Key Elements of Employment Programs; Strategies from the Field for Identifying, Implementing, and Sustaining Core Components
Employment service providers looking to replicate evidence-based interventions will likely face challenges in determining how to implement the most important elements, or core components, of those interventions. There are several reasons that this is challenging, including that employment and training interventions are often a bundle of many services, making it hard to disentangle which of those services may be driving results.
Using Pathways Evidence Snapshots to Understand the Evidence Behind Employment Strategies
The Pathways to Work Evidence Clearinghouse produces Evidence Snapshots and reports to help employment service providers, policymakers, and federal funders use the Pathways Clearinghouse to access information about evidence across different interventions. This video describes these resources and depicts how they are part of a larger suite of products now available from the Pathways Clearinghouse.
Next Generation of Enhanced Employment Strategies Project
To further build the evidence around effective strategies for helping individuals with low incomes find and sustain employment, OPRE contracted with Mathematica to conduct the Next Generation of Enhanced Employment Strategies (NextGen) Project. This project will identify and test innovative, promising employment interventions designed to help individuals facing complex challenges secure a pathway toward economic independence. These challenges may be physical and mental health conditions, substance misuse, a criminal history, or limited work skills and experience.
Digging Deeper into What Works: What Services Improve Labor Market Outcomes, and for Whom?
Introduction
Service providers, policymakers, and researchers need to know how likely specific interventions are to improve employment and related outcomes if implemented in a particular setting with clients. In practice, most employment interventions offer a combination of services that are designed to improve labor market outcomes (e.g., employment, earnings, education and training, and public benefit receipt).
What Works to Improve Employment and Earnings for People with Low Incomes?
This March 2022 webinar highlighted findings from a meta-analysis that synthesized more than 220 interventions and 300 studies reviewed by the Pathways to Work Evidence Clearinghouse to provide practitioners, policymakers, and researchers with new insights into the evidence on what interventions boost employment and earnings for people with low incomes. Panelists described how practitioners and policymakers can use the findings to best meet the needs of populations with low income who are seeking gainful employment.
Subsidized Employment and Transitional Jobs
The Pathways to Work Evidence Clearinghouse defines subsidized employment as employment that is partially or fully paid for by an external funder (not the employer), and transitional jobs as jobs meant to integrate those who have been out of the workforce (for example, people who were formerly incarcerated) back into the workforce. Transitional jobs can be paid or unpaid. This Evidence Snapshot describes the effectiveness of programs that were identified by the Pathways Clearinghouse as using subsidized employment or transitional jobs.