Jobs: Employment Opportunities in the Washington Metropolitan Area for Persons with Limited Employment Qualifications

Employment data for the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area were analyzed to determine jobs available to people who had not graduated from high school. Three hundred nine occupations offered at least some openings. These occupations encompassed 584,000 jobs and offered 14,000 openings in an average week. These numbers overestimated jobs available to many chronically poor for three reasons: prerequisites may stand between job seekers and jobs; only a fraction of the job vacancies are widely advertised; and race and sex discrimination limit the number and quality of jobs available to females or members of minority groups. Only one-third of these jobs offered starting wages that exceeded the official federal poverty level for a prototypical family of one adult and two children. At least 50 percent offered no employer-financed health insurance. Sixty percent of the job openings that occurred in a typical week led to a job lasting less than 1 year. Instead of relying on upward mobility within an occupation, workers could increase their qualifications for more attractive occupations. Findings suggested three lessons concerning employment as a strategy for helping people escape chronic poverty: relevance of employment, importance of reducing barriers to employment, and importance of occupational upgrading. (Appendixes include a list of the 309 occupations, list of occupations offering jobs of higher quality, statistical regression analysis, and 97-item bibliography.) (YLB)