Transitional Jobs Provide Path into Workforce

Many people who are unemployed face problems — disabilities, substance abuse, domestic violence, or a lack of job skills and experience — that can make it difficult to find and hold onto a job.

Transitional jobs, which have long helped people with disabilities and other barriers to getting hired, can make a difference. Transitional jobs combine a few months of subsidized, paid work experience with support services that help participants overcome their employment barriers. Transitional jobs programs have a proven track record of helping people enter the labor market, keep their jobs, and eventually advance into better jobs.

Transitional jobs usually pay between $5.15 and $8.00 an hour and provide 20 to 35 hours of work per week for a limited time, usually three to six months.

More than 17,000 people in 18 states have become better able to support themselves after taking part in transitional jobs programs. While they work, generally in clerical, maintenance, or food service jobs for a nonprofit or government agency, participants become acclimated to the workplace and develop a work ethic.

Transitional jobs programs have proven to be an especially beneficial model for struggling rural and urban areas that have a higher-than-average rate of long-term unemployment.

Research shows that these programs — though more expensive than other welfare reform efforts — are cost-effective because they lead to better employment outcomes, empowering people to become productive members of society, reducing public costs like welfare or prisons.

Why Transitional Jobs Work.

Short-term investment with long-term payoff. Participants in effective transitional jobs programs receive appropriate training, work experience, and assistance now so they will not need as much support later.

Supports. People who participate in these programs are eligible for essential supports they need to make it in the workplace – like counseling, childcare, transportation assistance, and job training and placement.

Workers in programs do not displace other workers. Participants take on new jobs that did not exist before they joined the workforce.

Partnerships. Successful programs often depend on strong partnerships with nonprofit, community-based, or public agencies.

Filling a need that would not otherwise be filled. In effect, transitional jobs programs subsidize the low-wage labor market because employers do not directly pay for the employment or training of participants in the programs.

Placement. Transitional jobs programs have proven to be successful at finding permanent jobs for 50 percent to 75 percent of all targeted hard-to-place participants, according to the Brookings Institution.

Models

Many model programs around the country have demonstrated that transitional jobs can be an important element of a welfare-to-work strategy.

New York: The Center for Employment Opportunities provides job training and placement to people returning from prison to New York City. Its work experience program serves as an "employment lab," giving paid, short-term jobs that teach participants the essential skills they need to become productive members of the workforce. Within three months, 60 percent of graduates have permanent jobs.

Minnesota: Advancement Plus started as a pilot project in St. Paul in 1999, and the legislature expanded it statewide in 2001. The program provides a place to learn about the workplace, how to deal with the demands of full-time employment, and how to develop the skills necessary for job advancement. English is taught on-site, as most participants are generally Hmong or Somali refugees. Participants are expected to do 35 hours of paid work each week and advance through the program from an entry-level job at a packaging company to clerical or custodial work at the Science Museum of Minnesota and finishing with work in various county departments. At the end of the program 50 percent of participants have found permanent employment.

Washington State: Community Jobs, administered by the state’s Office of Trade and Economic Development, became the nation’s first transitional jobs program in 1998. Community Jobs has served more than 5,500 people. And an independent evaluation of the program in 2000 found that a year after leaving the program, participants had double the annual income of what they had when they started.

Detroit: A program offers 80 to 100 people convicted of nonviolent offenses 12 weeks of subsidized work at Goodwill Industries, along with job readiness, education, and placement services.

Chicago: Transitional Community Service Jobs, a joint project of two nonprofit organizations in Chicago, employed participants for 30 hours a week and provided 10 hours a week of academic, job-related or other life-skills training. Most participants who worked in subsidized jobs through the program moved on to unsubsidized jobs with sustained earnings potential -- and received less assistance through welfare. (Note: Transitional Community Service Jobs is no longer operating, as state funds for the program were not re-appropriated.)

Philadelphia: The Transitional Work Corporation offers participants transitional work for 25 hours a week at a governmental or nonprofit employer, and 10 hours a week of academic or job-related training. Once a participant finds an unsubsidized job, the organization provides up to six months of retention services, including financial incentives for keeping a job or getting promoted. More than 60% of the participants in the program had kept their unsubsidized jobs after six months.

Georgia: The Department of Labor's GoodWorks program gives welfare recipients the opportunity to work for nonprofit employers that also will provide job-readiness training.

Policymakers can invest in transitional jobs programs as an effective tool for people seeking to break into the labor market.

Potential funding comes from Temporary Aid for Needy Families, corrections departments, or Office of Refugee Resettlement funds.

• State corrections departments could decide to implement early-release programs and use the savings from shorter prison sentences on transitional jobs programs for recently released ex-offenders.
• Any grants should be flexible so communities can adapt programs to meet their needs.
• Funds should be accessible to communities with a disproportionate share of their state’s welfare recipients or unemployed or displaced workers.
• Participants should be paid minimum wage and be eligible for earned-income tax credits and other supports.