Labor Economics Commons^™

The Wagner-Peyser Act And U.S. Employment Service: 75 Years Of Matching Job Seekers And Employers, Christopher J. O'Leary, Randall W. Eberts

Presentations

No abstract provided.

Time To Expand?!: A Workforce Study Of Construction Occupations In The Greater Cleveland Area, Kathleen Bolter, Jim Robey, Gerrit Anderson

Reports

No abstract provided.

Time To Expand?!: A Workforce Study Of Construction Occupations In The Greater Cleveland Area, An Illustrated Executive Summary, Kathleen Bolter, Jim Robey, Gerrit Anderson

Reports

No abstract provided.

Reemployment Services And Eligibility Assessments (Resea) In Maryland—Formative Evaluation, Program Year 2019, Christopher J. O'Leary, Gabrielle Pepin, Ting Zhang, Conrad Helms

Upjohn Institute Technical Reports

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 …

Reemployment Services And Eligibility Assessments (Resea) In Maryland: Process Analysis Report, Christopher J. O'Leary, Gabrielle Pepin, Ting Zhang, Conrad Helms

Upjohn Institute Technical Reports

No abstract provided.

Are Participants Good Evaluators?, Jeffrey A. Smith, Alexander Whalley, Nathaniel T. Wilcox

Upjohn Press

Managers of workforce training programs are often unable to afford costly, full-fledged experimental or nonexperimental evaluations to determine their programs’ impacts. Therefore, many rely on the survey responses of program participants to gauge program impacts.

Smith, Whalley, and Wilcox present the first attempt to assess such measures despite their already widespread use in program evaluations. They develop a multidisciplinary framework for addressing the issue and apply it to three case studies: the National Job Training Partnership Act Study, the U.S. National Supported Work Demonstration, and the Connecticut Jobs First Program.

Each of these studies were subjected to experimental evaluations that …

A Moment Of Opportunity: Strategies For Inclusive Economic Growth, Michelle Miller-Adams, Timothy J. Bartik, Brad J. Hershbein

Upjohn Institute Technical Reports

No abstract provided.

Workforce Outcomes Of Tuition-Free College: Early Findings, Brad J. Hershbein, Michelle Miller-Adams

Presentations

No abstract provided.

How Communities Can Connect Economic And Skills Development, Timothy J. Bartik, Brad J. Hershbein, Michelle Miller-Adams

Presentations

No abstract provided.

Workforce Data (And Knowledge) Under Pressure, Joshua D. Hawley

Employment Research Newsletter

No abstract provided.

Cost Estimations Of Potential Scholarship Programs For The Rockford Promise, George Erickcek

Reports

This brief report presents a 10-year cost forecast for three possible Rockford Promise Scholarship programs: (1) A program that provides full, two-year, tuition scholarships for all Rockford Public School graduates who select to attend the Rock Valley College; (2) The scholarship is available for eligible students who enroll full-time at a partnering college or university in the fall following their high school graduation; and (3) The provision of an annual $4,000 scholarship for all Rockford Public School high school graduates for up to 4 years of college. The report concludes with comments on how the Rockford Promise may best achieve …

Data Science In The Public Interest: Improving Government Performance In The Workforce, Joshua D. Hawley

Upjohn Press

This book is about how new and underutilized types of big data sources can inform public policy decisions related to workforce development. Hawley describes how government is currently using data to inform decisions about the workforce at the state and local levels. He then moves beyond standardized performance metrics designed to serve federal agency requirements and discusses how government can improve data gathering and analysis to provide better, up-to-date information for government decision making.

Using Nonexperimental Methods To Address Noncompliance, Daniel Litwok

Upjohn Institute Working Papers

The analysis compares estimates of the incremental impact for those who receive HPOG with a program enhancement to the standard HPOG program. The experimental benchmark for the incremental impact comes from two-stage least squares with random assignment as an instrumental variable for enhancement take-up. Then, ignoring the randomly assigned conditions, the analysis estimates the counterfactual for those who “take up” the enhancement using ordinary least squares and inverse propensity weighting. The analysis also tests whether adding information that is only available due to the experiment—who complied with their randomization status and who did not—improves the nonexperimental estimates. The analysis compares …

Investing In Community: A Playbook For Connecting Economic And Skills Development, Timothy J. Bartik, Brad J. Hershbein, Michelle Miller-Adams, Lee Adams, Amy Meyers, Bridget Timmeney

Reports

No abstract provided.

Pathways To Careers In Health Care, Christopher T. King Editor, Philip Young P. Hong Editor

Upjohn Press

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act passed by Congress and signed into law by President Barack Obama in 2010 effected major changes in the financing and delivery of health care in the United States. It also authorized creation of the Health Profession Opportunity Grants program (HPOG), a demonstration effort within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to provide opportunities for education and training that lead to jobs and career advancement in health care for recipients of Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) and other low-income individuals and to respond to the increasing demand for health care professionals. …

Should Place-Based Jobs Policies Be Used To Help Distressed Communities? Yes, But Current Policies Need Reforms, Timothy J. Bartik

Presentations

No abstract provided.

Evaluation Of Per Scholas As An Employee Recruiting Tool For Businesses, Lee Adams, Jing Cai, Janelle Grant, Brad J. Hershbein, Bridget F. Timmeney

Reports

No abstract provided.

What Should States Do About Incentives?, Timothy J. Bartik

Presentations

No abstract provided.

Individual Training Accounts And Nonstandard Work Arrangements, Randall W. Eberts

Upjohn Institute Technical Reports

This paper was commissioned by the Organisation for Economic and Co-operative Development (OECD) to describe the use of Individual Training Accounts (ITAs) under the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act and under its predecessor the Workforce Investment Act (WIA). Particular interest is in the use of ITAs by WIOA participants from nonstandard work arrangements. The study provides detailed information about the use of ITAs by participants of the two adult programs under WIOA, Disadvantaged Adult Programs and Dislocated Worker Programs, and in two states, Michigan and Washington. Information for the WIOA programs is gathered and analyzed from the public-use version of …

Should Place-Based Jobs Policies Be Used To Help Distressed Communities?, Timothy J. Bartik

Upjohn Institute Working Papers

Should policymakers seek to increase jobs in particular local labor markets? Yes, but only if these policies are well targeted and designed. Encouraging job growth in distressed places can cause persistent gains in employment-to-population ratios. But our current place-based jobs policies, under which state and local governments provide long-term tax incentives to megacorporations, are poorly targeted and designed. Such incentives are as large in nondistressed areas as in distressed areas, and they are excessively costly. What reforms are needed? First, job growth policies should target distressed areas. Second, tax incentives should be focused on high-multiplier businesses, such as high-tech firms. …

Place-Based Jobs Policies, Timothy J. Bartik

Presentations

No abstract provided.

The Occupational Structures Of Low- And High-Wage Service Sector Establishments, Eliza C. Forsythe

Upjohn Institute Working Papers

The occupational structure of an establishment provides a description of its production process by detailing the distribution and relative intensity of tasks performed. In this paper, I investigate whether there are substantive differences in the occupational structures of low- and high-wage service sector establishments. I show that low-wage establishments organize production to use less labor in professional occupations compared to high-wage establishments operating in the same local-labor market and industry. In addition, low-wage establishments employ fewer individuals in information technology occupations, employ fewer managers, and have substantially wider supervisory spans of control. These results indicate that, despite operating in the …

Evaluation Of The Battle Creek Jobs Fund, George A. Erickcek, Jim Robey, Claudette Robey, Brian Pittelko, Marie Holler, Don Edgerly

Reports

No abstract provided.

Stem And The Local Economy: Do Regions Reap The Benefits Of A Stem-Educated Workforce?, Fran Stewart

Employment Research Newsletter

No abstract provided.

Do Recessions Accelerate Routine-Biased Technological Change? Evidence From Vacancy Postings, Brad J. Hershbein, Lisa B. Kahn

Employment Research Newsletter

No abstract provided.

Charles Ballard Interview, Justin Carinci

External Papers and Reports

Professor Charles Ballard of Michigan State University delivered the lecture “The Fall and Rise of Income Equality in the United States” Sept. 27, 2017 as part of the Werner Sichel Lecture Series at Western Michigan University. Ballard detailed the “Great Convergence” of income equality in the United States that grew out of policies of the 1930s and 1940s and a “Great Divergence” of inequality starting about 1980. Ballard called this income gap, which is now greater than during the Gilded Age, “the largest economic phenomenon of our lifetimes.”

Veterans In Workforce Development: Participation And Labor Market Outcomes, Colleen Chrisinger

Upjohn Institute Working Papers

This paper compares the employment status and earnings of veterans and nonveterans following their receipt of public workforce development services in Washington State during the years 2002–2012. It also describes workforce program participation patterns for veterans and nonveterans to determine if veterans have equal or prioritized access to key programs, where prioritization is required by law. Based on tabulations and propensity score weighted regressions using administrative data, the results indicate slightly lower levels of participation by veterans than nonveterans in two major workforce programs (Wagner-Peyser and the Workforce Investment Act Adult program), and high participation in veteran-specific programs (Disabled Veterans …

Lessons Learned From Public Workforce Program Experiments, Stephen A. Wandner Editor

Upjohn Press

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.

The Stem Dilemma: Skills That Matter To Regions, Fran Stewart

Upjohn Press

Fran Stewart dives into the murky waters where education and economic goals meet to confront several key issues facing policymakers and educators, including the role of public investment in human capital, the types of human capital investment that provide the greatest public return, and whether those investments should vary by region.

She shows that not all high-paying jobs require STEM skills; that not all good-paying, highly skilled STEM jobs require college degrees; and that "soft skills" are important for STEM as well as other high-paying jobs.

Net Impact And Benefit-Cost Estimates Of The Workforce Development System In Washington State, Kevin Hollenbeck, Wei-Jang Huang

Employment Research Newsletter

No abstract provided.