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188 Chris Benneryears, however, education-based initiatives have played a greater role inretraining older workers and in expanding their ties with employers. Thisincludes developing specialized curriculum development and trainingprograms geared specifically for employers’ needs, and providing a widerange of onsite custom training for employers. These trends blur the distinctionbetween “education” and “job-training” programs, and position educationalinstitutions as more active intermediaries in the labor market (Grubb,1996).The third category of publicly funded intermediaries is community andnon-profit organizations that engage in job-training and placement activities.Most of the funding for these programs comes from federal and state workforce-developmentgrants, and thus they are closely integrated into the growingone-stop, career-center system. Certain community-based organizationsare exemplary, however, in the strength of their ties in particular communitiesof disadvantaged workers. Being strongly integrated into social networks inpoor communities can be extremely valuable for improving the effectivenessof intermediaries in improving labor market outcome for disadvantaged workers(Harrison and Weiss, 1998).All three types of intermediaries are quite widespread in Silicon Valley. Arecent survey of workers’ job-search experiences found that one in four peoplehave held a job in the previous three years that they obtained through an intermediary,and that intermediary use was spread across the labor market (Pastoret al., 2003). This is a conservative estimate of the impact of intermediaries inthe labor market since it does not include jobs found through web-based intermediaries,and does not examine the extent to which social networks, whichaccount for the largest single means of finding a job, were built through intermediaryactivity. Furthermore, this only measures the extent to which intermediarieswere successful in placing workers in a job, and does not measure“unsuccessful” attempts to use intermediaries, or the role intermediaries playin shaping work practices more broadly. Although most people still find workby contacting employers directly or through social networks, by directlytouching at least 25 percent of the labor force in a three-year period, and indirectlyprobably touching a significantly larger portion, intermediaries areclearly important in shaping regional labor market dynamics (Benner, 2003b).LABOR MARKET OUTCOMESFlexible labor markets, at least certain aspects of them, are clearly a criticalcomponent of Silicon Valley’s long-term economic success. The circulation ofpeople and information from firm to firm has helped to foster creative innovationin product development and process improvements, and helped to