Finding the Next Job – Reemployment Strategies in Retention and Advancement Programs for Current and Former Welfare Recipients

Current and former welfare recipients often have very unstable employment experiences. They find low-wage work but then quickly lose these jobs (either voluntarily or not), have trouble finding another job, and are unable to achieve earnings gains, even over time. This practitioner brief offers program administrators — particularly those managing employment retention and advancement programs — practical advice on how to design and implement policies that turn a recent job loss into an opportunity to find a better job.

It is based on the experiences of 12 programs in the national Employment Retention and Advancement (ERA) evaluation conducted by MDRC for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, with support from the U.S. Department of Labor. A central lesson from this evaluation is that retention and advancement programs for this population confront very rapid and high rates of job loss despite the services provided and must therefore focus as much, if not more, on reemploying program participants as on helping them advance in existing jobs.

Melissa Wavelet, Karin Martinson, and Gayle Hamilton

Full Story: http://www.mdrc.org/publications/576/overview.html