Policy Research on Workforce Development

The State of Working Pennsylvania 2003 focuses on two stand-out trends in current economic data bearing on quality of life for the state’s middle class: wages have stagnated again for Pennsylvania workers and the state is “growing apart” once more; and like the rest of the nation, Pennsylvania has experienced a “job loss” recovery. This report serves as a baseline against which the progress of any new initiatives designed to help Pennsylvania return to robust economic growth might be measured.

JFF, along with several partners, has researched the question of how workforce intermediaries might use existing or new funding sources to finance their core functions. JFF prepared these working papers for Investing in Workforce Intermediaries, a collaboration of the Annie E. Casey and Ford foundations. Since 2004, the foundations, working with JFF, have led a pilot effort to create a national support infrastructure for workforce intermediaries.

To inform anticipated reforms of the U.S. workforce development system, a new brief from the National Fund for Workforce Solutions describes its principles for effective efforts to make the system better for workers, employers, and regions:

States and communities are turning to new labor market institutions known as workforce intermediaries in response to a dual challenge: the need to aid low-skilled workers seeking advancement opportunities and the need to aid employers seeking employees who can help them compete in today's economy. However, workforce intermediaries have grown largely on the local level and independently of major national programs or funding streams, responding to the absence in local labor markets of institutions that can adequately serve low-skilled workers and their employers.