South By North Strategies, Ltd.

The NC Budget & Tax Center recently released a report on the potential benefits of “career pathway” training models for workers, firms, and the larger economy. From the report …

Career pathways – “a series of connected education and training programs and student support services that enable individuals to secure a job or advance in a demand industry or occupation”– can be one effective response to this disconnect. Career pathways focus on easing and facilitating student transition from high school and low-skill occupations into community college or vocational training programs, and then to consecutively higher skill and higher-wage employment. In doing so, career pathways create structured avenues for workers to increase their skills through credentialed training programs that in turn allow these workers to move into higher-paying, more skill-intensive employment opportunities within their industry or occupation. In North Carolina, the legislature actively pursued career pathway programs as part of welfare reform in the late 1990s in an effort to help move program recipients into employment and self-sustaining careers. After some initial interest, the legislature stopped funding these programs in the early 2000s, but local workforce boards, nonprofit workforce intermediaries, and community-based organizations picked up the mantle from the state and began experimenting with various models of career pathways targeted toward different populations and industries.