What do we know about how well interventions designed to improve employment and earnings for people with low incomes have worked in past periods of economic recession and recovery? Learning from what has been effective during past periods of economic difficulty can help inform how we meet today’s challenges.
The Pathways to Work Evidence Clearinghouse is dedicated to gathering information from research and making research evidence more useful to decision makers. As part of these efforts, the Pathways Clearinghouse identifies interventions that aim to directly or indirectly improve employment outcomes and systematically evaluates and summarizes the evidence of interventions’ effectiveness.
This September 2021 webinar featured a discussion with practitioners who have adapted existing services to remotely provide work readiness activities or education and training services to job seekers with low incomes. This webinar:
Provided a demonstration of the Pathways to Work Evidence Clearinghouse and how to access employment interventions that include remote service delivery;
This video details the types of interventions and services that show the strongest evidence of success in improving employment, earnings, and related outcomes during periods of economic recession and recovery. It is designed to help decision makers:
The Pathways to Work Evidence Clearinghouse defines employment coaching as intensive, collaborative assistance with identifying and addressing employment barriers and goals. Clients typically identify challenges to getting and keeping a job such as child care, transportation, or time management skills, and then develop strategies and set goals to help overcome these challenges. This Evidence Snapshot describes the effectiveness of programs that were identified by the Pathways Clearinghouse as using employment coaching.
The COVID-19 pandemic, and the resulting economic recession, have impacted employment in dramatic ways. In the United States, at the start of the pandemic, the unemployment rate more than tripled, disproportionately affecting some groups. Evidence on programs that have effectively improved employment and earnings for people with low incomes during past recessions and recoveries can help policymakers and practitioners target their resources as they seek to improve employment in the wake of the pandemic and beyond.
The COVID-19 pandemic, and the resulting economic recession, have impacted employment in dramatic ways. In the United States, at the start of the pandemic, the unemployment rate more than tripled, disproportionately affecting some groups. Evidence on programs that have effectively improved employment and earnings for people with low incomes during past recessions and recoveries can help policymakers and practitioners target their resources as they seek to improve employment in the wake of the pandemic and beyond.
How does the Pathways Clearinghouse determine which employment and training programs improve outcomes for people with low incomes? Watch this video to learn about the systematic evidence review process behind the Pathways Clearinghouse and how this supports those who want to easily identify evidence-based programs and strategies to help job seekers find and maintain gainful employment.
The Pathways Clearinghouse identifies and reviews relevant studies, including impact, descriptive, and implementation studies, to collect details on how an intervention was implemented. We summarize information such as the amount of services received, the number of staff delivering services, and costs and benefits. For each intervention summary, we identify a key informant, who is usually the lead author on one or more of the studies. We share the draft implementation summary with the key informant to ensure accuracy and clarity.
The Pathways Clearinghouse reports implementation details for interventions with at least one outcome domain that has a well-supported or supported rating across the 10 outcome domains (increasing earnings, increasing employment, or decreasing benefit receipt in the short, long, or very long term, or increasing education and training). We focus on well-implemented interventions with supported outcomes because practitioners and decision makers might be interested in learning more about how to implement these interventions.