It is widely known that the earnings of workers without college degrees have stagnated in recent years and employment rates, especially among men, have strongly declined (Groshen and Holzer, 2021; Reeves, 2021). The recent Covid-19 pandemic and recession exacerbated earnings and employment gaps by race/gender and education, and also generated millions more displaced workers (Hershbein and Holzer, 2021); and automation in the job market will no doubt create many more displaced workers over time. The “Great Resignation” of workers from many low-wage jobs also demonstrates a need for successful post-secondary education or training, so that earnings and upward mobility prospects among those with lower levels of education can rise.

For decades policy analysts have sought to identify cost-effective job training programs with lasting impacts for disadvantaged or displaced workers, with limited success. But a very promising model for such training has recently emerged: sector-based training, where people are trained for existing jobs in high-demand sectors that pay well for workers without four-year college degrees. Several rigorous evaluations studies (reported below) have found large and lasting impacts of several such programs on worker earnings and sometimes on college credential attainment (Holzer, 2021).

Indeed, this record of success motivated the Biden administration and the House of Representatives to include at least $10B of training for jobs of “in-demand sectors” in the Build Back Better bill which the House recently passed. The Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA), which will likely be reauthorized in 2022, also encourages state and local workforce boards to fund sector-based programs.

But the What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) of the US Department of Education, which summarizes the results of rigorous evaluation studies for policymakers and practitioners, released reports in November casting doubt on the effectiveness of two of the best-known sector-based programs for disadvantaged workers: Project Quest and Year Up.

Both programs have been evaluated many times and are widely considered to be very successful. But, in each case, WWC provides evidence of only one or two positive impacts on specific measures of education or earnings, while claiming zero or negative impacts on most others. In many cases, the weak results are generated by WWC protocols for judging evaluation results that, while often sensible, can also be arbitrary in some contexts. And WWC failed to include several more recent reports in its summary that provide more positive evidence of longer-term impacts.

Below I argue that the best available evidence still suggests that Project Quest and Year Up, along with other sector-based programs, remain among our most successful education and training efforts for disadvantaged US workers. While major challenges remain in scaling such programs and limiting their cost, the evidence to date of their effectiveness remains strong, and they should continue to be a major pillar of workforce policy going forward.

Read the full article about sector-based training by Harry J. Holzer at Brookings.