Labor Policy Research

Career success and the financial stability it produces are part of the American dream. But not everyone entering the workforce has the education and training needed to succeed. Young people in poverty, disadvantaged adults, and people involved in the criminal justice system can have especially severe barriers to workforce achievement. On the other end of the spectrum, older and highly experienced workers who lose their jobs have unique needs that must be addressed. Mathematica has been studying ways to help these groups succeed. In addition, we have examined operational and administrative issues and conducted performance monitoring to help government agencies and nonprofit organizations provide services effectively and efficiently.

Moving Young People into Productive Careers

The Workforce Investment Act, which specifies how federal funds should be allocated to state and local agencies, focuses the workforce development system on the concept of one-stop shopping and packages tailored to individual needs. We have evaluated community-based versions of these programs, where case managers help youth access the services they need, enlisting the support of key stakeholders to enhance individual and program success. We have also studied alternative programs such as Job Corps, which saturates young people with education, training, and other services in a residential setting, and the Quantum Opportunity Program.

Recently, these efforts have been complemented by career-focused strategies. We have evaluated programs that pair workforce development services with alternative-school initiatives to prepare youth for work. Other studies have examined ways to link at-risk students with an array of educational, mentoring, career, cultural, and financial supports, as well as postsecondary training.

Figuring Out What's Effective with Disadvantaged Adults

Although many disadvantaged adults have some job experience, it is often not enough to garner high wages in the labor market. These individuals tend to lack experience and skills to move up the ladder or into more highly skilled occupations. Yet the demand for highly skilled workers continues to rise, especially as welfare recipients with little job experience and few skills have moved into the workforce.

We have evaluated welfare-to-work programs to help policymakers figure out not only how to get people into the workforce but also how to keep them there, since evidence suggests that retaining a job is as much a challenge for a disadvantaged adult as is obtaining a job. We have broad experience examining programs that work with this population to reduce their barriers to self-sufficiency. Some of our other studies have looked at how to help people get better jobs and how to get them back to work quickly when they lose a job.

Encouraging Productive Participation in Society by Criminally Involved Youth and Adults

Young people who have been involved in criminal activity or the criminal justice system face special hurdles to career success. In many cases, they confront the same challenges as other disadvantaged youth and young adults—low educational levels, spotty work history, and lack of job skills. They also may need help dealing with issues such as substance abuse and mental illness, which are prevalent among criminally involved populations. These difficulties, coupled with the temptations of a criminal lifestyle and the stigma of a criminal record, can be powerful forces to drive criminally active youth and adults away from the work and persistence required to advance in education, training, and employment.

Programs designed to help encourage criminally active or formerly incarcerated youth and adults to become involved in legal, socially acceptable activities must take into account their special needs. We have evaluated programs that work with criminally involved or at-risk youth and adults to determine whether they have increased participation in education and legal-sector employment and reduced involvement in the criminal justice system. We also are investigating whether mentoring and other services offered by local faith- and community-based organizations help individuals recently released from jail to obtain jobs and job skills and stay out of trouble with the law.

Addressing the Unique Problems of Experienced Workers

Highly experienced workers who lose their jobs are a special policy concern, since they often depart industries in decline and have few skills to transfer to more high-tech and growing fields. To get people back to work faster, we have looked at innovative ways to restructure the unemployment insurance (UI) system. For example, we have tested the usefulness of different services, such as workshops to help people find jobs, and incentives to get people to look for work, such as cash bonuses for finding a job quickly. We have analyzed the effectiveness of different reemployment strategies, including training and services for people who are forced out of work because of import competition.

To help people who have job skills but have the misfortune of being laid off when unemployment is high, we have studied how benefits can be delivered more effectively during economic downturns. For example, we have tested different ways of extending the length of the benefits period and putting people on part-time work rather than layoffs.

Operating Programs and Delivering Services Efficiently

Call centers and the internet have revolutionized the way that government agencies provide benefits and services to job seekers and people in search of training or educational assistance. Mathematica has examined the implications of adopting these technologies on a range of issues, such as whether the changes affect benefit receipt and customer satisfaction, whether the quality of the information collected and the integrity of the program are affected, and whether the costs of providing benefits decline. In several other studies, we have examined the most effective ways to measure whether programs have been achieving their objectives. And, as both the government and society have had a renewed recognition of the importance of grassroots, faith-based, and community-based organizations in the provision of personal, flexible services and emotional support to people in need, Mathematica has examined whether these organizations are effective in linking with the local workforce development system and in reaching the hardest-to-serve populations.

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