ISSUE 7 MAY 2009 In Brief Job Training That Works: Findings from the Sectoral Employment Impact Study By Sheila Maguire, Joshua Freely, Carol Clymer and Maureen Conway* Introduction In today’s knowledge-based economy, where low skills generally equal low pay, many disadvantaged people face diffcult odds in earning enough to sup- port themselves and their families. Businesses also suffer when local workers lack skills. Going into the current economic downturn, many industries, including healthcare, manufacturing, logistics and energy, faced critical workforce gaps: They had trouble flling a variety of jobs requiring specifc technical skills. 1 As we focus on rebuilding the American economy, it will be more important than ever that low-income workers have the opportunity to develop skills that they and local indus- tries need to succeed. Over the past three decades, however, federal expen- ditures on employment and training across a range of departments have dwindled; spending levels in 2004 were under $8.5 billion, compared with a peak of $22 billion in 1980. 2 In particular, US Department of Labor (DOL) spending has decreased sharply. Total DOL spending for employment and training was about $5.5 billion in 2008, compared with about $17 billion through the Comprehensive Employment and Training Act at its height in 1979 (both in 2007 dollars). 3 The US now ranks 21st among industrialized nations in total federal expenditures on job training programs. 4 Aside from spending levels, other key policies that affect disadvantaged workers have also led to a decline in training opportunities. Welfare reform’s emphasis on “work frst” has meant many programs offer par- ticipants only short-term job readiness services, rather than skills training. 5 The Workforce Investment Act (WIA) has also resulted in fewer dollars spent on train- ing and fewer disadvantaged people being served. 6 On the employer side, where funding for training dwarfs government spending, resources are typically concen- trated on higher-wage and management-level workers. In recent years, though, in communities all over the United States, there has been considerable experi- mentation and development of alternative approaches to help low-income people build skills for particular industry sectors. This issue of P/PV In Brief summarizes the outcomes of a rigorous evaluation of one of these approaches—sector-focused skills training—and dem- onstrates the positive impact that three programs using this approach have been able to achieve. Background In 2003, based on promising earlier fndings from P/PV’s implementation study of nine sectoral programs and a similar study conducted by the Aspen Institute, 7 P/PV launched the Sectoral Employment Impact Study with funding from the Charles Stewart Mott Founda- tion. Researchers set out to conduct a rigorous random assignment evaluation that would answer the question: Can well-implemented, sector-focused training pro- grams make a difference to the earnings of low-income disadvantaged workers and job seekers? Through nomi- nations from leaders in the workforce development feld, P/PV identifed organizations that had been operating workforce programs for at least three years, had well- implemented training that served more than 100 people each year and targeted an occupation or cluster of occu- pations with jobs paying more than $8 an hour. Three organizations were selected: Jewish Vocational Service, a community-based nonproft in Boston; Per Scholas, * Maureen Conway is the Director of the Workforce Strategies Initiative at The Aspen Institute.