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labor market

Certificates: Gateway To Gainful Employment and College Degrees

Certificates have swelled to become the second most common postsecondary award in the U.S.: Over 1 million are awarded each year. In the context of concerns about rising college costs and student loan debt, certificates, which are cheaper and take less time to complete than college degrees, have become of increasing interest to researchers, institutions, and other stakeholders in higher education.

In this report, Anthony P. Carnevale, Stephen J. Rose, and Andrew R. Hanson of the Center on Education and the Workforce at Georgetown University analyze earnings by field of study, sex, race/ethnicity, and program length. One of the most important factors that affects earnings is whether certificate holders work in the same occupational field they studied in.

The authors also take a close look at the demographic characteristics of certificate holders: sex, race/ethnicity, age, educational attainment, academic preparation/skill, family income, and parents' education.

Last, the authors analyze the institutions that most commonly award certificates—such as community colleges and for-profit institutions—and the states where certificates are most prevalent and provide the highest earnings returns.

2012
Anthony P. Carnevale, Stephen J. Rose, and Andrew R. Hanson
Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce
http://www9.georgetown.edu/grad/gppi/hpi/cew/pdfs/CertificatesFullReport1.pdf
From Hidden Costs to High Returns Unlocking the Potential of the Lower-Wage Workforce

Employers can improve their fortunes by investing in training and development for their lower-wage employees according. This business brief, released by the National Network for Sector Partners (NNSP), is based on structured interviews with employers around the nation who have achieved significant bottom line benefits by undertaking innovative training and career development efforts targeted at their lower-skilled, lower-wage workers, and providing significant wage increases for those that develop skills the employers value. Many of the employers participate in sector initiatives.

2010
National Network of Sector Partners, The Insight Center for Community Economic Development
http://www.insightcced.org/uploads/publications/wd/HiddenCosts-HighReturns.pdf
Business and Community College Partnerships: A Blueprint

For over a decade Corporate Voices for Working Families (Corporate Voices) has provided leading best-practice employers a forum to improve the lives of working families, while strengthening our nation’s economy. Many employers accomplish this by supporting the educational attainment of current and future employees. In order to ensure that individuals have the skills to succeed in the workplace and are on education and career pathways to earning family sustaining wages, employers often partner with community colleges in Learn and Earn models of talent development. These partnerships integrate important aspects of employment and education for working learners and do so at an attractive price point for working families.

This blueprint, which is intended for business and community college leaders who have limited expertise in forming partnerships and are interested in undertaking such an endeavor, is divided into four sections:
• Overview: Explains how partnerships serve businesses, community colleges and working learners.

• Section I: Targets businesses with strategic ways to leverage community college expertise.

• Section II: Identifies business and community college divisions where partnerships can be integrated.

• Section III: Targets community colleges with the advantages of partnering with business.

http://www.corporatevoices.org/system/files/Learn-Earn-Blueprint-Updated.pdf
Aligning Community Colleges to Their Local Labor Markets

The U.S. economy will emerge from the Great Recession radically transformed from what it was a generation ago. Changes are afoot affecting which occupations and industry sectors will produce employment growth, as well as what education credentials, competencies, and skills will be required to do those jobs.

Community colleges already take steps to address the workforce needs of local employers, but their efforts often are hampered by a lack of detailed, up-to-date information about occupations and skills in demand. A promising, yet still-evolving solution to that problem can be found within the large pool of job openings posted on the Internet.

This paper discusses new sophisticated “spidering” and artificial intelligence technologies that can aggregate and analyze these online job ads and provide a more comprehensive, “real-time” source of information about the hiring and skill needs of local employers. If proven accurate and reliable, analyses of online job ads could complement traditional ways that community colleges determine labor market demand for program and course offerings.

2011
David Altstadt
Jobs for the Future
http://www.jff.org/sites/default/files/AligningCommunityColleges_LaborMarkets_11...
Building America’s Job Skills with Effective Workforce Programs: A Training Strategy to Raise Wages and Increase Work Opportunities

This paper discusses the importance of effective training and workforce development programs as part of a broader strategy to increase the competitiveness of American workers. Although rapid technological change and increasing global competition have delivered great economic benefits to the U.S. economy overall, the development of new and more productive industries has caused some Americans to experience significant declines in their earnings and job prospects; the Great Recession exacerbated these longer-term trends. Workers with less education and those who have been displaced from long-tenured jobs face particular challenges, and effective job training programs are an important component of policies to help these workers.

The Hamilton Project proposes two general principles that can guide policy-makers in improving training programs to aid American workers:

1) Training funds should be directed to programs with a track record of success in improving earnings for the specific target population and to those workers who can benefit the most from those programs; and

2) Training programs should directly engage employer and industry partners, or actively guide students to career-specific training.

 

 

2011
Michael Greenstone, Adam Looney
The Brookings Institute
http://www.brookings.edu/papers/2011/11_training_greenstone_looney.aspx
Help Wanted: Projections of Jobs and Education Requirements Through 2018 - State by State Analysis (June 2010)

This comprehensive report from the Georgetown Center for Education and the Workforce highlights individual state data on the growth of jobs that will require a postsecondary credential and other labor market trends.

2010
Georgetown Center for Education and the Workforce
http://cew.georgetown.edu/jobs2018/states/
A Short Guide to “Tipping Point” Analyses of Community College Student Labor Market Outcomes

This guide describes how states can use data on community college students to conduct “tipping point” analyses of labor market outcomes. It specifies the data elements needed to complete a study and potential uses of the research.

2008
Davis Jenkins
Community College Research Center, Teacher's College, Columbia University 
http://ccrc.tc.columbia.edu/Publication.asp?UID=600