When it comes to changes in the workforce and the job market, Carl Van Horn has witnessed a lot as a researcher and observer over the course of several decades. He’s seen and analyzed a wide range of developments confronting employers and employees. He also knows ways to best address the resulting challenges and find solutions when quality data, analysis, and purposeful strategies unite.

“We’ve done hundreds of research projects around workforce development,” said Van Horn, director of the 25-year-old John J. Heldrich Center for Workforce Development (the Heldrich Center). “Our staff is focused on researching and evaluating a variety of topics that affect the workforce. We translate research in a way that helps develop strategies and actions that transform the field and improve outcomes for employers, employees, and job seekers.”

The Heldrich Center, operating from the Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers University, is named after John J. Heldrich. As a former executive at Johnson & Johnson and founding chair of the New Jersey State Employment and Training Commission, Heldrich championed improving opportunities for workers and employees. The Heldrich Center has produced more than 200 research reports and publications focused on topics ranging from career and technical education to unemployment and reemployment.

Studying workforce issues to identify solutions

The Heldrich Center aims to enhance employment by strengthening workforce education and training and expanding access to quality job opportunities for unemployed and low- and moderate-income workers. They do this through rigorous and objective research, worker surveys, and program evaluation designed to influence policy and practice. “There are some workforce challenges that never go away. I think of them as ‘evergreen,’” Van Horn said. “One of them is access to high-quality and affordable child care, which is critical to workforce participation.”

In 2023, the Heldrich Center conducted six focus groups with 45 employees in New Jersey to learn more about their motivations for working in child care. In order to make the delivery of child care services possible for the broader labor market, Heldrich researchers realized they also had to understand the needs of child care workers. Heldrich Center staff also asked focus group participants about their workplace environments, career support and planning, and perceived barriers and challenges in entering and continuing to work in the child care field.

In the surveys and focus groups, individuals shared that they entered the child care workforce through a variety of pathways. Findings also suggest that employees commonly remain in the profession due to their passion for working with children. Although those in the focus groups were mostly paid hourly, had reliable schedules, and could take time off, many lacked healthcare and other critical benefits.

Staff will draw on this analysis to develop a larger New Jersey child care professionals survey that, along with findings from additional focus groups, can inform policy recommendations to the state to help increase the supply of providers by making child care jobs better meet the needs of workers.

The Heldrich Center has also released research that explores how generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) may affect New Jersey’s workforce. Traditional AI primarily focuses on analyzing data that exists while GenAI can create new data. The analysis focused on the life sciences and technology sectors, which are two key industries in the state. The report addressed how organizations are exploring this technology, and what workers, employers, and policymakers should consider to support the successful implementation of GenAI in the workplace.

Collaborating on Fed workforce initiatives

In addition to their work in New Jersey, Heldrich Center staff also evaluate and provide expertise nationally. Since 2014, the Heldrich Center has partnered with the Federal Reserve on several workforce initiatives.

For example, Heldrich Center staff worked with the Atlanta Fed on the Investing in America’s Workforce project. Over two-and-a-half years, the two organizations jointly hosted listening sessions, held events, and wrote reports and edited books focusing on workforce issues, policy, and programs.

The partnership explored how well-constructed and effective workforce programs and policy can result in better economic outcomes for employers, employees, and the economy. Van Horn says the evidence and recommendations contained in the books have had a broad impact on the workforce development field.

Heldrich Center researchers, drawing on their experience with policy and program evaluation and data, played a key role as research collaborators in supporting the Atlanta Fed’s workforce development efforts at the Center for Workforce and Economic Opportunity (CWEO). The CWEO focuses on employment policies and labor market issues that affect low- and moderate-income people.

“The Atlanta Fed partnered with the Heldrich Center to better connect strategies to improve places through community development systems and strategies to support people through workforce development systems,” said Karen Leone de Nie, the community affairs officer at the Atlanta Fed. “Together, that’s a powerful combination to foster an economy that works for everyone.” 

Using long-term data to identify trends and insights 

The Fed and Heldrich Center partnership forged in the early days of the CWEO remains strong. Van Horn recently worked with Nye Hodge, an Atlanta Fed policy specialist contributing to CWEO research, and Stu Andreason, former director of the CWEO and current executive director of programs at The Burning Glass Institute, a nonprofit focused on workforce development and economic mobility issues to produce “Then and Now: Key Trends and Transformations in the 21st Century Labor Market.” This project provides important perspectives on how education and labor markets have changed over the past two decades. It also highlights critical challenges for job seekers, employers, and policymakers.

The 2024 three-part series tells the story of American workers through data. The research focuses on notable workforce trends and transformations and examines the evolution of key worker support systems. The series also charts the changing landscape of education outcomes and funding over 20 years.

“It was an exciting project,” Hodge said. “It’s not often that a project requires me to look back at 20-plus years of data. Most projects prioritize recency. However, analyzing more than two decades of data allowed us to put today’s trends into context.”

Hodge shared one labor force data trend that surprised him.

“There was a lot of talk about the labor force participation rate declining because of the pandemic and a shortage of workers,” he said. “Which of course there was, but when we look back at 20 years of data, we see that the rate has been declining since the turn of the century.”

He continued, “The Great Recession of 2007-2009 and the pandemic-era recession exacerbated these declines. This long-range approach gave more context to that narrative and calls for further investigation of the underlying causes.”

Andreason says working together on projects like this can be valuable for important reasons. “Each organization is different and has different strengths,” he said. “There are things that government was created to do. There are things that the nonprofits do well. And there are strengths that academics and the Fed can bring to workforce issues. And embracing that approach of ‘rowing the boat together’ means that you end up with much more impactful work than going at it alone.”

A partnership to better understand how workers navigate economic changes  

Heldrich Center staff also served as advisors to the Federal Reserve System’s Worker Voices project. Worker Voices captures first-hand experiences of workers and job seekers, documenting how these individuals navigated the labor market from the start of the pandemic through recovery.

Federal Reserve staff held focus groups across the country with workers earning low wages and those without college degrees. The goal was to look beyond the numbers and better understand the perceptions and motivations behind workers’ decisions.

The Heldrich Center staff brought to the project valuable experience fielding long-standing surveys with workers. They also contributed to the development of framing questions for non-business or academic audiences. This expertise helped the project team make sure surveyed workers were asked meaningful questions to widen the Fed’s perspective about the conditions of their labor markets.

The benefits of learning shared lessons along the way 

“Experts like those at the Heldrich Center can help guide initial conversations and strategy about the value that the Fed can bring to the workforce conversation around its maximum employment mandate,” said Sarah Miller, a director and principal adviser at the Atlanta Fed who co-leads the Worker Voices project. “It’s good to work with external experts to check the value of the work and to present data in a way that speaks to the realities of what’s happening.”

Van Horn, who has served as a visiting non-resident scholar at the Atlanta Fed on multiple occasions, said that the interactions with the Fed’s work have been mutually beneficial. 

“I don’t think anyone should go at this work alone,” he said. “One of the most gratifying things I’ve learned from the [Heldrich] Center’s partnership with the Fed is how deeply involved Reserve Banks are in their regions in advancing important issues that affect communities, job seekers, and employers.”