "outcome-based planning model" adopted for the Jobs Initiative. Benefits of using the framework included that it helped sites to be more strategic about how to intervene in the system, to connect jobs projects with broader-scale interventions at the system level, to recognize who in the system they had to influence to generate systemic change, and to recognize potential connections between the labor market and the social services system. Difficulties in using the framework included that it was not always relevant to local conditions and that it was hard to tie systems reform to outcome-based job programs and to determine exactly what outcomes were desirable and how to measure them. (KC)