Scholars debate the criticism higher education has received for not adequately preparing students for careers that reflect employer and industry needs and low job placement rates (Holzner, 2017; Monis, 2018; Niu et al., 2019). The skills desired for today's qualified applicants continue to change, and employers are experiencing difficulty finding…

Purpose: Employment mismatch is a significant problem in many countries. However, little conceptualization research has been conducted on employment mismatch from a social justice perspective. The purpose of this study is to shed light on social justice issues that have been obscured in the human resource development (HRD) literature through the…

A growing number of employers identify difficulty hiring highly qualified workers as their top competitive challenge. Roughly 75 million of Americans could meet these employer needs but currently lack the skills or supports to do so. This is America's untapped workforce--the many people who do not have the work or wages they need to get by, but…

With nearly 2 million college-educated immigrants and refugees in the United States unable to fully utilize their professional skills, better understanding of the elements of successful programs and policies that reduce the waste of advanced education and skills can benefit immigrants, their families, and the U.S. economy more generally. This…

Intermediaries--also referred to as bridge builders, boundary spanners, conveners, and other names--fill the critical role of connecting all the parties in the system to empower people with the skills required in the labor force. Those parties generally include employers, educators, workers, and prospective workers. Within these categories may…

Implications of new government approaches to manpower planning and its relationship to higher education in Ontario are examined. In January 1980 the Council of Ontario Universities released a background paper on the employment of university graduates, which reviewed the current major economic and demographic analyses of youth unemployment, the…

A followup study collected employment data from masters and post-masters degree holders from the Department of Instructional Systems, Leadership, and Workforce Development, Mississippi State University, between 1996-2000. Data from 123 questionnaires were analyzed using percentages, means, correlation statistics, analysis of variance, and…

Multi-year applied research studied operations and outcomes of six employment initiatives that developed industry-based approaches to workforce development. Findings from the longitudinal survey of 732 individuals indicated participants in sectoral programs improved their position within local labor markets; increased wages, hours worked, and…

A study assessed the first two years of a three-year initiative to test the potential of extending sectoral employment strategies among 10 organizations, most of which were new to the sectoral employment field. Five organizations increasing low-income workers' access to good jobs were ARCH; PhAME; Training, Inc.; WIRE-Net; and Project QUEST. Five…

The At-Risk Youth Task Force of the State Employment and Training Commission concluded that a generation of young people faced underemployment or unemployment as a result of the increased skill demands required by the global economy. Two interrelated phenomena adversely affected the ability of a majority of young people to succeed in the labor…

These three volumes comprise the background publication of the second report on vocational education and training (VET) research in Europe. The two parts of Volume 1 contain 10 papers; Volume 2 contains 11 papers in two parts; and there are 10 papers in the two parts and annex of Volume 3. In Volume 1 are the following: "Steering, Networking,…

This document, which is based on data gathered during the 1992 National Adult Literacy Survey (NALS), examines the literacy skills of the U.S. civilian labor force, including the employed and unemployed. The following topics are among those discussed: (1) human resources and the U.S. economy; (2) literacy proficiencies of the nation's labor force;…

The Leeds Under-Employed Graduates project was developed to assist higher education (HE) graduates living or working in Leeds, England, who encountered difficulty in establishing themselves in the local labor market. The main project activities were as follows: (1) services for graduates (including graduate career development workshops, assistance…