This Jobs for the Future toolkit serves as a strategic, action-oriented resource to help intermediaries build data-driven, learner-centered, and employer-aligned pathways to digital jobs. It provides guidance on building digital career pathways, including training design, employer connections, and credential alignment. The toolkit offers practical strategies for TANF programs to support participants in high-growth, technology-driven fields.

This Connecticut Faith Jobs Collaborative webpage highlights cross-sector collaboration to connect participants with training and employment opportunities. Programs can review these partnerships to replicate in creating structured, accessible career pathways for participants.

This faith-based training program combines soft skills, job readiness, and employer engagement. It provides an example of how community partnerships can expand access to career pathways and help participants achieve lasting employment outcomes.

Talent and workforce leaders must actively counteract three major risks – (1) automation outpacing foresight, (2) lagging capability systems, and (3) strategy being dictated by technology – by advocating for internal mobility and upskilling to close projected talent shortfalls. Ultimately, they must view AI adoption as a development opportunity to redefine how capability is built, focusing on outcomes and consciously reinvesting capacity freed by automation to ensure growth and resilience for both the business and its people.

This Aspen Institute playbook explores emerging skills in the AI-driven labor market and offers strategies for workforce upskilling. TANF programs can leverage these approaches to align training with in-demand occupations and prepare participants for sustainable career pathways.

This America Succeeds report highlights the workplace value of durable skills: communication, teamwork, problem-solving, and leadership. TANF programs can integrate these into their case management or training to help participants build foundational and transferable skills for long-term career growth.

Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) programs play a critical role in helping families move toward employment, stability, and long-term economic mobility, including through the use of career pathways, which are connected sequences of education, training, and work experiences that help individuals progress through chosen fields. STAR has created a catalog of career pathway toolkits to help TANF programs plan career pathway initiatives. 

To accompany the Career Pathways Toolkit Catalog, these Starter Pathways are designed to help TANF administrators and staff navigate the toolkits more efficiently and intentionally. 

Users can begin with Starter Pathways to identify where to start planning based on their role and quickly access the most relevant toolkit sections based on their career pathways goals.

Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) programs play a critical role in helping families move toward employment, stability, and long-term economic mobility, including through the use of career pathways, which are connected sequences of education, training, and work experiences that help individuals progress through chosen fields. STAR has created a catalog of career pathway toolkits to help TANF programs plan career pathway initiatives. 

To accompany the Career Pathways Toolkit Catalog, these Guided Use Cases offer short, practical explainers that show how TANF programs can apply selected tools to common implementation challenges. TANF administrators and staff can use these Guided Use Cases to quickly identify which tools are most relevant, when to use them, and how they can support TANF program goals.

The need for a tech-savvy, well-prepared workforce continues to rise. This MDRC resource discusses the development of the partnership between NPower and Urban Alliance, which are two national nonprofits working to deliver digital literacy and IT training to high school students. This resource offers lessons for improving cross-organizational partnerships that support youth career pathways. It also describes the two programs developed during the partnership, discusses some of the challenges that the two organizations encountered during the development and implementation of the programs and how they addressed those challenges, and provides additional considerations for future partnerships.

This Annie E. Casey Foundation resource highlights the work of the Del Norte Work-Based Learning Ecosystem, which works to trans­form edu­ca­tion to bet­ter respond to stu­dents and help schools and dis­tricts in strength­en­ing or imple­ment­ing work-based learn­ing programs. Indi­vid­u­al­ized youth intern­ships are keep­ing stu­dents at Del Norte High School in Albu­querque, New Mex­i­co, on track to achieve aca­d­e­m­ic and career goals. By intern­ing at orga­ni­za­tions that address homelessness, these stu­dents are build­ing aca­d­e­m­ic and occu­pa­tion­al skills as they con­tribute to their communities.

Apprenticeships can be a powerful model for workforce development but too often completion rates fall short. Apprenticeships for America will host a webinar on September 25, 2025 at 12:00 p.m. ET to explore the challenges and strategies behind improving apprenticeship completion rates.