Finding and Keeping a Job: Enhancing Welfare-to-Work Strategies

Under 1996 welfare reforms, more people with limited skills and family and personal difficulties entered the labor market. Although time limits will motivate some to hold on to their jobs, many face multiple challenges to finding and keeping jobs. Now, more than ever, it is important to focus on retention and advancement.

Welfare reform has propelled many people into the work world under strict new requirements for becoming and remaining employed. Mathematica has studied key questions about helping them retain and advance in their jobs. How are they faring on the job? Are they holding on to their jobs? Are they moving up into higher-paying positions? What services can help them stay employed, encourage self-sufficiency, and foster career advancement?

Learning from Early Efforts

We evaluated one of the first efforts to help welfare recipients hold on to their jobs, the Postemployment Services Demonstration (PESD). The cornerstone of the program’s services was extended case management. The evaluation addressed three questions: (1) How long do welfare recipients who find jobs keep their jobs? (2) What challenges do they face as they start working? (3) How effective are programs that attempt to promote job retention or help welfare recipients find new jobs? The study found that many of those who found jobs had trouble maintaining stable employment. Furthermore, many positions offered low pay, poor benefits, and little room for growth. The jobs usually required only modest skills, which led to poor job attachment, and many employees were fired or quit. The study was the first to identify gaps in the system that impeded the welfare-to-work transition. The PESD programs had little effect on employment success, which suggests the need for interventions that go beyond care management and target services better.

Possibilities for Transitional Employment Programs

The hardest-to-employ TANF recipients can be distressed by welfare reform’s pressures to find work. Mathematica has identified and studied a variety of transitional employment and paid community service programs designed to build such people’s experience, confidence, and skills so they can then move into the unsubsidized competitive job market. Mathematica’s work has documented alternative program designs, the kinds of people served, and the costs of such programs.

Bridging the Gaps

Many people making the transition between welfare dependency and self-sufficiency discover large gaps in services. We studied a voluntary program to bridge these gaps in the state of Pennsylvania. In addition to employment assistance, the program provided supportive counseling, child care and transportation help, advice on workplace behavior, food and clothing, and many other types of personalized assistance. Most participants experienced steady economic progress while in the program. Another Pennsylvania study looked at an innovative performance-based strategy under which human services contractors received payment based on the number of clients who achieved specific employment goals. The study revealed complexities in this type of payment method as well as the difficulties in communicating performance goals consistently to contractors and participants.

Testing Different Approaches

We evaluated pilot efforts in the state of Iowa to develop models for postemployment services that would help people achieve sustained and progressive employment after leaving welfare. Although the study looked at voluntary and mandatory programs, low participation was the main challenge at all sites. Most programs tried to help clients build “soft skills” and address personal challenges on the road to self-sufficiency.

Differences Between Urban and Rural Communities

Rural communities do not have the same needs as their urban counterparts, particularly in the area of welfare-to-work. Implementing employment retention programs in rural areas can present challenges. Reliable transportation may be especially important, since jobs are farther away and crucial social and educational services may not be available in convenient locations. Child care options may be limited and hard to arrange. Further-more, many rural residents are employed in low-skill, low-wage jobs with little opportunity for advancement. To help states and localities learn from the successes of other programs, we are studying approaches to help rural families find sustained employment.

Using Incentives to Promote Advancement

Incentives—monetary and nonmonetary rewards used to encourage certain behaviors, activities, or results—can help program administrators improve job retention and advancement. We have examined the private sector’s experience in designing and implementing incentive programs, to highlight ways that employment and training providers might think “out of the box” and develop innovative approaches. Our researchers have developed step-by-step guides to designing specialized incentive programs.

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