1. Job search programs require welfare recipients to seek employment. In a group job search program, for example, an individual will be required to receive up to a week of training on how to find a job. This may be followed by several weeks of participation in a phone bank where recipients are required to report to the welfare office and explore job openings over the phone under the management and encouragement of a supervisor. These activities may be followed by several weeks of monitored solitary job search by the individual. .

             2. Education and Training includes basic remedial education, vocational education, on-the-job training, and, in some cases, even post-secondary education. .

             3. Community Work Service is also called work experience and requires welfare recipients to work part-time or full-time for government agencies or non-profit organizations. Mandatory community service work is intended to reduce the attractiveness of welfare by attaching a labor obligation. It also gives useful service back to the community in exchange for welfare aid, and it can make the welfare recipient more employable by instilling crucial job skills relating to appearance, timeliness, and responsibility. .

             Workfare got a jump-start with the passage of the federal Family Support Act in 1988. This bill aimed to produce economic self-sufficiency by providing education, job training, childcare, and health insurance (i.e. Medicaid) to federal AFDC (Aid to Families with Dependent Children) recipients who got jobs. In the past few years, many states have added their own workfare programs. Work experience and job search training are only one part of many states' welfare work programs, which have steadily increased in number during the past five years. Putting welfare recipients to work while this academic debate has continued, America's legislators have been conducting practical experiments. Several states have introduced schemes that try, with varying degrees of insistence, to get poor people to accept training or to look for jobs in exchange for their welfare payments.