The Office of Workforce Development (OWD) in New Orleans, Louisiana, with a grant from the U.S. Department of Labor, implemented Career Pathways, an innovative program designed to increase the local talent pool and help lower-skilled, unemployed, and underemployed individuals train for work in growing fields. RAND Corporation researchers evaluated…

Lower-skilled workers in the United States face a shrinking pool of employment opportunities. To combat this, the city of New Orleans' Office of Workforce Development (OWD) developed a job training program with a grant, awarded in 2014, from the U.S. Department of Labor Workforce Innovation Fund. The program, Career Pathways, was designed to help…

Operation Wordpower was created to provide a reading program which would help underemployed, nonreading adults attain a better economic position and an increased level of satisfaction. For the past two years, the program has operated in four of Chicago's Urban Progress Centers and accepts any student reading below the fifth grade level. The…

Skill Upgrading in Cleveland (SUIC) is one of three manpower training and upgrading organizations which was funded to replicate and further test the High Intensity Training (HIT) model for upgrading underemployed workers. This report is a summary of activities aimed at upgrading low-skill, low-wage workers within a plant setting and with small…