2015-2016 Academic Catalog

May 08, 2024

2015-2016 Academic Catalog [ARCHIVED CATALOG]

IDCE 387 - Workforce Development and Urban/Regional Employment

During the last three decades, income inequality in the US (and other parts of the world) has been increasing. A recent report from Congressional Budget Office of the US is unequivocal about it: “For the 1 percent of the population with the highest income, average real after-tax household income grew by 275 percent between 1979 and 2007… For the 20 percent of the population with the lowest income, average real after-tax household income was about 18 percent higher in 2007 than it had been in 1979 (CBO, 2011).” Among the set of policies to combat income inequality are workforce development and employment policies. Workforce development encompasses a variety of place-based and non-placed based strategies and programs to boost the employability of workers, improve the matching of workers and employers in labor markets, increase the competitiveness of industrial sectors, urban areas and regions, and to address multiple kinds of labor market dislocations resulting from enterprise restructuring, deindustrialization, technological modernization, and occupational obsolescence. This course examines, first, basic theories about the functioning of labor markets (neoclassical, human capital, segmentation/dual labor markets) and the structural forces behind the deterioration of jobs, such as the growth in low-wage employment, declining quality of jobs, unemployment, and labor market deregulation. Secondly, the course examines workforce development strategies and programs (adult education, pre-labor market programs, work-first, sectorial/cluster-based, career-ladders), and the role of various actors in the formation and implementation of such programs (government, community colleges, labor market intermediaries, unions, networks). Finally, the course explores the interconnection between workforce development policies and community/regional economic development. The course relies mainly on material from the US but with applicability to other regions of the world.