Giving Compass Take:

• YES! Magazine explores the mechanics of social safety net programs and finds that those that offered education, training and job search help for the unemployed were successful — as long as they had funding.

• Where can the nonprofit world step in if the government decides to reduce support for more robust work requirement programs? Understanding which programs have shown real impact is a start.

• Work requirements and housing: What we don't know could hurt us.

In April, President Trump signed an executive order requiring many Americans who get public benefits to join the workforce if they want to continue receiving assistance. The order, Reducing Poverty in America by Promoting Opportunity and Economic Mobility, was immediately decried by advocates for low-income people as an ineffective effort to reduce government aid.

The most-cited reason has been that most people getting social safety net supports such as Medicaid, SNAP (formerly known as food stamps), and housing subsidies, and other assistance already work at low-paying jobs. Of those who don’t, a majority of them face serious barriers to employment: criminal records, disabilities, homelessness, histories of substance abuse or domestic abuse. A simple demand for these people to find jobs likely will not land them livable-wage, long-term employment — especially in a tight labor market.

But more important, researchers say, social safety net programs need more money, not less, for a work requirement program to succeed.

In 2016, the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities examined work requirements implemented by eight cities or counties around the country in the 1990s and found that they were largely ineffective. The requirements resulted in very little initial increase in employment, and virtually no impact five years later. More significantly, most of those people who had major barriers to employment never found jobs. Instead, they lost benefits and drifted further down the socioeconomic scale.

There were two notable exceptions, though.

Work requirement programs in Riverside County, California, and Portland, Oregon, did see real increases in employment that didn’t completely disappear over time. Why? Unlike the others, both places offered a combination of assistance to participants in the form of education, training, and help with job searches.

Read the full article about work requirements and helping the unemployed by Amanda Abrams at YES! Magazine.