Labor Topics

• Measuring Program Performance
• Finding Out What Works
• Using Vouchers to Deliver Services
• Helping Service Members
• Self-Employment as an Alternative Strategy
• Moving Young People into Productive Careers
• Encouraging Employment for Ex-Offenders
• Addressing Unique Problems of Experienced Workers
• Assisting DOL and Grantees
• Clients

Military Base National Emergency Grants: Assisting Military Personnel Transition to Civilian Jobs

In the late 1990s and early 2000s, the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) awarded several national emergency grants (NEGs) to communities with large military populations to help involuntarily separated military personnel transition to civilian jobs. However, because the military stopped downsizing after the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, the primary target group for the grants shifted from involuntarily separated military personnel to spouses of military personnel, who often have difficulty developing careers in high-demand occupations because of their frequent relocations as part of a military family. Department of Defense civilian personnel, military reservists, and National Guard members also could be served with some NEGs.

Mathematica studied three of the largest military-base NEG grantees that were of particular interest to DOL: the San Diego Workforce Partnership; the State of Tennessee (providing services in Fort Campbell, Kentucky); and Opportunity, Inc., of Hampton Roads (Norfolk, Virginia). These grantees had the longest history with the program and had a broader range of challenges and experiences than smaller grantees with more limited funding. We evaluated these military-base NEGs with the goals of understanding their history, learning about participants’ employment outcomes and costs, and examining implications of the program for the workforce investment system. In addition, to understand how NEGS have operated in smaller military communities, we examined three medium-sized NEGs that operated in Cumberland, North Carolina; Fort Hood, Texas; and Pikes Peak, Colorado. 

Our research focused on:

• The special workforce needs and strengths of military spouses
• Challenges associated with the military spouses’ high levels of mobility
• Ways that the workforce investment system can best help military spouses obtain high-quality jobs
• The services that the groups received and associated costs
• Military spouses’ labor market outcomes
• Comparisons between NEGs and nonemergency workforce investment strategies

We drew five general lessons about the specific operations of the NEGs:

1. Integrating NEG services with WIA services, to the extent possible, provides efficient and effective methods for service delivery. Although some sites initially developed separate structures for organizing their NEGs, they ultimately switched to a closer integration of both operations and staffing.
   
   
2. Developing informal screening procedures to ensure that military spouses wanted to work appears to be a successful approach for enrolling clients and using grant resources effectively. By helping clients identify their own goals and priorities within their dynamic family situation, staff were able to target resources effectively by indirectly encouraging clients who were not serious about working to self-select out of the application and enrollment process.
   
   
3. It may be difficult to duplicate some aspects of military base NEG implementation at other sites and with other client groups. For example, other sites may have challenges in replicating the degree of military cooperation established in Fort Campbell. Furthermore, future efforts to serve National Guard or the Reserves may pose distinct wrinkles to service delivery that were not encountered in the group of NEGs included in this evaluation.
   
   
4. The difficulties that some sites had locating space for services, the shifts in the target population, and the temporary, short-term nature of the grants led to large inefficiencies and challenges in grant operations. The challenges in locating facilities hampered the startup of service delivery at all three large sites. Furthermore, the temporary and short-term nature of the grants made it hard for sites to manage the grants and to retain staff who wanted permanent jobs.
   
   
5. Training and support services are expensive components of the package of services that were offered to military personnel and military spouses. Training costs were about 60 percent of expenditures during a one-year period when sites had stable operations, and support services were about 15 percent at the two large sites that provided them. NEG staff reported that, by design, they focused expenditures on training. Both NEG staff and military partners thought that these training funds filled a gap in services in the military communities, because non-NEG sources of funds for these expensive activities could not meet the demand for them. For some military spouses to effectively participate in training and other employment-related activities, strong linkages with other support services providers may be beneficial.

Publications

"Evaluation of the Military Base National Emergency Grants" (December 2006)