Portraits of the Unemployed
A new interactive report from the Brookings Institution provides detailed profiles on the unemployed adult population in more than 100 large cities and counties, finding wide variation in age, race and other factors. Meet The Out-Of-Work: Local Profiles of Jobless Adults and Strategies to Connect Them to Employment finds that the out-of-work population is disproportionately composed of people with little education, low English proficiency and little work experience, with the largest group being prime-age workers without higher education. The authors recommend several policy options to connect unemployed Americans to jobs in their communities, including apprenticeships, two-generation programs and social enterprises.