Looking across this project studies, we observed implications from this research around three themes; program effectiveness and influential program characteristics, career advancement and equity for women and people of color. The meta-analysis generated evidence about program effectiveness and what might lead to greater effectiveness. As we talked about in that coffee break video, the meta-analysis found that career pathways programs increase educational progress and employment in targeted fields, and on average, those impacts are large. That suggests that programs are generally successful at meeting their initial goal of getting people trained and into the jobs they're training for. The main implication of this combination of findings is that programs should consider explicitly how to convert those large educational progress gains and industry shifting employment into earnings gains across both the short and long term. In response, programs might consider implementing or emphasizing those characteristics found to be associated with larger impacts.

But because that evidence is not causal, we interpret and proceed with caution. Programs generally face trade-offs between scale and access, and how to best configure to meet their community's needs. This study's evidence suggests that those choices and trade-offs have implications for those programs’ effectiveness. Future meta-analyses could be strengthened with more consistent measurement of program components. This would allow researchers to more easily draw comparisons and synthesize across studies. This study has made important headway into identifying those program components or characteristics that associate with larger impacts and future research can think more deliberately about how to do that by examining programs and participant characteristics and how those vary. This could yield insights about other settings or people to which particular program components might be useful adapted in order to improve results. 

The meta-analysis found that career pathways programs have generally been successful at getting people trained and placed into jobs in their field. But how might programs convert these shorter run successes into longer run earnings gains for participants? Our career pathways and occupational transition study findings suggest that it may be helpful for program designers to consider focusing training more on occupations that tend to be stronger launchpads for future wage growth. You might think the workers who start in jobs that require similar levels, preparation and similar starting wages also tend to have similar longer run career prospects. But we found substantial differences across occupations when it comes to the future wage growth that new entrances go on to experience. For example, suppose we have two workers who each were placed in jobs in different occupations, paying $20 per hour, but one was placed in a high wage growth launchpad occupation while the other was placed in a low wage growth occupation. 

Ten years later, the worker placed in the launchpad occupation would be expected to earn $7.20 more per hour than the worker placed in the low wage growth occupation. That amounts to a $15,000 difference in annual earnings by the 10th year after placement. Launchpad occupations exist in many occupational clusters, so thinking about how to focus training on occupations that are stronger launchpads does not mean limiting training to one or two occupational clusters. That said, knowledge clusters like IT and science, math and engineering offer higher wage growth. Our analyses also showed that wage growth prospects are stronger in occupations that emphasize problem solving and communication implying that training programs may want to explore ways to build these transferable skills along with specialized technical skills. Finally, we found large disparities in wage growth by race and gender, even among workers who start in the same occupation at similar wages. This indicates the value of considering structural and other barriers to career advancement that women and workers of color face. For more information about launchpad occupations, check out the second video in the series or are final reports linked to in the notes below the videos.

Finally, the studies point to a need to focus on equity and career pathways programs. We know from the meta-analysis that collectively career pathways programs serve a fairly diverse population in terms of race and gender. We also found that programs that serve a larger share of black participants had larger labor market impacts. This is somewhat encouraging, but since the data was about the impacts of the program rather than the outcomes for individuals, we can't say whether Black participants did better or worse than white participants or participants of other races in career pathways programs. If new research on training programs report outcomes more consistently by race and ethnicity, that will help us build clearer evidence about whether these programs can play a role in improving labor market outcomes for black participants and other participants of color. However, from the analysis of career trajectories, we saw large and persistent disparities in wage growth by race and gender among workers who start in the same occupations at comparable wages. 

This means that we can assume that preparing workers for launchpad occupation is enough to lead to long term earnings gains. The existence and magnitude of the disparities we see imply that programs that serve women and workers of color may want to consider ways to provide additional resources to support workers long term trajectories. This project was not designed to evaluate specific strategies to address wage growth disparities, but there are ideas we can draw on from other research and literature. Some strategies that may help include policies that directly address wage disparities like pay transparency or supports that help workers remain employed and in a better position to advance like childcare or transportation access and flexibility in the workplace. At the program level, policy makers and practitioners may wish to consider what barriers certain workers may face in the labor market and ways to tailor support for women and Black and Hispanic workers.

For example, this might include longer term services to assist workers in making upward transitions beyond their first mid-level step. We also know that career pathways programs frequently work with employers. In the meta-analysis for this project, we found that over 90% of programs had some sort of employer involvement. Career pathways programs might work with employers to explore approaches to address wage disparities. This could include focusing on things like biases and task assignment, mentoring or performance assessment.  

The studies we've shared with you over our evidence Coffee Break series from the Department of Labor's Career Pathways Descriptive and Analytical project offer a substantial set of actionable research findings. Together they offer the most up to date understanding about career pathways approaches, including rich information about models and promising components. Further, the project offers a first of its kind analysis on workers', actual wage growth and occupational pathways over three, five, and 10 year time periods with detailed demographic differences explored by gender, race, educational status, and age. Policy relevant insights from this research suggest future refinements to career pathways and related employment and training approaches to improve earnings outcomes for participants. We hope you enjoyed our short series and found the information about this new evidence useful. We encourage you to check out the full set of reports and interactive dashboard to explore more.