Current employment statistics by categories:

• Seven percent of participants own or manage businesses.

• Twenty-nine percent are career professionals.

• Nineteen percent hold blue collar or entry level service jobs.

• Twenty-one percent of participants are students, homemakers, or retired.

Retired and Disabled Workers

• Participants are workers. They engage in volunteer jobs after they retire. In a population where the average age is 49.6.

• Ten of the 15 participants between 60 and 80 years of age declared themselves retired; of these, four are active community volunteers and one is looking for financial assistance to bring a toy he developed to the marketplace.

• Of the 13 participants still on unemployment disability or SSI/SSD; three are college students, three are retired, and six of the remaining seven are working at part time jobs in “helping” professions.

CAREER SELECTION AND FUTURE PLANS

• The “helping” professions and service areas were practitioners’ overwhelming choice for new careers.

• Jobs were valued for the self-image they imparted and the satisfaction of helping others as much as for the financial resources they provided.

• Continuing education and training were key elements in securing employment.

• Nearly all participants regardless of level (ABE, ESL, GED, Higher Education) were able to find better-quality employment after exiting educational/training programs.

• Participants show an “information age” spiral of alternating schooling with employment and returning to education for career changes and further advancement.

• Positive attitudes and the ability to face and overcome setbacks were mentioned by participants far more often than specific academic or employability skills. Credit was accorded ABLE practitioners and programs for helping to instill these attitudes.

• Regardless of current position or level of job satisfaction, participants under 50 years of age continue setting goals for future advancement; older participants set goals for future learning.

Home and Family

Did changes in participants’ education, employment and attitudes that stemmed from ABLE participation affect their future way of life? Has steady employment in better than minimum wage jobs led to financial security? Does that security (in tag terms of the sixties) break “the cycle of poverty” and “illiteracy?” Is the American dream of two cars and a home in the suburbs still possible for people who start with nothing but determination? And, if so, is that all there is?