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The current thrust of U.S. public policy is to push workers into jobs, including those paying poverty-level wages, rather than to provide them with the training and skills needed to reach self-sufficiency. If these "work first" programs were a stepping stone to economic self-sufficiency, as their proponents claim, they could perhaps be justified. Yet research on the U.S. labor market suggests that workers employed in low wage jobs remain mired there. Skills training is widely understood to be the key to moving workers into jobs that pay wages that meet family needs and enable workers to be self sufficient. However, turnover in low-wage jobs is high, and private employers are reluctant to invest in training these workers. The limited public training dollars available tend to be targeted to the unemployed and, in any case, most training programs do not take into account the multiple constraints faced by workers who hold jobs and must also care for children or other family members. How, then, can access to training be democratized, and workers receive the skills training that will enable them to move beyond entry-level jobs? In this paper, building on data collected from a New Jersey Department of Labor training program, we focus on the innovative use of information technology to deliver the skills training in a manner that is flexible in both time and space, and in the necessary collaboration among government agencies, training organizations, researchers, unions and employers to develop local public-private partnerships and to cut through bureaucratic impediments. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Researchers and policymakers have begun to realize that the skills required for service occupations have for too long been excluded from skills debates. Discussions have tended to focus on two trends affecting the labor market - the changes wrought by new technologies and globalization - rather than looking inside the jobs that have always been with us. As Marek Korczynski (2005) notes, "debates on skills both within policy circles and academia have too often leapt from a focus on manufacturing to a focus informed by the all-embracing new paradigm of the knowledge economy. In this breathless journey, there is one notable segment of the workforce that tends to be left by the wayside—service workers, particularly those in direct contact with service recipients or customers" (p. 3). In this paper we delve more deeply into the rapidly growing service occupations in the United States and the level of skills these jobs require. Our focus is on service occupations that require "face-to-face" contact, which includes nearly every service occupation. This paper will review both economic and case study/ethnographic literature on service occupations to understand what skills are required in service occupations and how the skill levels relate to wages in these jobs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]