The U.S. labor market is rapidly changing, making it difficult for programs serving recipients of Temporary Assistance for Needy Families and other workers with low incomes to have practical and relevant labor market information and information on available education and training programs. We have created this website to assist these individuals as they explore more rewarding career paths.
The Promising Occupations website is a career exploration tool that features more than 600 occupations that are expected to grow over the next 10 years and pay $15 per hour or more. Using a simple interface, users can look up promising occupations—those that also have many job openings and are accessible with only short-term training or less. Users can also conduct a customized search of occupations using filters such as hourly median wage, required level of education, number of job openings, or occupation type. The tool uses publicly available and up-to-date labor market information at the state level and, where possible, at the local level, to produce detailed results on local occupational information. The tool then directs users to U.S. Department of Labor–sponsored websites to conduct customized searches for local job postings, training and apprenticeship opportunities, and certificate programs.
The Office of Planning, Research, and Evaluation (OPRE) within the Administration for Children and Families (ACF) awarded a contract to MEF Associates and its subcontractor, Mathematica, to increase the usability of labor market information and create a user-friendly, interactive website that case managers or other employment service providers and job seekers can use to identify promising occupations that are attainable through short-term education or training and are projected to grow with family-sustaining wages. This website is developed as part of the Promising Occupations Achievable through Short-term Education or Training for Low Income Families project.
About OPRE
OPRE builds evidence to improve the lives of children and families. It aims to increase knowledge about effective approaches to helping children and families from low-income households by sponsoring rigorous research and evaluation projects and by working to increase the quality, usefulness, sharing, and analysis of data. OPRE’s work includes descriptive and exploratory studies, implementation and impact studies, measure development, data improvement, and evaluation technical assistance. OPRE works in program areas including welfare, employment, and family self-sufficiency; child care; Head Start and Early Head Start; child abuse and neglect; teen pregnancy prevention and sexual risk avoidance; healthy marriage; responsible fatherhood; family violence; and home visiting. Its work is guided by ACF’s Evaluation Policy, which states that ACF seeks to promote rigor, relevance, transparency, independence, and ethics in the conduct of evaluations.
For more information, please reach out to OPRE’s primary point of contact for this project, Girley Wright.
Suggested citation: Inanc, H., Hollender, D., Kivi, A., Mugo, E., Shenk, M., Gilliard, R. & Mastri, A. (2023). Promising occupations achievable through short-term education or training. http://www.promising-careers.org