Sectoral Employment Development Learning Project (SEDLP): This 4½-year project was an intensive learning evaluation of the outcomes, strategies and industry relationships of six leading sectoral programs. The project produced a series of research reports that highlighted the labor market outcomes of low-income participants of these projects both prior to receiving training, and one and two years following training. In addition, extensive research was done on the particular strategies each program employed to provide services to low-income people and to industry. Results of that research appear in research reports that discuss the methodology used and provide an overview of the outcomes; in-depth case studies of each of the organizations participating in the SEDLP; and policy papers that benchmarked findings about participants in the six programs against findings from other well known studies of workforce development demonstrations, such as the National Job Training Partnership Act (JTPA) Study. Click here to find out more about the research reports, case studies, and policy papers that resulted from this research.

Department of Labor Sectoral Employment Development Demonstration Project: Beginning in Program Year 2000, the Employment and Training Administration of the U.S. Department of Labor funded 39 local Workforce Investment Boards (WIBs) to participate in the sectoral employment demonstration. WSI and the Urban Institute collaborated to serve as evaluators for the project from September 2002 through December 2003. The Evaluation of the Sectoral Employment Demonstration Program: Final Report (published June 2004) discusses grantee strategies and progress in using the sector approach to engage local businesses and meet their needs, to identify and address needs of specific segments of the labor force, and to support the overall health of the targeted sector. The final evaluation report is accompanied by a separate volume that profiles the work of each of the grantees. The evaluation built on work by WSI and the National Network of Sector Partners in 2002 to conduct an interim review of the progress made by the grantees. Results of the interim evaluation are available in the report: Mid-Project Review: The Department of Labor Sectoral Employment Development Demonstration (published May 2002).

Jobs and the Urban Poor: Privately Initiated Sectoral Strategies: In the early 1990s, the Aspen Institute became engaged in an effort to assess the potential of newly emerging sectoral employment development strategies. This research looked at the experience of community-based organizations that were undertaking sector approaches to workforce development. Published in 1995, Jobs and the Urban Poor: Privately Initiated Sectoral Strategies is an initial attempt to define sectoral workforce development strategies and to assess their potential to alleviate urban poverty by providing good jobs for low-income individuals.

From the Bottom Up: Toward a Strategy for Income and Employment Generation Among the Disadvantaged: Published in 1993, this report was the result of the Aspen Institute’s earliest efforts to define and document innovative income- and employment-generation strategies to assist disadvantaged workers. In conducting the research for this report, Aspen assessed 60 self-employment, job training and placement, job creation and retention, and community-based finance programs nationally. One important finding was that organizations that adopted market-oriented (often sectoral) approaches offered some of the most promising models of practice.