With unemployment still high, and millions discouraged from even looking for work, there is considerable interest in ways to connect people to jobs. Certainly stimulating the economy is essential to creating more opportunity. But what can we do to help people make the connections to employers who are looking for workers?
Job training programs would seem to be a logical answer, a key step in moving someone from unemployment, or underemployment due to obsolete skills, into well-paying work. But there is much skepticism that training programs perform well. Reports of scandals surrounding proprietary schools with low placement and high debt feed this doubt. But focusing on these failures misses the larger point. Best-practice models exist, and are slowly diffusing. The challenge lies not in ignorance about what works, but how to reach scale in delivering quality programs.
In Texas, a network of programs affiliated with the Texas Interfaith Education Fund works with employers to identify openings, provide accelerated remediation to prepare people for community college credit courses, cooperate with community colleges to create flexible scheduling, and offer ongoing counseling and support to the enrollees. The payoff to this is substantial: Independent evaluations place earnings gains at between $5,000 and $10,000 per enrollee.
Cooperative Home Care Associates in New York, a worker cooperative of some of the lowest-paid workers in America, trains home health aides more extensively than is typical for those in these jobs, which in turn leads to higher wages and lower turnover. In Boston, Jewish Vocational Services works with area hospitals to build career ladders for low-wage employees, creating opportunities for local residents who otherwise would not qualify for employment in a teaching hospital.
What makes these programs, and the many others like them, work so well? They work with employers to identify real jobs, and they then make substantial investments in trainees to help them succeed. No training vouchers are simply handed out with no follow-up, as in the cases cited by critics of training programs. No enrollee is left on his or her own to navigate a complex system. The leaders of these effective programs believe that they have two clients-the students and the employers-and they work hard to meet the needs of each.
Such programs are not unique. Throughout the country, workforce intermediaries have adopted similar models. Indeed, a number of foundations have cooperated to establish the National Fund For Workforce Solutions in order to support these efforts.
Critics are wrong when they say that, as one solution to underemployment, job training is a failure. But the harder truth is that these programs are not having an impact because they cannot reach scale. They are small and scattered.
The problem is that foundations are in the business of funding new ideas and kick-starting innovation. They cannot be expected to provide the long-term support required to sustain such programs, and they certainly cannot be expected to fund enough activity to help all who need it. Historically, federal job training funds were intended to fill the gap, but this funding has not only declined-a fall of $1 billion dollars since 2010-but regulations regarding administrative costs often preclude the staff-intensive, hands-on interaction with firms that make the best of these programs successful.
A second challenge lies in the local politics of job training. The successful programs described above all make long-term investments in people, yet the incentives facing local funders are to enroll as many people as possible in short-term interventions. Taken at face value, the numbers may be more impressive, but the results are not.
The third challenge is getting employers to pay attention. Although good data are not available, many observers believe that firms have reduced their commitment to internal training. Investments in people are among the first expenses to feel the axe when organizations face hard times-and this has been exacerbated by the growing use of contract and temporary workers, people in whom firms do not want to invest.
It all adds up to this: What has become the conventional narrative is wrong. Job training can be effective; we do know what works. The challenge lies in the delivery system. If we want to connect people to jobs we need to build an effective infrastructure for doing so.
