The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) recently projected record-breaking growth in 2021, but it is premature to celebrate this rosy macroeconomic picture. In the same document, the CBO also made an alarming prediction: The U.S. labor market will not fully recover until 2024. Recent U.S. jobs reports reveal the depth of the pandemic-created…

In Mississippi, the bulk of the responsibility to conduct workforce training falls on the community colleges. With the recent trends of large industry relocating overseas, layoffs, and plant closures, these challenges have become prevalent in rural America. Through the development and delivery of workforce programs to local business and industry,…

These four papers are from a symposium facilitated by Eugene Andette on work force issues facing human resources development (HRD) at the 1995 Academy of Human Resource Development conference. "Meaning Construction and Personal Transformation: Alternative Dimensions of Job Loss" (Terri A. Deems) reports a study conducted to explore the ways…

This paper presents new evidence regarding the benefits of retraining prime-aged adults by analyzing the impacts of community college schooling on displaced workers in Washington State during the 1990s. The authors also conducted a similar analysis of a small program that provided community college courses to workers displaced from their jobs…

Job loss through technological advancement, particularly technologies based on microelectronics, is increasing for all economic sectors in a nation already hard challenged in world and domestic markets for goods and services. But assessing technology's employment impact remains difficult not only because of its direct and indirect effects and…

This monograph studies unemployment in relation to labor market vacancies throughout the United States, using a new set of data: the Survey of Firms from the Employment Opportunity Pilot Project, a labor market experiment conducted by the Department of Labor at 28 sites in 1979 and 1980. The monograph is organized in five chapters. The first…

The 13 chapters in this volume detail how industrial and organizational psychologists, human resource professionals, and consultants have created innovative human resource development and training programs. "Employee Development and Job Creation" (Jennifer Jarratt, Joseph F. Coates) looks at several trends that have important consequences for…

An emerging U.S. employment system is the Security, Employee Involvement, and Training (SET) system. The system is characterized by the following: (1) a high degree of employment security based upon flexible job assignment; (2) employee involvement in problem solving and continuous improvement; and (3) continuous training of all employees. Case…

A study examined the experiences of some 1.4 million American defense industry workers, displaced in the wake of the Cold War, as a way of reviewing and evaluating national policies toward worker adjustment and re-employment as they have evolved in the 1990s. The study found that the federal government, through the Department of Labor,…

New corporate practices and strategies, technological advances and rising job skill requirements are making postsecondary training a virtual necessity for a high-paying job. This is driving a wedge between the earnings of education "haves" and "have nots." Corporate restructuring is eliminating hundreds of thousands of jobs,…

The question of why some employers opt to lay off current workers and hire new workers with different skills while other employers retrain and retain their workers was examined. First, the literature on employer-provided training and the role of social capital in the workplace was reviewed. Next, data from a 1994 national employers survey of firms…

Faced with worker displacement stemming from a changing economy, states are acting to soften the economic impact of displacement on affected individuals and businesses. Key strategies and practices are as follows: (1) anticipating layoffs by analyzing economic and labor market trends (using data to anticipate layoffs; developing an early warning…