This digest analyzes information from two recently completed national surveys to determine the extent to which various vocational education programs improve employment opportunities in the United States. The impact of a General Educational Development (GED) certificate on workers' wages is also analyzed. Data are from the 1992 National Adult…

Research was conducted to determine whether Job Training Partnership Act (JTPA) services were being targeted to those most in need, to identify which participants got which services, and to identify associations between characteristics, services, and outcomes. Data were obtained on 5,300 youth from a random sample of 63 service delivery areas. The…

Amendments to the Job Training Partnership Act (JTPA) require each service delivery area to develop an educational component as part of its Summer Youth Employment Program. The Summer Youth Employment Program enhances the basic educational skills of youth, encourages school completion for enrollment in supplementary or alternative school programs,…

A project studied use of state unemployment insurance (UI) wage-record data for Program Year 1986 to assess the effectiveness of Job Training Partnership Act (JTPA) programs. Eleven of 27 interested states were selected by ability to meet data requirements. These issues associated with the use of UI data as an assessment tool were explored:…

Over the past 2 decades, the inflation-adjusted median weekly earnings of full-time employed males and females decreased by 31% and 13%, respectively, and the deterioration in the real weekly earnings of young adults (ages 18-24) shows no signs of abatement. Male high school dropouts and graduates with no postsecondary schooling experienced the…