Project ProTech in Boston, sponsored by the Boston Private Industry Council, exemplifies a good program. It obtains after-school and summer medical jobs for high school students whose school curriculum is then revised to draw upon that work experience. After graduation, students receive support in enrolling in community college programs in medical areas. The experience of employment and training programs with disadvantaged young high school dropouts is discouraging. But efforts to replicate it in a non-residential setting have not done well.
Results tend to be better for women, but men also benefit.
Much less is known about programs for dislocated workers. Job search assistance appears to provide modest benefits. We do not yet know whether more ambitious efforts to retrain middle-aged workers can succeed, in good part because this population has not participated in the external labor market for many years. The record of the employment and training system is not as bad as sometimes painted. With the exception of programs for youth dropouts, a variety of demonstration efforts have been shown to be successful in the cost-benefit sense.