Serving People with Disabilities through the Workforce Investment Act's One-Stop Career Centers

This paper examines the extent to which people with disabilities are served through WIA's One-Stop system and discusses its capacity to serve people with disabilities who desire employment assistance, both in terms of common barriers to access as well as promising strategies to improve service delivery to people with disabilities

Vouchers in U.S. vocational training programs: an overview of what we have learned

An important decision that must be made in operating training programs targeted toward disadvantaged workers is whether the programs dictate the specific training programs that participants will take or they issue vouchers that permit participants to select their specific training programs. Over the past 40 years, the United States has operated a number of targeted training programs, some of which have used vouchers and voucher-like instruments to let participants determine their programs. This paper reviews the evidence from the U.S. experience. Although vouchers permit maximum consumer choice and reduce the need for government oversight, vouchers may not lead to optimal results due to imperfect information and a divergence between government and participant goals. Although vouchers are generally popular with participants, evaluations of U.S. training programs for poor workers and dislocated (displaced) workers show mixed results: many studies indicate that the impact of programs with vouchers is often lower than for programs without vouchers for poor participants, and the evidence is mixed for dislocated workers. When vouchers are used, appropriate counseling and assessment as well as the provision of provider performance information can improve the results

Formative Evaluation of Job Clubs Operated by Faith- and Community-Based Organizations: Findings From Site Visits and Options for Future Evaluation

Over the past several decades, job search support groups, commonly referred to as “job clubs,” have evolved into one of several important activities used by the public workforce system and faith- and community-based organizations to enhance worker readiness and employability, as well as to provide ongoing support to unemployed and underemployed individuals as they search for jobs. The U.S. Department of Labor\u27s (DOL) Chief Evaluation Office (CEO) contracted in September 2012 with Capital Research Corporation, Inc. and George Washington University to conduct an assessment of job clubs sponsored by faith-based and community-based organizations (FBOs/CBOs). The overall purpose of this evaluation effort was to systematically describe the key characteristics of job clubs being offered by a range of faith- and community- based organizations, document how they differ from and are similar to the job clubs operated by publicly-funded workforce agencies (such as at American Job Centers [AJCs]), and identify potential approaches that might be used for more rigorous formal evaluation of impacts and effectiveness. Findings from the telephone interviews with stakeholders and in-person interviews with facilitators during the site visits indicate that job clubs operated by FBOs, CBOs and public workforce agencies are alike in many ways, with all of them emphasizing the critical importance of: (1) networking during the job search; (2) offering ongoing peer support and sharing of similar experiences among participants; and (3) providing instruction and guidance on the basics of the job search process (e.g., elevator pitches, resume development, job interview practice). Noteworthy differences between the FBO/CBO job clubs and those operated by public workforce agencies are related to staffing patterns and available resources for program operations and services. While public workforce agency job clubs are led by paid professional staff, supported by the full complement of workshops, activities, and other services typically available through AJCs/One-Stop Centers, FBO/CBO job clubs, in most cases, operate with limited budgets or no funding whatsoever. Additionally, compared with public sector agencies, FBOs/CBOs typically collect little in the way of participant-level data, such as participant identifiers, demographic characteristics, service receipt, or outcomes. Finally, although this report suggests several approaches to future rigorous experimental/non-experimental and process/implementation evaluation of FBO/CBO-sponsored job clubs, there are likely to be formidable challenges to implementation of rigorous evaluation methods because these job clubs rarely collect identifying information on participants, such as Social Security numbers, and are generally opposed to random assignment for their programs

The Costs of Defined Benefit Pension Plans and Firm Adjustments

[Excerpt] While it is obvious that the costs of term life insurance vary directly with age, it is less obvious how employers\u27 contributions to pension funds, which comprise a major share of nonwage compensation, vary. As such, we focus in this paper on the most common variant of pension plans and demonstrate how an employer\u27s cost of fully funding a plan varies with the age and service characteristics of his work force. This cost, as a percent of annual salary, is seen to increase with employees\u27 ages and, in some cases, years of service. This variation has important implications for the level and shape of life-cycle earnings profiles, for labor turnover, and for the likely impact of pension reform legislation, such as the Employees Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA), on the well-being of workers. These implications are discussed in this paper