The Director of the Division of Workforce Services shall take all appropriate steps to reduce and prevent unemployment, to encourage and assist in the adoption of practical methods of vocational training, retraining, and vocational guidance, to investigate, recommend, advise, and assist in the establishment and operation by municipalities, counties, planning districts, school districts, and the state of programs for public works to be used in times and places of economic downturn and high unemployment for the purpose of promoting the employment of unemployed and underemployed workers throughout the state, and to these ends, to carry on research and such investigations as he or she shall deem necessary and to publish the results thereof.