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…

Today, 6.7 million youth in the United States between the ages of 16 and 24 are neither enrolled in school nor employed. This crisis continues to grow as, each year, over one million additional youth become disconnected from the schools and systems intended to prepare them for their future. Educators and youth advocates have dubbed this…