Lessons Learned from Public Workforce Program Experiments

This book chronicles many of the most important experiments and the key lessons derived from the evaluations of both existing large-scale public workforce programs and the development of new interventions—including low-cost experiments based on behavioral science methods.https://research.upjohn.org/up_press/1265/thumbnail.jp

Expediting the Return to Work: Approaches in the Unemployment Compensation Program

[Excerpt] Policy makers and analysts have searched for methods to speed the return to work of unemployment compensation (UC) recipients with varying levels of intensity. The most recent recession led to an unprecedented increase in the number of workers unemployed for more than 26 weeks (the long-term unemployed). As a result, congressional interest in policy initiatives to expedite the return to work grew. This report examines the current initiatives as well as previous demonstration projects within the UC system to reduce long-term unemployment and speed the return to work

Reemployment Services and Eligibility Assessments (RESEA) in Maryland— Formative Evaluation, Program Year 2019

Unemployment insurance (UI) exists to provide temporary partial wage replacement during periods of involuntary unemployment while beneficiaries are actively seeking reemployment. The reemployment effort required of UI beneficiaries, which balances the work disincentive of income replacement, ensures that UI is social insurance rather than social welfare. In 2017, Congress appropriated funding to provide reemployment services and eligibility assessments (RESEA) to UI beneficiaries. The legislation also required that states receiving RESEA conduct annual evaluations to produce causal evidence that reemployment services and eligibility assessments are effective. In this formative evaluation, we produce the first causal effect estimates of the Maryland RESEA program for participants in program year 2019. Using a comparison-group design and administrative microdata, we find that participation in RESEA, relative to participation in Worker Profiling and Reemployment Services (WPRS), reduces UI benefit year compensation by 0.62 weeks, reduces the probability of UI benefit exhaustion by 3.1 percentage points, and decreases the proportion of benefits received by 2.3 percentage points. We also find that RESEA increases the probability of employment in the quarter following the benefit year begin date by 1.9 percentage points but does not affect medium-run employment and earnings outcomes. Results suggest that Maryland’s RESEA program successfully met its stated goal of reducing UI duration by increasing employment rates in the short term, but the program does not seem to offer a longer-term solution to improving UI beneficiaries’ labor market outcomes. Our evaluation design was driven by the available data, which include indicators of program participation but no information on referral to reemployment services programs. As in all states, Maryland assigns WPRS profiling scores, which measure the probability of UI benefit exhaustion, to all beneficiaries who are required to engage in an active search for reemployment. That is, UI beneficiaries who are neither union hiring hall members nor awaiting employer recall. Then, within each county, Maryland refers the 50 percent of UI beneficiaries determined most likely to exhaust their benefits to RESEA and the remainder to WPRS. We show, however, that distributions of profiling scores do not differ between RESEA and WPRS participants, and that observed proportions of UI benefits received are uncorrelated with profiling scores. In light of this, as a basis for this formative evaluation, we assume that assignment to RESEA or WPRS is as good as random, conditional on observable characteristics. We test the robustness of results to alternative specifications and matching models. We also estimate associations between particular UI services and UI and labor market outcomes, but selection into services received precludes causal impact estimates. This formative evaluation sets a benchmark for Maryland RESEA program impact estimates. Together with our process analysis report, we have provided guidance for more complete and consistent recording of data on RESEA referrals, participation, and services as a basis for future ii evaluations. In future years, we expect to produce increasingly informative evidence on the RESEA program, RESEA services, and efforts to improve participation by UI beneficiaries referred to RESEA

The Wagner-Peyser Act and U.S. Employment Service: Seventy-Five Years of Matching Job Seekers and Employers

This paper provides an overview of the public labor exchange system in the United States, how it came to be, and where it is going. The paper begins by offering a brief history of the development of the U.S. Employment Service, emphasizing the federal-state partnership that has evolved over time and highlighting the differing priorities Congress has placed on the services funded under Wagner-Peyser Act. It then examines the ways workers search for jobs and employers recruit employees. It also shows the role the ES plays in this job matching process. The complementarity between ES services and the broader workforce development system is then examined. Systems for ES performance measurement and the results of impact evaluations of ES services are then reviewed. The paper concludes with a summary and list of challenges facing the ES

Policies for Displaced Workers: An American Perspective

American employment policy for displaced workers started in the Great Depression with programs for the employment service, unemployment insurance, work experience, and direct job creation. Assistance for workers displaced by foreign competition emerged in the 1960s along with formalized programs for occupational job skill training. The policy focus on displaced workers was sharpened in the 1980s through the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act and the Economic Dislocation and Worker Adjustment Assistance Act. Field experiments on services to dislocated workers led to Worker Profiling and Reemployment Services systems in all states, and federal rules adopted as part of the North American Free Trade Agreement Act permitted UI benefit receipt while starting self-employment. Evaluation evidence suggests there should be continuous connection of unemployment compensation recipients to reemployment services, skill training closely connected to employer requirements, earnings supplements to ease transitions to different jobs, efforts to maintain and strengthen employer-employee relationships, information channels to employees and communities about impending employment disruptions, and targeting of services to improve returns on public investments. While no silver bullet emerges to solve worker displacement, many different programs addressing a variety of needs can improve labor market outcomes after permanent job loss

The Effectiveness of Training for Displaced Workers with Long Prior Job Tenure

Workers displaced from long-tenure jobs often have difficulty finding new employment and can take a substantial drop in earnings when they find reemployment. These losses are large and persistent, and can easily dwarf the transitory losses from the initial period of nonemployment. Policy response for these long-term problems has centred on education, training and skill development. This paper surveys and assesses a variety of strategies that have been employed to determine training effectiveness, using results from field experiments and from econometric work based on non-experimental data. Findings from this large research enterprise are not encouraging. Both experimental and non-experimental research shows that the returns to training for displaced workers are low, almost surely less than the (well-estimated) returns to formal schooling which lie in the 6-9% range. On a cost-benefit basis, the body of evidence does not show that training pays off for most of the displaced population. Alternative means to compensate the losers from economic adjustment might include modified or expanded EI coverage, without any necessary link to training expenditures, and perhaps consideration of alternative policies, such as Wage Insurance. Since evidence on training programs for displaced workers gives only limited promise, it is important to search for other creative ways to ensure that the costs of economic restructuring do not fall disproportionately on a narrow group.labour market adjustment, training, displaced workers

Policies for Displaced Workers: An American Perspective

American employment policy for displaced workers started in the Great Depression with programs for the employment service, unemployment insurance, work experience, and direct job creation. Assistance for workers displaced by foreign competition emerged in the 1960s along with formalized programs for occupational job skill training. The policy focus on displaced workers was sharpened in the 1980s through the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act and the Economic Dislocation and Worker Adjustment Assistance Act. Field experiments on services to dislocated workers led to Worker Profiling and Reemployment Services systems in all states, and federal rules adopted as part of the North American Free Trade Agreement Act permitted UI benefit receipt while starting self-employment. Evaluation evidence suggests there should be continuous connection of unemployment compensation recipients to reemployment services, skill training closely connected to employer requirements, earnings supplements to ease transitions to different jobs, efforts to maintain and strengthen employer-employee relationships, information channels to employees and communities about impending employment disruptions, and targeting of services to improve returns on public investments. While no silver bullet emerges to solve worker displacement, many different programs addressing a variety of needs can improve labor market outcomes after permanent job loss.Displaced Workers, Reemployment, Unemployment Insurance, Employment Service, Public Employment Policy, Job Training, Wage Subsidies, Direct Job Creation, Self-Employment

Solving the Reemployment Puzzle: From Research to Policy

Wandner examines the research and evaluation of U.S. employment and training programs over the past 25 years. He also discusses the impact such research can have and how misuse of research findings can hamper program effectiveness.https://research.upjohn.org/up_press/1221/thumbnail.jp

Intergovernmental Relations and Employment Policy: The United States Experience

Policies to regulate and support labor markets in the United States have mainly been an initiative of the federal government. Historically, states and localities were reluctant to act independently to build up worker rights and protections for fear of competitively disadvantaging resident industries with added costs. Federal constitutional authority to raise revenue and control commerce among the states governed development of labor market policy in the United States. Labor market support initiatives usually have been forged in difficult economic times with contributions and compromise from the full political spectrum. This paper examines the development of employment policy in the twentieth century by viewing the interplay of federal, state, and local partners. The programs considered include unemployment insurance, training, youth programs, and the employment service. Some attention is also given to governmental policy that influences the geographic mobility of labor. Intergovernmental relations in labor market policy have resulted in a system that performs a wide variety of functions, varies greatly at the local and state levels, but maintains important federal standards nationwide.unemployment, intergovernmental, relations, employment, policy, O'Leary, Straits