Millions of Americans face barriers to employment and struggle to succeed in work. Supports available through social safety net policies and the public workforce system aim to help these individuals succeed in employment, but are there areas the safety net doesn’t reach and where access to economic opportunity is scarce? Our proposed spatial analysis project is to map the relationship among where individuals and families facing barriers to employment live, the use of the social safety net and access to public workforce services, and the availability of good job opportunities across the nation. We think our project may reveal “economic opportunity deserts” where workers’ employment needs don’t align with available supports or access to jobs. By helping us understand these “deserts,” this project will inform a national conversation about access to opportunity and fuel place-based and national policy solutions for ensuring more people facing barriers to employment can be successful.
The American Community Survey, which contains data on the following by census tract: unemployment and labor force participation; poverty and extreme poverty; receipt of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, or food stamps) or Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF, or welfare) benefits; educational attainment, race, and family structure; median age; growth of population; severe rent burden; and 16- to 19-year-olds who are not working or in school.
We are asking the U.S. Department of Labor if we can obtain a dataset of the locations of all American Job Centers. These data are compiled on a semi-annual basis and are currently searchable online by city, state, or ZIP code.
The Census Bureau’s U.S. Economic Census and Longitudinal Employer-Household Dynamics program provides detailed local information about the location and types of businesses and jobs, which industries are growing or declining over time, and jobs by earnings level.
Using geospatial analysis, this project will assess the relationship among the location of jobseekers facing barriers to employment, and, among those jobseekers, who is accessing the safety net; the location of American Job Centers designed to help these jobseekers connect with work; and the location of job clusters. This visualization will help us draw insights into how well the employment needs of jobseekers facing barriers align with the safety net’s reach and access to employment and economic opportunity. The analysis should seek to identify “economic opportunity deserts” where there is significant physical distance and disconnect among people facing barriers to employment, the reach of the safety net and available public workforce services, and potential jobs. The final deliverable will be threefold: an economic opportunity desert map that reflects the spatial analysis, a series of thematic maps of each dataset, and a memo outlining what we can learn from the findings.
2016 will see a new Administration and mark the 20th anniversary of welfare reform legislation that has largely failed to be a springboard to opportunity for low-income jobseekers. There’s growing federal momentum to reform welfare again, and communities are in the initial implementation of the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act, which reorients the public workforce toward serving jobseekers facing barriers. Building on this energy, and harnessing the idea that place matters when it comes to accessing economic opportunity, we’ll be releasing big policy ideas to shape the future of safety net and jobs policy and reimagine how to connect low-income jobseekers to work. We’ll use the analysis and maps to inform our policy analysis and to spur robust, national-level conversations about the employment needs of low-income jobseekers, the reach and limitations of the safety net, inequitable access to economic opportunity, and what’s needed to help more people succeed in work.
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