Learning from the Field: Economic Growth and Workforce Development in the 1990s

Although attention to labor market preparation, access, and retention for disadvantaged workers has experienced a dramatic turnaround in the past 6 years for economic and policy reasons, serious challenges remain. Today’s workforce development implies more than employment training in the narrow sense: It means substantial employer engagement, deep community connections, career advancement, integrative human service supports, contextual and industry-driven education and training, reformed community colleges, and connective tissue of networks. This article discusses six areas of workforce development learning: (a) retention and advancement, (b) employer and jobseeker customers, (c) regions and neighborhoods, (d) race and labor markets, (e) best practices and replication, and (f) labor market reform. In addition to inevitable economic downturns, optimism should be tempered by three big challenges: the underlying patterns of wage and income inequality, the persistence of race and gender inequalities, and our historic failure to create effective links between schools and labor markets.