New technology, international trade and deregulation have led to major changes for American businesses and the people who work for them. The American job market offers less security than it did a generation ago, the wage gap continues to grow, and those with fewer skills find it increasingly difficult to earn a living wage. Major policy reforms, particularly the Workforce Investment Act (WIA) and the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA), have changed the way employment services are delivered, and funding for employment programs has declined. Yet, without strategies that effectively link disadvantaged people to living-wage jobs, poverty will persist.

Employment issues have been at the forefront of our work since we began operations in 1978. Throughout the 1980s, we studied diverse combinations of employment training and preparation, academic remediation, community service, adult guidance and support services aimed at disadvantaged youth. In the early 1990s, P/PV became involved in the launch of Bridges to Work, which tested a strategy to address the geographic mismatch between inner-city job seekers and suburban jobs, as well as the State Workforce Policy Initiative, which examined five states' policies and strategies aimed at helping low-income individuals gain the skills needed to maintain steady employment. We have also examined jobs programs for noncustodial fathers, strategies for helping low-income people build informal employment networks, and employment services targeting those recently released from incarceration.

Our current work includes projects testing the efficacy of promising sectoral employment and alternative staffing models; building the capacity of workforce development leaders; and working to define benchmarks of "good performance" for the workforce development field. Looking to the future, we will continue to explore approaches designed to help individuals get and keep jobs, increase their earnings and move out of poverty. We will also seek to answer questions such as: How can organizations help job seekers navigate the contingent labor market? What constitutes good performance given current labor market realities? And how does the field develop the leadership needed to improve practice?