In our latest concept paper, we propose reinventing and transforming One-Stop Career Centers into places that engage employers willing to invest in upskilling the workforce support workers willing to engage in a combination of work and learning to gain market-relevant skills and credentials to achieve good paying jobs with career potential…

The Benchmarking Project launched in 2004 to understand what “good” performance looks like for different types of workforce development programs. The aggregate data from 332 programs in 200 organizations – mostly CBOs – represent the largest collection of outcomes information to date for programs serving America’s disadvantaged job seekers…

Arizona seeks to align its economic development, safety net, and education systems to benefit both its citizens and its economy. The systems would do well to align themselves around an asset development framework. Assets reduce the risk of poverty and reliance on the safety-net. Assets can break generational poverty. Assets enable people to start businesses. Assets enable people to invest in education. Education improves productivity and the economy. This paper explains that self-sufficient families are still vulnerable and have not reached their maximum capacity if they continue to be asset-poor.

NGA and CSW further developed our sector strategy thinking in co-writing and releasing a report in early 2013. This report offers a snapshot of sector strategies today, an overview of what makes them different from traditional workforce and economic development programs, and a description of actions that state administrators and policymakers can take as part of a policy framework to support the strategies’ creation and effective operation. The report explores the opportunity for state and local policymakers to use sector strategies to integrate other potentially powerful industry-focused strategies, particularly career pathway programs and regional industry clusters. It is here that sector strategies present a tangible way to integrate the state’s talent agenda with the goals of economic competitiveness.

Community Colleges are recognizing the importance of more deeply engaging their business partners. How can colleges more deeply engage employers as strategic partners? Engagement is more than attending annual business advisory committee meetings or providing input regarding curriculum…

Using seed capital from a US Department of Labor(DOL) grant, the Detroit GreenWorks Solutions (DGWS) is a community effort to invest in Detroit’s workforce and economic revitalization through the green economy. The next wave of industrial innovation and opportunity is here, and DGWS is playing a critical part helping local businesses fill a growing market opportunity in the green economy with skilled talent from local communities – Detroit jobs for Detroit workers. This report goes far beyond standard performance measures to both tell the story and quantify how the investment from DOL had impacts that go far beyond standard performance measures. In addition to looking at things like participant outcomes, the methodology also measured and quantified environmental, economic, and social impacts.

Over the past few years, CSW has been engaging in deep facilitation and partnership building work in Detroit. This report, published and edited by the Detroit Regional Workforce Fund and authored by CSW’s Michael DiRamio and Tammy Coxen, tells the story of the diverse partnerships focused on creating pathways to careers in a range of industries and occupations of the growing green economy. It demonstrates the impressive results that new community-based partnerships have been able to achieve in the industrial heartland. These efforts have helped to place a large number of disadvantaged residents of Metro Detroit in careers, despite stiff competition for jobs in this region.

Only a small number of people actually follow a linear path to finding a job. For most, educational choices and career paths are complicated, fragmented, and circuitous. In most communities, information about local career opportunities and the education required to qualify for them is not organized and readily available. This paper describes a new approach to identifying, following, and obtaining quality careers. We envision a strong, integrated set of high tech and high touch tools that enable individuals to access and receive real-time, tailored information and supports to make truly informed decisions about career and learning opportunities.

It is time to start talking about alternative models for the One-Stop system. We posed a starting point for this discussion in this working concept paper, which explains how One-Stops can be transformed into places where work and learning intersect to help transitioning workers obtain needed skills, knowledge, and market-relevant credentials.

We developed this paper as part of a call for ideas on job creation from the University of California Berkeley Institute for Research on Labor & Employment…

CSW authored this report on behalf of the Commission on Community Action and Economic Opportunity, summarizing testimony from a series of statewide Poverty Forums and outlining an entrepreneurial approach to addressing economic challenges.

CSW developed the M-PaTH Learning History to help other communities, both in Michigan and beyond, prepare to address the complex and pressing needs of dislocated workers through strategic partnerships…