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Building America’s Job Skills with Effective Workforce Programs: A Training Strategy to Raise Wages and Increase Work Opportunities

For most of American history, opportunities in the job market have enabled each generation to achieve a higher standard of living for themselves and their families than their parents enjoyed. Innovation and an entrepreneurial spirit fueled robust employment growth, a solid educational system readied workers to take advantage of employment opportunities, and a broad array of safety-net programs helped those who stumbled along the way get back on their feet.

More recently, rapid technological changes and increasing global competition have continued to deliver great economic benefits to Americans, through lower prices for consumer goods or advances in health care that prolong our lives or improvements in the quality and capabilities of everyday products. But this recent wave of change has also left some workers behind, particularly less-skilled workers, by making it more difficult for them to find good job opportunities and by eroding their wages on the job. For instance, recent research by The Hamilton Project shows that over the past four decades the annual earnings of the median man with only a high school diploma have declined by 46 percent. Not since this country has maintained records has such a large group of Americans experienced a similar prolonged period of declining real earnings.

Michael Greenstone, Director, The Hamilton Project, and Senior Fellow, Economic Studies

Adam Looney, Policy Director, The Hamilton Project, and Senior Fellow, Economic Studies

Full Study: http://www.brookings.edu/papers/2011/11_training_greenstone_looney.aspx

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