Evidence-Based Resources | The PROMISE Center
This page provides a curated list of resources produced by AIR staff related to the PROMISE Center’s background, vision, and work, as well as the challenges and opportunities for advancing equity within the workforce system.
Our Background, Vision, and Work
The PROMISE Center has been shaped by the learning agenda evolving out of the landscape analyses AIR staff conducted as part of the Workforce Development and Economic Mobility/Prosperity Working Group (WDEMP), with support from the AIR Equity Initiative. Explore the below resources to learn more about the critical workforce development topics driving the PROMISE Center’s work.
The Importance of Workforce Development for a Future-Ready, Resilient, and Equitable American Economy, a brief produced by the WDEMP working group, discusses why workforce development must be a critical component of any agenda to improve equity in the United States and to create a more inclusive economy and society with opportunity for all.
Bridges Toward Equity: Making Workforce Development Work for All, launching the Equity Initiative, a roundtable discussion held on September 28, 2021, kicked off the AIR Equity Initiative—AIR’s $100+ million five-year investment to advance equity in several important areas including workforce development. In the first of a series of roundtable discussions focused on equity, a panel of AIR and community experts shared how they will partner to pursue an agenda to increase economic mobility and prosperity for the many Americans who are currently being left behind. Watch the discussion to learn more.
Making Workforce Development Work for All: Five Themes from Our Panel Discussion shares some additional insights and themes from the above panel discussion.
The PROMISE Center at AIR: Providing Equitable Opportunity for Economic Mobility to America’s Workforce is a brief that provides an overview of the PROMISE Center's work. With a $10 million grant from the AIR Equity Initiative, PROMISE is launching a wide-ranging research, capacity building, and engagement strategy that leverages AIR’s deep technical assistance, research, and evaluation expertise.
Challenges and Opportunities
Through a series of landscape analyses, AIR staff identified key challenges and opportunities for strengthening the US workforce system. Discover more below.
Building the US Workforce for the Future: Key Challenges and Opportunities. AIR experts conducted a series of analyses to better understand current economic dynamics impacting workforce stability and preparation. Read this post to learn about the key takeaways and guideposts for building a strong, enduring workforce system.
Automation Risk and COVID-19 Job Losses: Implications for Economic Recovery and Reskilling Policy. This brief highlights another disparity stemming from the pandemic: mass layoffs of individuals in jobs that were easy to automate. The AIR analysis suggests that there is a greater urgency for reskilling workers to help jobless individuals return to work.
Assessing Job Interrelatedness: Data Sources to Facilitate Job Transition and the Future of Work. Given the significant impact technological advances are having on the business environment, a need exists to accurately examine the interrelatedness of jobs so that organizations and individuals will be adequately prepared to adapt. This brief describes several data sources that can be used to examine the interrelatedness of different occupations.
Support Labor Market Resiliency and Future: Readiness; The Case for Measure Skill Demand in Real Time. This brief summarizes how the nature of work is changing, and how the skills associated with jobs may continue to change. It also describes what AIR staff conceptualize as “future skills,” which must be accurately measured and understood to effectively align the supply and demand for future jobs.
