Holzer calls for new competitive grant program.

Harry Holzer, Professor of Public Policy at Georgetown University and NSC Board Member, presented his prize-winning paper, Raising Job Quality and Skills for American Workers: Creating More-Effective Education and Workforce Development Systems in the States, at a November 30th Hamilton Project conference on Training America's Workforce. In the paper, Professor Holzer calls for a new $2 billion federal competitive grant program that would reward states for adopting evidence-supported strategies that educate workers for jobs in firms that pay well within growing industries. The strategies would be expected to build on already proven state practices of building industry- or sector-targeted partnerships between employers, education providers, workforce agencies and intermediaries to provide training and a range of support services to workers entering that industry. Holzer offers a cost-benefit analysis of the $2 billion investment that shows the program would pay for itself several times over due to increased individual employment and earnings, particularly among disadvantaged students. The paper won the 2011 Hamilton Project Policy Innovation Prize for the best proposal to create jobs and enhance productivity.

The other research presented at the event was a paper by Lou Jacobsen, et.al,, entitled, Policies to Reduce High-Tenured Displaced Workers’ Earnings Losses Through Retraining, which proposes a new series of investments that would make up to two years of re-training available to displaced workers as a means for them to re-enter the labor market. Recipients would be expected to first receive career counseling at a One-Stop Career Center to help them make sound education sources and to provide support to mitigate challenges that often prevent such workers from completing their education programs.