Job seekers, employers and communities all benefited from workforce programs under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), according to a new report, written by CSW Founder Larry Good, and companion paper, written in part by VP of Business & Community Innovation Taryn MacFarlane. Both pieces were released by the National Governors Association.
In response to difficult economic conditions during the 2007-2009 recession, the U.S. Department of Labor funded 152 grantees across the country to train nearly 200,000 Americans in emerging and growing sectors such as health care and green jobs.
Advances in Workforce Policy: Insights from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act Training Grants examines the 50 top-tier ARRA grantees. Against the backdrop of the 2007–2009 recession, some grantees had difficulty achieving their goals, but many found ways to adapt to the changing economic environment and meet their targets for placing newly trained individuals in jobs.
Other ARRA grantees focused on training unemployed and dislocated workers in emerging and growing sectors to advance incumbent workers and open entry-level positions for unemployed job seekers. This approach is known as upskill/backfill.
Upskill/Backfill Strategies: Advancing Incumbent Workers and Opening Opportunities for Job Seekers summarizes key lessons learned and documents benefits. These include job seekers benefiting from an increase in capacity of a company’s operations and ability to hire; employers benefiting from training that reduced costs by increasing worker productivity and reducing staff turnover; and communities benefiting from the preservation of jobs and the increasing income of newly trained workers.
Comments are closed.