U.S. jobless claims may be at historically low levels, but even though many Americans are now able to find work, not everyone is finding work in the fields in which they have been trained. Among those who are most struggling to find jobs in their fields: graduates in sociology, with an under-employment rate of 56.5
Stacey Scott’s accomplishment should not be dismissed in any way. The 30-year-old mother of four from Alabama overcame tremendous adversity on the way to earning her GED this week. But as heart-warming as it was to read about Scott’s journey from frequent joblessness to the graduation stage, it’s important to remember that a diploma of
Here’s the challenge Virginia Lt. Gov. Ralph Northam heard from constituents during a recent roundtable with local business owners: Employers are ready and willing to hire more workers into middle- and high-skill technical jobs, but there aren’t enough workers who have the right amount of post-high-school training to even begin the job-specific training. “We have
Layne Beatty had a Class B commercial driver’s license and no technical experience. Robison Oil needed a service technician. It was a match made in America. First, Robison hired Beatty as a warehouse worker. Then it put him through technical training and summer classes with Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act support. And now Beatty’s got
Millions of working adults, including many who have earned a high school diploma, have low literacy, numeracy and digital problem-solving skills — and this problem won’t just “age away.” According to the Center for Postsecondary and Economic Success, half of workers with limited skills are under the age of 45. And while many of these
With funding made possible by the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act, Vermont will be among the first states to launch a program specifically targeted at raising graduation rates and career readiness for students with disabilities. The three-year pilot, called the Linking Learning to Careers program, will provide 400 high school students with access to community
More than $16.3 million is on its way to support re-employment services for Texas oil and gas workers whose jobs have been lost in recent years. That’s good news in oil-dependent places like Brooks, Duval and Jim Wells counties, where unemployment is more than twice the national average — but it’s also a bit of
It’s not altogether unusual for the federal government to have a law on the books long before the rules that govern how the law will be enforced have been created. The Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act was different, though, in one key way: It required every state to come up with a comprehensive plan for
The best indicator of whether a person will earn a college degree also appears to be the hardest to change: For nearly half a century, people who come from families in the top quarter of the income strata have made up more than 50 percent of those earning bachelor’s degrees at U.S. universities. That’s according
With more veterans per capita than any other state — and in a time in which unemployment among those who have served in the U.S. Armed Forces is a key national concern — Alaska will be spending a lot of time and effort helping ensure its vets have jobs in the coming years. That would