Many individuals with low incomes struggle to obtain and maintain jobs that pay them enough to meet their needs and put them on a path to upward mobility. At the same time, employers often report difficulty finding workers with the required skills. WorkAdvance — a workforce development model — seeks to overcome these challenges through a “dual customer” approach that meets the needs of both job seekers and employers.

The WorkAdvance model was strongly influenced by prior research on sector strategies, which train individuals for quality jobs in specific industries and occupational clusters where there is strong local demand and the opportunity for career advancement, as well as research on job retention and career advancement services.

The findings presented in this brief are an interim look at the effectiveness of WorkAdvance at promoting upward mobility in the long term; they are some of the first rigorous findings from sector programs beyond the second year of follow-up. With three years of follow-up data, the economic impacts of WorkAdvance are still varied across the sites.

Read the full research article by Kelsey Schaberg about sector strategies on mdrc.org