The Great Recession left a crater in the labor market that has been devastating for unemployed Americans of all ages. After more than two years of unemployment at well over 8%, there is a hole of more than 11 million jobs, with average spells of unemployment lasting nearly nine months. The weak labor market has been particularly tough on young…

A literature review and two major studies discovered four approaches to job design, each geared toward different sets of outcomes for individual employees and organizations. The motivational approach tries to design jobs to provide the worker with autonomy and the opportunity to make decisions about how or in what order tasks are done. The…

This manual systematizes the techniques and strategies that employment workers used in Jobs Now, the manpower agency which developed the coaching role that has subsequently been adopted throughout the country. It is designed both for those people with a general interest in staff-client relations and techniques and for those concerned with specific…

Analyzes the processes whereby new technologies create opportunities for new markets and increase the need for value-added knowledge work. Suggests that in some sectors information and communications technologies will cause substantial displacement of workers in routine-based jobs. (Contains 46 references.) (SK)

Robots are machines designed to replace human labor. A fear of vast unemployment due to robots seems unfounded, however, since industrialization creates many more jobs and automation requires technologists to build, program, maintain, and operate sophisticated equipment. Robots possess an intelligence unit, a manipulator, and an end effector.…

There are large groups of people in this country who want to work, but cannot get useful jobs, because they are undereducated, unskilled, considered too young or to old, or are subject to discrimination. The Committee for Economic Development (CED) has been examining the problem and in a new report has called for a broad set of private and public…

Research has shown that three main barriers impede the ability of inner-city, low-income job seekers to find employment in the suburbs: an administrative or information barrier, a physical barrier, and a social barrier. The Bridges to Work demonstration program was designed to test the idea that improved access to suburban jobs can significantly…

Intended for persons establishing job development programs for developmentally disabled individuals, this training manual details the structure and procedures of Project PLANTWORK, a 21-month demonstration program which placed approximately 70 workers with developmental disabilities into employment in horticulture industry firms or into…

The report highlights policy implications of research conducted on formal and informal labor market information systems and the disadvantaged. Policy implications are developed at the end of each of eight sections reviewing studies in the areas of: insurance, an inner-city training program, newspaper ads, the Job Bank system, immigrant labor,…

This interdisciplinary conference was intended to make employment service personnel in two Appalachian states more aware of the social and psychological aspects of poverty and the training and employment needs of the poor. Papers are included by Robert J. Lampman, Frank H. Cassell, Louis A. Ferman, Charles C. Killingsworth, Robert C. Couthorn, and…

This article identifies segments of the deaf-blind population needing additional support to secure and maintain employment, such as the deaf-blind mentally retarded. Supported employment models are described in this context, with special emphasis on the individual placement model and its approaches to job development, worker assessment, training…

There is a general consensus that school counseling is a profession in trouble. Most of the education reform movements underway in various states barely mention, if at all, the importance of school counseling, and counseling positions are in constant danger of being eliminated by school boards faced with budget restraints. Several factors…

The report discusses the problems of the older worker (those 45 and older) in obtaining and maintaining employment in the state of Massachusetts. It also assesses the feasibility of redirecting and reactivating the older worker toward employment with the aid of job counseling and placement, job development, and comprehensive supportive services…