The WIOA Research Portfolio Project
In summer of 2020, SPR, Mathematica, and the National Association of Workforce Boards helped the US Department of Labor (DOL) Chief Evaluation Office update its plan for investing in research and evaluation under the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA) by launching a field-wide engagement project. The COVID crisis had begun and provided important content for the project.
Project Highlights
Our joint team
established an expert panel comprising federal, state, and local workforce agencies, advocacy organizations, organized labor, industry, and post-secondary education institutions to guide the project. We co-hosted seven stakeholder focus groups and met with 53 organizations, including partner federal agencies and representatives of tribal governments.
We identified
widespread consensus on priorities in the workforce system to guide DOL investments in research and evaluation, including case management models and approaches, service integration, training models and interventions, work-based learning and apprenticeship, and youth services.
Stakeholders emphasized
enduring priorities in addition to crisis-driven needs. Focus group participants, in particular, highlighted diversity, equity, and inclusion, and the need to balance investments in projects that offer short- and long-term benefit to the workforce system as it responds to the COVID crisis and aftermath.
“"We're not seeing an end to remote work—or remote everything else. What are the implications for workforce development?"
We learned that workforce stakeholders have profound questions about remote work, remote delivery of workforce programs, and how to respond to new labor market challenges related to changing technology, such as automation.
At the same time, stakeholders recognized the crisis as a laboratory for opportunity and favored using evaluation and research to harvest innovations developed during the crisis.
Stakeholders echoed knowledge gaps and priorities identified in the project’s evidence scan and analysis of labor market trends and emphasized the need to address long-term challenges while also responding to short-term needs.
Research Review
The Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA) Research Portfolio: A Research Evidence Scan of Key Strategies Related to WIOA
Intended to assist the US Department of Labor’s (DOL) Chief Evaluation Office in identifying priorities areas for research and evaluation, this brief documents economic trends and changes, shifts in industry employment and occupations stemming from technological advancement and automation, remote workforce services and evolving work-from-home supports, and federal workforce policy trends–both enduring and COVID-related.
Summary Scan
(A Scan of) Key Trends in the Labor Market and Workforce Development System July 2021
To support the development of the US Department of Labor’s next-generation research portfolio, this scan describes recent and long-term economic and policy developments with relevance for the public workforce system.
Summary Brief
The Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA)Research Portfolio: Summary of Stakeholder Input on Research Priorities
To support the development of the US Department of Labor’s next-generation research portfolio, this brief summarizes the perspectives of over 100 workforce and workforce-adjacent stakeholders–including researchers, experts, policymakers, and practitioners. It identifies the five workforce topics stakeholders prioritized for future research and evaluation investment and five topics specifically related to the future of work–both in recognition of the importance of automation and other long-term labor market dynamics and because of the role the pandemic has played in accelerating them.