Workforce Entry Including Career and Technical Education and Training

• Date: 01 May 2021
• Published date: 01 May 2021
• DOI: 10.1177/00027162211031811
• Subject Matter: Institutional Outcomes

260 ANNALS, AAPSS, 695, May 2021

DOI: 10.1177/00027162211031811

Workforce

Entry Including

Career and

Technical

Education and

Training

By

BURT S. BARNOW,

LOIS M. MILLER,

and

JEFFREY A. SMITH

1031811ANN The Annals Of The American AcademyWorkforce Entry

research-article2021

This article reviews the basic patterns of employment

and school enrollment for new labor market entrants in

the period leading up to the Great Recession and in the

decade thereafter. We find a persistent shift into four-

year colleges that began during the Great Recession. At

the same time, fewer youth are neither working nor

enrolled in school. We see little change in occupational

training programs during our study period, in program

or in participation rates; in particular, rates of training

provided via federal workforce development programs

remain low among workforce entrants. The research

literature on these programs has advanced but without

large effects on policy or practice.

Keywords: workforce entry; CTE; job training; com-

munity college; sectoral training

When examining how American workers

have fared over the past decade, an

important group to consider is young adults in

the years immediately following their high

school education. We focus primarily, but not

exclusively, on “non–college youth”—young

adults not destined to complete a four-year

college degree. Given our interest in human

capital investment around the time of labor

market entry, we treat non–college youth as the

Burt S. Barnow is Amsterdam Professor of Public

Service and Economics at the Trachtenberg School of

Public Policy and Public Administration at George

Washington University. His research focuses on pro-

gram evaluations, employment and training programs,

and labor market policies.

Lois M. Miller is a doctoral candidate in economics at

the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Her research

focuses on higher education.

Jeffrey A. Smith is the Paul T. Heyne Distinguished

Chair in Economics and the Richard Meese Chair in

Applied Econometrics at the University of Wisconsin–

Madison. His research centers on active labor market

programs, college quality, and the applied econometrics

of program evaluation.

Correspondence: lmmiller22@wisc.edu