Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

This paper will present best practices in workforce development systems change through a case study of New York City’s experience in building evidence and making change. Since its’ founding in 2007, the New York City Center for Economic Opportunity (CEO), an entity within the Mayor’s Office, has been tasked with building evidence for what works in breaking the cycle of poverty. One of CEO’s central foci has always been workforce development.

In 2008, CEO piloted the Sector-focused Career Centers to provide industry-specific job services and training to jobseekers. CEO commissioned Westat to perform a quasi-experimental evaluation of the Sector-focused Career Centers, comparing them to traditional One-Stop Career Centers. The analysis found that participants in the sector-based programs experienced employment, earnings, and job stability gains over those in traditional programs. In addition, Sector-focused Career Center participants who received industry-specific training had greater employment and earnings gains than those who did not receive training. These findings highlight the importance of a sector-based focus and specifically, the importance of training leading to an industry-recognized credential. Based on these findings, and other promising evidence, CEO developed WorkAdvance as part of its’ evaluation portfolio. By combining the promising evidence about sector-based programs with the need for an advancement focus, CEO is building greater evidence for a demand-driven web of programming that serves the interests of both jobseekers and employers.

In response to the evidence from CEO’s workforce evaluations, New York City is changing its workforce development system to include a specific focus on sector partnerships and training. The Jobs for New Yorkers Task Force’s Career Pathways report, which is now being adopted throughout City government, has laid out the blueprint for this change. The report’s recommendations include launching or expanding industry partnerships in six different sectors and tripling the City’s training investment. As these changes unfold across New York, CEO’s evidence will continue to play a critical role. Additionally, the federal government passed the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA) in 2014 and is currently implementing it across the federal workforce system. WIOA includes a focus on sector-based programming and career pathways, and the nationwide implementation of these new policies make the lessons of CEO’s implementation experience all the more relevant.

In this paper, Berman will discuss both the evidence of the evaluations and what has worked in bringing that evidence to bear in discussions of workforce systems change. CEO has had to work with a variety of stakeholders in and out of government to make this shift happen, and the New York City experience contains lessons for communities looking to move to an evidence-based career pathways system.