By Ramona Schindelheim for WorkingNation.
Broadcast version by Alex Gonzalez for Utah News Connection reporting for the Working Nation-Public News Service Collaboration

As employers struggle to find talent, it appears the stigma of resume gaps is fading.

"We're seeing significant progress in what we call the institutional shift toward normalizing career breaks - so normalizing the career break that is part of a career path and the concept of taking career breaks itself," says Carol Fishman Cohen, CEO and co-founder of iRelaunch, a career reentry company.

By Cohen's count, iRelaunch has worked with more than 250 companies since 2007 to create programs for professionals looking to relaunch their careers after being out of the workforce for at least one year to 20+ years.

Returnships as an On-ramp

A vast majority of the return-to-work programs are returnships, similar to paid internships. Unlike an internship, returnships are not entry-level roles and employers have the intent to hire and convert the returnship into a full-time job. Programs vary in length, depending on the employer.

iRelaunch provides transitional support to both employers and professionals reentering the workforce with manager training, coaching and mentoring, and creating cohorts for participants. Cohen says participants are mostly women but also include men.

Reasons for extended absences from the workforce range from raising families to medical conditions, elder care, being a military spouse, personal pursuits, or retirees deciding to come out of retirement.

"The common factor is that these reasons are for something external and have nothing to do with a person's work performance," notes Cohen.

She explains that while career breaks are becoming more common, it's not the only reason employers are looking past resume gaps.

"The biggest factor is a greater recognition by employers of the attributes of professionals who have taken career breaks," says Cohen. "This is a pool of people who are educated, have great work experience, and are in a relatively stable life stage."

Returnships Move to the Public Sector

Returnships began in financial firms more than a decade ago with Goldman Sachs credited with starting them.

They spread to the tech sector and in 2015, iRelaunch partnered with the Society of Women Engineers to create the STEM Reentry Task Force and now counts 40 company participants including Intel, IBM, Johnson & Johnson, Merck, Ford, and General Motors. Almost 1,000 professionals have participated in the STEM Reentry programs, according to Cohen, with 85% hired into permanent roles.

Cohen says the latest wave of employers to embrace these return-to-work programs are in the public sector citing the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab, and Utah -the first state to offer a career reentry program of this kind.

"We, on a state level, certainly are experiencing a labor shortage just like everyone else is, so we need access to quality candidates," says Shay Baker, program manager for Return Utah which specifically recruits individuals who have taken career breaks for mid-career-level roles at state agencies.

"Also, like everyone else, we had a lot of women in particular leave the workforce during the height of COVID so we are utilizing it to get more women in the workforce," notes Baker.

Scores of women were forced to leave the workforce when schools and daycare centers shut down during the pandemic, leaving working mothers juggling the management of full-time childcare and a full-time job.

Return Utah was launched in 2021 with the help of Lieutenant Governor Deidre Henderson who had taken a career break herself to raise her family.

The program runs 16 weeks and offers cohort participants training, coaching, and support.

To date, 42 people have completed the program with 60% hired in temporary roles and 92% converted to full-time jobs, according to Baker. She notes several other states and cities have reached out, expressing interest about starting returnships.

Baker speaks from personal experience. The former television journalist took an eight-year break to raise her children and applied to Return Utah when a communications role at a state agency opened up. "I felt intimidated about having workplace conversations. I really had fallen behind in regard to any technical aptitude and technology," says Baker.

Addressing Skills Gaps

Those who run returnship programs encourage professionals to network and research products, updates, and services in their fields. In certain technology fields, they advise upskilling through bootcamps, or online courses may be needed.

Concerns about technical skills alone, say some, should not deter people trying to return to the workplace.

"Returners by definition typically are people that have a certain amount of years of experience. They've managed people before. They've managed organizations before. They may not have the latest technology tools in their toolkit but that's something they can learn if they are someone who embraces learning," says Addie Swartz, CEO of ReacHIRE. The organization works with about 50 companies including Wayfair and Fidelity to develop 6-month returnships and training programs.

People looking to return to the workforce can sign up, receive instructional content, attend webinars, learn about job openings, and submit resumes to reacHIRE's recruiters. Swartz stresses the importance of being able to transfer skills into different industries like tech and biotech. She adds, "We've moved marketing people into finance roles. We've done all kinds of things because smart, capable people can move into different industries, different segments of industries."

ReacHIRE boasts a 92% success rate in converting returnships into permanent roles. Swartz says it is helping companies grow their diversity pipelines. "Not only do we get this amazing talent back into the workforce, but they are actually staying and growing in their organizations."

A Lesson in Persistence

One of ReacHIRE's success stories almost never materialized.

Sujatha Kumarappan almost gave up on her career as a software engineer when she hit roadblocks with employers. "As soon as they asked, 'Tell me about yourself' and I said that I had a break, sometimes I wouldn't get a call back. Sometimes, they'd say, 'No, we are looking for someone who is still actively working,'" says Kumarappan.

When her family moved from India to the U.S. eight years ago, she took a break to raise her children and rejections started eroding her confidence. "It was a bit disappointing for me which made me feel like this is not going to work out and it was reducing my confidence level more and more," says Kumarappan.

Through social media, she learned about ReacHIRE, applied and landed a 6-month returnship at a financial firm where she was hired with the title Software Engineer II. Four months in, Kumarappan learned she would be hired permanently.

Now she's spreading the word for people in the same situation, emphasizing the importance of being part of a cohort and "feeling and sharing with someone who was going through the same experience," says Kumarappan.

Personal Obstacles

That sense of community can be key for returners to overcome personal obstacles. "On a personal note, I would say confidence and imposter syndrome are the biggest things that they are grappling with and are holding them back," says Christine Winston, executive director at Path Forward, a nonprofit that assists people who take breaks for caregiving return to the paid workforce.

Winston stresses, "Try to get educated about what employers are looking for in your field today and figure out how your past experience fits in there."

Convincing Skeptics

Path Forward counts 100 companies it's worked with since starting in 2016 ranging from Walmart and Amazon to startups. While employers may like the idea, it can be a hard sell to put into motion.

"For recruiters, the question is, 'Are my hiring managers going to be receptive to this?' For a hiring manager, it's 'Am I going to get penalized for taking a chance on somebody who has a career break?'" says Winston.

"Those are the things that we work to help them get past so they can get these programs set up and start to hire this talent - at which point the talent speaks for itself," she explains. "I love the converts that we see, the skeptics who become complete converts once they have gone through this program once and see the kinds of talent that they hire."


Ramona Schindelheim wrote this article for Working Nation.

Support for this reporting was provided by Lumina Foundation.


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By Hevin Wilkey / Broadcast version by Farah Siddiqi reporting for the Kent State NewsLab-Ohio News Connection Collaboration.

Ohio students are urging their universities to increase campus wages. Earlier this year, Ohio raised the minimum wage from $10.10 to $10.45 an hour, and it will be raised to $10.70 on Jan. 1, 2025. Some students say they need more to better support themselves.

"It would relieve a lot of stress to not have to worry about what is going to happen if you buy one too many cups of coffee that week, or if you change your Spotify subscription, or you need a new backpack and you just don't have to worry about counting the pennies in your wallet to make sure that it's something you can afford," said Nica-Emmanuel Delgado, vice president of Kent State's chapter of the Ohio Student Association.

OSA is a political student organization that advocates for accessible and affordable higher education, along with other issues of interest to college students in the state.

Not only has Delgado worked multiple on-campus jobs, the senior anthropology major also works off campus. Despite all the jobs and splitting rent with their partner, Delgado said they sometimes struggle to afford everyday necessities like gas, rent and groceries.

Efforts to raise wages for student workers at some schools have been somewhat successful. For example, in winter 2022, students at Ohio State University protested on-campus wages, demanding $15 an hour. By the start of 2024, the university decided to raise its minimum wage to $13 an hour after researching market rates and setting a goal to retain student employees.

This summer Kent State's United Students Against Sweatshops succeeded in getting the university to raise wages for resident assistants from $500 to $1,730 per semester through campaigning and meeting with administrators.

Every year MIT produces a living wage calculator for the entire United States. For Ohio, one adult with no children should make at least $19.40 an hour to live, nearly $9 above the minimum wage.

OSA's Delgado said they aren't asking for something as high as the $19 an hour livable wage, but the goal is for students to feel less stressed.

As much as students fight for livable wages, sometimes it isn't in university budgets, said Sandy Baum, higher education economist and senior fellow at the Urban Institute.

"They have to figure out where the money is going to come from and they have to make choices about how to allocate their budgets," Baum said. "I think taking all of those things into consideration is really important in terms of figuring out what the solutions are to make students better off."

She also said that universities might have to choose between lower wages for more workers or higher wages for fewer workers, ultimately increasing each employee's workload.

In United Students Against Sweatshops Kent State chapter chair Madison McCartha's opinion, the overall workload is already too intense. She has talked with various professors and Faculty Senate about the correlation between student grades and the burden of working one or several jobs. The students who are most impacted by their finances also struggle with academics.

"Students who come from better-off backgrounds or have higher paying jobs sometimes are able to allow themselves a little bit more grace to work, because if they have to miss a shift or any of these different things, it's not the end of the world for them," McCartha said. "We see that that stress really reduces your academic performance, and again, as an institution of higher learning, we want to prioritize learning."

Despite potentially lower wages, there is still a major appeal for students to work on campus.

Many campuses offer flexibility for their students' jobs based around their schedule and time of year. Universities understand that students should only work a certain number of hours to make sure they can still focus on studying while also being able to give them breaks according to the calendar. Not working during breaks or holidays is another plus for many students. And students without their own transportation don't have to travel far to work.

When McCartha worked on her campus, she was making around 40 cents more than the state minimum wage at the time, which was $10.10, and eventually switched to another campus job that paid her around $11.

She said even with the aid of the higher wages, which she appreciated, her funds were still lacking.

"Myself and my colleagues were, and some of them still are, donating plasma to make their bills and pay for food," McCartha said. "It was still not quite enough for the things that I needed at times."


This collaboration is produced in association with Media in the Public Interest and funded in part by the George Gund Foundation.


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Montana's wildland firefighters face a drastic pay cut at the end of this week without congressional action.

Nationwide, the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law made $600 million available to boost wages for more than 11,000 firefighters. The law gave Interior Department or Forest Service employees an annual raise of either $20,000 or a 50% base salary increase.

Wildland firefighters can make as little as $15 an hour doing one of the country's most dangerous jobs.

Jonathon Golden, legislative director for the advocacy group Grassroots Wildland Firefighters, described the pay raise as a game changer.

"That really sent a message and a signal to the workforce that they were acknowledged for their hard work, their dedication, their sacrifice," Golden explained. "That hard work also includes the off season when they are recovering."

Federal spending is set to expire at the end of this week. Congress could pass a continuing resolution to keep the government funded into the new year, which would cover the firefighter pay raise.

Golden's group said rather than needing biennial approval, Congress should make the federal wildland firefighting increases permanent. In addition to pay raises, more permanence would also allow crews to prepare and budget for future fire seasons, which Golden pointed out are becoming longer and more costly to fight.

"We need those preparedness budgets and the wages, salaries and expenses budgets as well to also increase," Golden urged. "Because that's the stuff that gets those firefighters out on the line, prepared and ready to go to fight the increasingly dangerous fires."

Golden and other advocates are pushing to bring federal wildland firefighter pay closer to the wages of state fire personnel, which in some cases are much higher.


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Kentucky's 33,000 state employees face challenges taking time off from work after giving birth to a child or adopting, and many are forced to use sick leave or take unpaid leave through the federal Family and Medical Leave Act because they don't have paid parental leave.

Dustin Pugel, policy director at the Kentucky Center for Economic Policy, said implementing a policy for state workers would put the Commonwealth more in line with other states, especially surrounding ones such as Ohio, already offering paid parental leave.

"Younger workers who are considering starting a family, who are also looking at other state sectors to decide where they want to work, it's really important that we attract them by offering this benefit."

Across Kentucky an increasing number of large private companies such as Norton Healthcare, along with public entities such as Louisville Metro Government and Fayette County Public Schools provide paid parental leave to employees.

Mothers who use paid parental leave have stronger bonds with their child and have better physical and mental health. Pugel added, dads also benefit from paid time off to help nurture new life.

"It's shown to increase brain activity in the part of the brain that's associated with empathy," Pugel outlined. "For kids whose parents use paid parental leave, there's a whole host of benefits as well, social, emotional, cognitive"

As of the beginning of 2024, 38 states had a paid parental leave policy for state government employees, with Kentucky remaining one of the 12 states without a policy.