Unfortunately, in Memphis, few resources exist to help people experiencing poverty identify their professional strengths and match those strengths with the living-wage jobs that value these strengths the most.

Memphis does not have a centralized organization that can help job seekers navigate employment pathways across sectors.

Six out of every ten Tennessee community college students experiencing poverty do not continue after the first year. In Shelby County, only 2 in 10 community college students graduate within six years.

An estimated 100,000 Memphians experiencing poverty need academic remediation to access and thrive in postsecondary programs due to insufficient literacy and numeracy skills. The lack of literacy as an adult is absolutely damning to career progression.

Job-seeking Memphians value the role of advocates and coaches who support them. Many training participants and students discussed the importance of an advocate, coach, or mentor in their education and employment journeys.

Self-efficacy is the capacity of people to achieve their long-term goals through resilience and belief in their ability to succeed. Various workforce development organizations have opportunities to help aspiring workforce participants build greater self-efficacy.

This blog shares insights from these conversations about how living in poverty can create a sense of survival mode, where a person is forced to focus nearly all of their efforts to help them and their family subsist and tackle the immediate roadblocks in their path.

Meeting with workforce participants, and the organizations that support them, to understand their experience pursuing postsecondary education and seeking living-wage career paths was a core focus of MemWorks.

Living-wage jobs can be a reliable path out of poverty. An overwhelming theme from our primary research is that even for those with postsecondary degrees and credentials, living-wage jobs are hard for Memphians experiencing poverty to access.