Personal Reemployment Accounts: Simulations for Planning Implementation

The proposed Back to Work Incentive Act of 2003 recommended personal reemployment accounts (PRAs) that would provide each eligible unemployment insurance (UI) claimant with a special account of up to $3,000 to finance reemployment activities. Account funds could be used to purchase intensive, supportive, and job training services. Any funds remaining in the PRA could be paid as a cash bonus for reemployment within 13 weeks, or drawn as extended income maintenance for exhaustees of regular UI benefits. Personal reemployment account offers would be targeted to UI beneficiaries most likely to exhaust their UI entitlements using state Worker Profiling and Reemployment Services (WPRS) models. The draft legislation called for a budget of$3.6 billion for PRAs, with the money to be committed over a two-year period. This report provides a simulation analysis of questions relevant to implementation of PRAs by states. The analysis is done using data for the state of Georgia. Simulations rely on recent patterns of intensive, supportive, and training services use. Simulations for alternative rules setting the PRA amount and varying behavioral responses are examined. Like the legislative proposal, simulated PRA offers are targeted using WPRS models. The key question examined is, how many PRA offers can a state make given a fixed budget? Proposed and alternative rules for substate budget allocation are also examined. The framework presented in this paper allows the exploration of several behavioral responses to incentives created by the PRA.profiling, worker, WPRS, personal, reemploymt, accounts, PRA, Upjohn, Eberts, O'Leary

Design of the Worker Profiling and Reemployment Services System and Evaluation in Michigan

The Unemployment Compensation Amendments of 1993, Public Law 103-152, require each state employment security agency to implement a Worker Profiling and Reemployment Services (WPRS) system. WPRS systems are intended to identify unemployment insurance beneficiaries who are most likely to exhaust their regular benefits, and refer them quickly to reemployment services to speed the transition to new employment. This brief paper was prepared for a national colloquium on WPRS held June 11-14, 1996 in Atlanta. The paper summarizes work done by the W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research for the State of Michigan to design and implement a UI profiling model, and to design an evaluation of the WPRS system effectiveness.unemployment, insurance, reemployment, Eberts, O'Leary

Reemployment and Earnings Recovery among Older Unemployment Insurance Claimants

The rate of involuntary job loss among older workers has increased in recent years. Previous research has found that after job separation older workers take longer to get back in jobs, and experience bigger earnings declines than younger prime age workers. These studies were based on surveys targeted at older and dislocated workers, which rely on retrospective interviews of strategic samples from the general labor force. Previous studies have not explicitly accounted for the availability of unemployment insurance (UI) benefits between jobs. This paper compares the adjustment to involuntary unemployment of older and younger prime age UI claimants, using a census of UI claimants constructed from records maintained for program administration in a large industrialized mid-western state. We compare subsequent labor market success of older UI claimants aged 50 years and over with younger prime working age claimants aged 30 to 49 following a claim for UI benefits during the major labor market contraction in 2001. We find that relative to their younger prime working age counterparts, older UI claimants return to work at lower rates, are less successful at returning to prior earnings levels, and have lower employment rates in the near term after reemployment. However, older workers who do gain reemployment after a UI claim maintain closer attachment to their new employers. The relative advantage for younger prime working age UI claimants in reemployment, earnings recovery, and subsequent employment is greatest in the first year after the claim for benefits. There is also evidence that both older and younger prime working age claimants who get back to work in the very first quarter after a UI claim have higher near term employment rates than those returning to work only one quarter later. Getting back to work quickly was also estimated to benefit older UI claimants by significantly raising the mean earnings recovery. No comparable earnings recovery was estimated for younger prime working age claimants who quickly returned to work.unemployment insurance, older workers, claimants, reemployment, o'leary

Employment and Training Policy in the United States during the Economic Crisis

This paper examines labor market conditions and public employment policies in the United States during what some are calling the Great Recession. We document the dramatic labor market changes that rapidly unfolded when the rate of gross domestic product growth turned negative, from the end of 2007 through early 2009. The paper reviews the resulting stress on labor market support programs and the broad federal response. That response came through modifications to existing programs and the introduction of new mechanisms to help Americans cope with job loss and protracted unemployment. The particular focus is on federally supported public programs for occupational job skills training and temporary income replacement. We also discuss procedures for evaluating the effectiveness of public reemployment efforts, and adjustments to these programs that were adopted during the crisis.job training, unemployment, unemployment insurance, employment policy, federal stimulus, American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, evaluation, performance measurement, net impacts, cream skimming, adjustment methodology

A Frontline Decision Support System for Georgia Career Centers

The Workforce Investment Act (WIA) of 1998 emphasizes the integration and coordination of employment services. Central to achieving this aim is the federal requirement that local areas receiving WIA funding must establish one-stop centers, where providers of various employment services within a local labor market are assembled in one location. A major challenge facing staff in these centers is the expected large volume of customers resulting from relaxed program eligibility rules. Nonetheless, resources for assessment and counseling are limited. To help frontline staff in one-stop centers quickly assess customer needs and properly target services, the U.S. Department of Labor has funded development of a Frontline Decision Support System (FDSS). The FDSS is being pilot tested in the state of Georgia where one-stop centers are called Georgia Career Centers. Technical assistance on the project is being provided by the W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research. FDSS is comprised of two main parts: 1) the systematic job search module, and 2) the service referral module. The systematic job search module is a means to undertake a structured search of vacancy listings. The module provides information about a customer's prospects for returning to a job like their prior one, provides a realistic assessment of likely reemployment earnings, identifies occupations related to the prior one, and screens job vacancy listings by region, occupation, and earnings requirements. The service referral module identifies the sequence of activities that most often lead to successful employment for clients with similar background characteristics. This paper documents the strategy and tools implemented to pilot test FDSS within the internet-based Georgia Workforce System. Pilot field operations in Georgia began in the Athens and Cobb-Cherokee Career Centers in July, 2002.Frontline, decision. Support, FDSS, Georgia, Eberts, O'Leary, Upjohn

A New WPRS Profiling Model for Michigan

The Worker Profiling and Reemployment Services (WPRS) system was established nationwide following the 1993 enactment of Public Law 103-152. The law requires state employment security agencies to profile new claimants for regular unemployment insurance (UI) benefits to identify those most likely to exhaust their regular benefits, and refer them to reemployment services to promote a faster transition to new employment. In November 1994, the Michigan Employment Security Commission (MESC) began profiling new UI claimants with technical assistance from the W. E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research. Since WPRS profiling was introduced in Michigan much has changed, but the same model was in use until very recently. The MESC has been abolished, with UI now administered by the Michigan Bureau of Workers' and Unemployment Compensation (MBWUC). The process of taking UI claims has shifted from in-person interviews at local offices around the state to telephone claims taken by staff at three call centers to be located in Detroit, Grand Rapids, and Saginaw. Michigan has also changed from being a wage-request state for UI eligibility determination to a wage-reporting state. This means that each claimant's full benefit year UI entitlement is now known at the time that eligibility is established, a fact that permits new approaches to WPRS modeling. The MBWUC is also switching to using the new Standard Occupation Code (SOC) and North American Industrial Classification System (NAICS). Furthermore, UI has become a partner in new one-stop centers for employment services established in each workforce development area in the state as required by the Workforce Investment Act (WIA) of 1998. To develop a new Michigan WPRS profiling model which is in harmony with the new institutional realities, the MBWUC once again chose to partner with the W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research. This brief paper offers a new WPRS model for Michigan which improves on the original model by applying lessons learned nationwide in the years since WPRS models were first implemented. A variety of alternative specifications were considered, the best of these was proposed as the new Michigan WPRS model. Michigan has since implemented this model and is now using it to profile UI claimants for referral to reemployment services promoting a speedy return to work.profiling, worker, WPRS, Michigan, model, Upjohn, Eberts, O'Leary

Structural studies of peri-interactions and bond formation between electron-rich atomic centres and N-phenylcarboxamides or nitroalkenyl groups

Structural studies of peri-interactions with dimethylamino groups in naphthalene systems indicate that the N-phenylcarboxamide group has a through-space electron attracting power closer to that of a carboxylic ester than a N,N-dialkylcarboxamide, while 2-nitroalkenyl groups have a lower through-space electron attracting power. However, addition of a benzoyl group to the 2-position of the nitroethenyl group leads to cyclisation to give a zwitterion, in which the carbanion is stabilised by full conjugation with the nitro group and partial conjugation with the carbonyl group. An interesting case where a steric interaction overrides an electrophile/nucleophile attraction is also described. The limitations to the interpretation of short contact distances from crystallographic measurements are discussed

Vevacious: A Tool For Finding The Global Minima Of One-Loop Effective Potentials With Many Scalars

Several extensions of the Standard Model of particle physics contain additional scalars implying a more complex scalar potential compared to that of the Standard Model. In general these potentials allow for charge and/or color breaking minima besides the desired one with correctly broken SU(2)_L times U(1)_Y . Even if one assumes that a metastable local minimum is realized, one has to ensure that its lifetime exceeds that of our universe. We introduce a new program called Vevacious which takes a generic expression for a one-loop effective potential energy function and finds all the tree-level extrema, which are then used as the starting points for gradient-based minimization of the one-loop effective potential. The tunneling time from a given input vacuum to the deepest minimum, if different from the input vacuum, can be calculated. The parameter points are given as files in the SLHA format (though is not restricted to supersymmetric models), and new model files can be easily generated automatically by the Mathematica package SARAH. This code uses HOM4PS2 to find all the minima of the tree-level potential, PyMinuit to follow gradients to the minima of the one-loop potential, and CosmoTransitions to calculate tunneling times.Comment: 44 pages, 1 figure, manual for publicly available software, v2 corresponds to version accepted for publication in EPJC [clearer explanation of scale dependence and region of validity, explicit mention that SLHA files should have blocks matching those expected by model files, updated references