A New Approach to Low-Wage Workers and Employers. Launching the Work Advancement and Support Center Demonstration

Since 1998, federally funded One-Stop Service Centers around the country have focused primarily on assisting the unemployed into work. WASC tests a strategy that expands that mission by targeting people who are already working, but at low wages. Through career coaching, skills training, and better connections with employers - and led by a newly integrated team of workforce and welfare professionals housed at the One-Stop--the program strives to help these workers stay employed, build their skills, and advance. At the same time, WASC makes it easier for busy working people to take up existing public financial work supports--a "make work pay" strategy that other research suggests will also help stabilize their employment. But WASC's longer-term goal is more ambitious: to enable these workers to climb career ladders so they will have less need for income supplements to support their families in the future. The program also intends to help employers reduce costly turnover and fill second- and third-rung positions that require more skills than do entry-level slots. This report examines the beginning efforts of two WASC sites to institute these reforms by bridging the divide between the workforce and welfare systems, which typically function in separate silos. Future reports will explain whether they--and other WASC sites--prove successful in implementing the full program vision and improving workers' skills, jobs, and income. (Contains 5 table, 2 figures, and 5 boxes.)