Welfare Reform and Opportunity in the Low-Wage Labor Market

With the enactment of welfare reforms in 1996, a large percentage of former welfare recipients entered the American job market. This brief answers the many questions brought up by this shift: Are there jobs available? If so, can former welfare recipients successfully compete for those jobs? Once settled in a job, what are the chances of someone previously on welfare earning enough to become self-sufficient? Also within the brief, a separate but related section estimates the actual number of workers that welfare reform added to the labor force in the United States.