About D4AD
Choices about education and job opportunities are among the most consequential decisions that individuals will make for their financial well-being. Yet, most people – especially low-income Americans from disadvantaged backgrounds – make these decisions with less data-driven insight than is the case when choosing a movie to watch at night. An estimated 13 million Americans are unemployed or underemployed, in many cases because they don’t know where to go to get the information they need to navigate the labor market. Opportunities are out there, but workers are simply not able to find them or to get the training needed to obtain them. This not only hurts the neediest in our society—low-income Americans from disadvantaged backgrounds—but also hurts overall economic growth as productive jobs and skill needs go unfilled.
The Data for the American Dream (D4AD) initiative aims to support innovative efforts to expand access to education and career data through partnerships that might include both public and private agencies and organizations. The goal of the D4AD initiative is to help students and jobseekers make better career decisions in a changing economy through data-driven information, and especially to help low-income, lower-skilled, underemployed, and unemployed Americans access better jobs and education opportunities.
D4AD Grantees
Colorado Workforce Development Council
Powered by a multi-agency, public-private data trust, My Colorado Journey will unite the existing fragmented ecosystem of data and allow for the creation of new datasets that connect services, programs, and education and employment opportunities.
Michigan Department of Technology, Management & Budget
Operating in partnership with Michigan’s Department of Labor and Economic Opportunity, a regional workforce development system, and academic and research institutions, this project will focus on creating a suite of tools that will aid displace workers and unemployed or low-income individuals in making the transition to successful, sustainable employment.
New Jersey
Department of Labor
Targeted at customers of the state’s human services programs and other disadvantaged populations, New Jersey’s D4AD project will build an interactive website containing smart disclosure tools that will help jobseekers make informed decisions about training. Project partners include state agencies and organizations from the non-profit and private sectors and academia.
NEWS
New resources available! Visit the Resources page to read the informative pieces we have put together drawing from research and our engagement with D4AD grantees.
D4AD grantees have worked hard on creating and iterating on their jobseeker tools based on user feedback. Check out their tools by following the links below!
- https://www.mycoloradojourney.com/journey
- https://www.mitalent.org/career-exploration
- https://training.njcareers.org/
Check out NJ D4AD’s Medium blog Engineering Matters: An Interview with Team D4AD’s Lead Engineer Anne LoVerso to learn more about the team’s user-centered approach.
@D4ADream
Join us today from 3-5 pm EDT to hear about the lessons and resulting resources from the D4AD initiative! We have a lot to share with the community of professionals seeking to build & share effective jobseeker tools. Register here: https://zoom.us/meeting/register/tJEld-uurT8uGtEzu50n30nvASseIwjSqIz8
Join us tomorrow 8.18 from 3-5 pm EDT to hear about the lessons and resulting resources from the D4AD initiative! We have a lot to share with the community of professionals seeking to build & share effective jobseeker tools! Register here: https://zoom.us/meeting/register/tJEld-uurT8uGtEzu50n30nvASseIwjSqIz8
We have released additional resources that include topics such as how to reach your audience, cross-state data sharing, and how data can help better align education and job opportunities. Find all our resources at: https://d4ad.com/resources/
OUR PARTNERS
