Grounded in a moral vision of labor that insists that work is essential to human dignity and that economic life must serve the human person, West/Southwest IAF Labor Market Intermediaries move working people into living-wage careers through skills training and wraparound support.
As MIT economist Paul Osterman observed, IAF programs not only help lower-income people access better jobs -- strengthening families, education, and civic life -- they improve local labor markets themselves by raising job quality, strengthening hiring pipelines, and reshaping relationships among employers, educators, and communities.
Decades of independent evaluation confirm the impact. Long-term studies of Project QUEST in San Antonio show sustained earnings gains over fourteen years, with participants earning tens of thousands more than peers — especially older workers and adults often left behind by traditional workforce systems.
Inspired by the success of Project QUEST, leaders across the region established an additional nine projects: Capital IDEA in Austin, Texas; Project ARRIBA in El Paso, Texas; VIDA in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas; JobPath in Tucson, Arizona; NOVA in Monroe, Louisiana, Skills-Quest in Dallas, Texas; Capital IDEA-Houston in Houston, Texas; Project IOWA; and Arizona Career Pathways in Phoenix. In 2014, DuPage County United launched its own labor market intermediary, Career Connect Metro West, just outside Chicago.
By organizing locally to turn bad jobs into good ones, West/Southwest IAF leaders are learning that dignified work is something communities can build – deliberately, collectively, and at scale.