Job placement services and supports

Before making investments in this strategy, city and county leaders should ensure this strategy addresses local needs.

The Urban Institute has developed an indicator framework to help local leaders assess conditions related to upward mobility, identify barriers, and guide investments to address these challenges. These indicator frameworks can serve as a starting point for self-assessment, not as a comprehensive evaluation, and should be complemented by other forms of local knowledge.

The Urban Institute's Upward Mobility Framework identifies a set of key local conditions that shape communities’ ability to advance upward mobility and racial equity. Local leaders can use the Upward Mobility Framework to better understand the factors that improve upward mobility and prioritize areas of focus. Data reports for cities and counties can be created here.

Several indicators in the Upward Mobility Framework may be improved with investments in job placement services and supports. To measure these indicators and determine if investments in these interventions could help, examine the following:

• Employment opportunities: Ratio of pay on an average job to the cost of living. These data are available from the Bureau of Labor and Statistics’ Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages.

• Access to jobs paying a living wage: Employment-to-population ratio for adults ages 25 to 54. These data are available from the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey and the Bureau of Labor and Statistics’ Local Area Unemployment Statistics.

• Opportunities for income: Household income at 20th, 50th, and 80th percentiles. These data are available from the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey.

• Financial security: Share of households with debt in collections. These data are available from the Urban Institute’s Debt in America website.

• Include job coaching and navigation services: Effective programs almost always offer robust coaching programs that help individuals identify goals, develop necessary skills, create an actionable plan, and review progress toward finding and securing a job. Once a participant secures a job, programs help participants navigate issues such as health insurance, childcare, and job-related challenges that may arise.

• Lower barriers to training and employment: In addition to traditional job search assistance and coaching, effective programs tend to provide participants with comprehensive support services to lower barriers to employment. These may include computer access and technology training, transportation subsidies, mental health counseling, and financial support for housing, education, and health care. Childcare assistance is also essential for parents and guardians to participate in training and find and maintain employment.

• Provide long-term workplace support: Effective programs generally provide services that extend beyond a participant receiving a job offer. Many models help participants navigate various aspects of the workplace, prepare for performance reviews, request a salary review, or change jobs internally. These also include soft skills coaching that can boost retention in the first six months of hire. Long-term support also builds a trusting relationship between the individual and support services.

• Create incentive and reward programs: To help individuals persist through training and improve opportunities for employment, some programs leverage financial incentives and rewards. Paying participants to attend training or coaching sessions or providing payments as participants make progress toward a goal (such as completing a high school diploma or obtaining a credential through a training course) can increase the likelihood of positive outcomes. This strategy should be tailored to fit an individual’s specific circumstances, motivations, and employment goals.

• Know the community: Job placement programs are most effective when service providers have extensive knowledge of the communities they serve and the experiences of those who live there. Understand a community’s history, culture, demographic makeup, and specific employment challenges, and adapt programming to accommodate unique needs, such as in urban and rural areas and Native American communities.
• Strive for language and cultural competency: Client-facing staff and job placement providers should have sufficient language skills and fluency to effectively communicate with their clients. Salary incentives can be utilized to hire multilingual case managers to support clients in their native language and to demonstrate the value placed on cultural competency.
• Increase access to services: Job placement offices are typically in fixed locations, which may be difficult for many individuals to reach, or in communities with a population that is hesitant about accessing government services. Mobile facilities, such as services-loaded buses, can be used in both urban and rural settings to reach people in these communities. Virtual consultations, training, and educational programs can also be useful.
• Reduce bias against second-chance hires: Many employers may struggle to hire second-chance candidates, due to legal restrictions on the nature of the person’s conviction, licensing requirements for specific roles, or broader bias toward the formerly incarcerated. Placement agencies emphasize the experience and capabilities of their clients and their desire to work, regardless of their incarceration background. Agencies and advocacy groups can also work with government officials and labor offices to examine and, if possible, change requirements to make certain job categories less restrictive.

• Workers: Including workers’ voices is critical to job placement programs because it ensures that strategies are grounded in their experience, address the real barriers that individuals face, and provide support tailored to their needs. This will also build trust with the coaching workforce, increase effectiveness, and lead to better long-term outcomes.

• Workforce development boards: Workforce development boards are public-private partnerships that connect job seekers with training and employment opportunities, and are essential components of regional workforce programs. The boards include a majority from the business sector, along with representatives from labor organizations, educational institutions, and community-based groups.

• Companies: Employers must be fully engaged in creating opportunities for individuals facing barriers to work. Private businesses can help program operators help understand industry needs and the skills participants need to be productive employees.

• Elected officials: Government officials oversee workforce development boards, appoint members, approve plans, and secure funding and resources. They also coordinate the efforts of federal, state, city, and local agencies, as well as the business community, and champion the importance of training and hiring workers who face challenges in the job market.

• Youth: Many young people struggle to find employment, often due to limited access to education and skills training. To help reduce long-term youth unemployment, it is important to involve youth and youth-serving nonprofits and advocates. This can ensure that programs are aligned with the needs of young people.

• The justice system: Probation and parole officers are directly involved with community supervision and rehabilitation programs and are essential partners in helping individuals find employment. They are uniquely positioned to assess client needs, evaluate their skills and work experience, and provide referrals to program providers.

• Understand employers’ needs: Evidence-based programs generally leverage in-depth knowledge of an employer’s corporate culture, working conditions, business model, along with their current and future labor requirements. This helps case managers identify and propose job matches that are best suited for both the employee and the employer, and over time helps build a strong relationship with the company.

• Expand awareness of opportunities: Given that some target populations may be difficult to reach, it is critical for programs to establish a social media presence that raises awareness of available opportunities, especially when trying to reach younger clients. Marketing campaigns should be in a variety of languages and include both digital and in-person events, such as job fairs.

• Create a network of second-chance employers: Target potential employers for inclusion in second-chance hiring programs, emphasizing the benefits for the individual, the company, and the community. Work with employers to identify potential job entry points and develop training, coaching, and support programs to help participants succeed at the company.

• Job training: Data on job training programs—including the types of skills and education offered, how many individuals express interest, attend, and complete the program, and with what type of credential, such as state or national—helps providers determine the demand for and effectiveness of offerings. This information can be used to adjust, add, or replace offerings as the job environment and labor market change. Experts note that this information can be hard to come by, particularly for private training providers who cannot readily access public administrative databases.

• Placement: Program managers at placement agencies need to know how many individuals are referred for a specific job, the success rate for placement, and why a candidate is accepted or rejected. They also require data on overall referral numbers and the companies and industries targeted to understand hiring trends. This is particularly important in second-chance hiring, in which it is more difficult to place candidates with a higher barrier to employment.

• Retention: Data on how many people retain or stay in a job, switch positions for which they were trained, or migrate to another employer provides insights into placement policies and company hiring practices. It also helps program managers adapt navigation strategies to help workers overcome job challenges.

• Wages and benefits: Wage growth and the job-related benefits that an individual receives are critical to job satisfaction, retention, and advancement. It is important to track and categorize the type of wage—such as living, minimum, or better wage—and wage increases or declines over time, and if the person has access to benefits, including health insurance, and understands how to apply for benefits such as Medicaid. Experts say this data is not always easily accessible, and may be limited concerning the type of data collected, the level of detail, and for what original purpose.

• Communities: Job placement agencies and workforce development boards are deeply rooted in communities and need data on whether their policies and practices are effectively serving all residents. These services must be geared to community members with a range of different needs, in various languages, and be culturally sensitive.