Impacts of Demand-Driven Workforce Development

We study the impacts of a major “demand-driven” workforce development program for under- and unemployed job seekers in Chicago. The program, run by Skills for Chicagoland's Future, works with employers to understand their hiring needs, company culture, and long-term workforce goals. Skills then acts as a matchmaker for local job seekers and serves as a connection, coach, and advocate. The focus of this program on employers is distinct from the “supply-side” approach or earlier placement programs as it seeks to help employers meet talent needs by bridging the access gap and opening opportunities to previously underutilized talent pipelines. Using survey and administrative data combined with a randomized experiment, we seek to measure the long-run impacts of a Skills job placement, differences in impacts across employer partners, and predictors of these impacts based on employer practices and policies. The results will shed light on the value of breaking into the entry-level labor market for workers historically excluded from these opportunities, the extent to which ostensibly similar jobs result in meaningfully different long-run outcomes, and the determinants of these differences in job quality. As Skills begins a planned national expansion, the results will also provide critical evidence on a promising workforce development model.