New Report: Workforce Development and Upward Mobility

Posted by on June 9, 2006

PolicyLink Releases New Paper, Moving Beyond the Divide: Workforce Development and Upward Mobility in Information Technology

As computers became ubiquitous in the global economy, pundits, politicians, and business leaders hailed information technology (IT) as a leading source of job growth and attractive wages. Workforce development advocates highlighted the need to capitalize on this potential by connecting low-income, underemployed populations to IT training. With the implementation of innovative skill-building programs across the United States?and the dot-com boom-and-bust of the 1990s?researchers and practitioners confronted two critical questions: do newly-trained workers remain employed in high technology jobs; and have these formerly-disadvantaged program participants sustained wage gains over time?

University of California, Berkeley Professor Karen Chapple led the first longitudinal analysis of graduates from community-based IT programs, analyzing the career trajectories of alumni and compiling case studies of training intermediaries in the New York, San Francisco, and Washington, DC regions. Moving Beyond the Divide summarizes the study?s findings, and lifts up best practices for helping people cross the digital divide, enter the IT field, and advance in their careers.

The policy brief is a collaborative effort between PolicyLink and the Institute of Urban and Regional Development designed to connect university research with policy strategies in an accessible document for community-based practitioners and advocates. Moving Beyond the Divide aims to revive a national conversation about the important role of local providers in training low-skilled job seekers and can bring these issues to the attention of policymakers, advocates, employers, and training providers.

To download a free copy of Moving Beyond the Divide in PDF, visit http://www.policylink.org/Research/IT_Workforce/. The abstract and full report on Chapple?s research, Promising Futures: Workforce Development and Upward Mobility in Information Technology is available online at http://www-iurd.ced.berkeley.edu/pub/abstract_mg200501.htm.