Minnesota Career Development Association

July RoundTable – Career Development and the Working Poor

When:  Wednesday, July 14, 2010

Time:  6:00 – 7:30

Facilitator: Denise Felder

Where:  University of Minnesota Law School, Room 471  229 19th Ave South, Minneapolis MN 55455

Directions:  http://www.law.umn.edu/contact/directions.html
Please RSVP to Liz Brenner at elizabethgrace1@gmail.com no later than Tuesday, July 13th 2010.  We will be serving food at our meeting, so please RSVP to ensure there is enough for everyone.  Also, if you have any food allergies or preferences, include that in your RSVP.

Career Development and the Working Poor

Workforce professionals often encourage clients to not only focus on immediate employment, but to make long-term career goals. Countless public and private initiatives promote career exploration for teens and adults, goal-setting, empowerment and career management. Yet the U.S. middle class is collapsing and the number of families experiencing poverty rose 22 percent in the past 10 years. In addition to the economic effect, low job satisfaction can be linked to increased stress, health concerns, depression, and other emotional and social issues.

This current economic downturn is only partially to blame. Even where there are a substantial number of living wage jobs available, large numbers of “underrepresented” people continue to experience chronic unemployment, precarious employment and low job satisfaction. Do workforce professionals need to develop new strategies for encouraging career development among the working poor — or should the entire concept be reevaluated?

Participants in this roundtable will discuss:

–   Challenges facing Minnesota’s working poor

–   How common psychology and career development principles correlate with today’s job seekers

–   Best practices for engaging clients in their own career development
Resources to help facilitate discussion:
“The Working Poor: Invisible In America” By David K. Shipler

“Nickel And Dimed: On (Not) Getting By In America” By Barbara Ehrenreich

Report “Uneven Pain: Unemployment by metropolitan area and race”
http://epi.3cdn.net/91deae2086a6f00e2a_afm6bnshh.pdf

Wikipedia: Culture of Poverty
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture_of_poverty

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The Minnesota Career Development Association (MCDA) offers monthly RoundTable meetings that focus on selected career development topics to help us become better practitioners.  RoundTables also serve as a time to network with colleagues working in a variety of sectors.  Note that you do not need to be a MCDA member. We encourage you to spread the word to your non-MCDA member colleagues!