In 2018, amendments to Section 306(c) of the Social Security Act (SSA) permanently authorized the Reemployment Services and Eligibility Assessments (RESEA) program and introduced substantive changes, including formula-based funding to states and a series of requirements intended to increase the use and availability of evidence-based reemployment interventions and strategies. The Department of Labor (DOL) provides funding to states to operate the RESEA program, which aims to help Unemployment Insurance (UI) claimants return to work quickly and meet eligibility requirements.

The evaluation of the RESEA program includes four major components: 1) an implementation report; 2) a brief on serving UI claimants during the COVID-19 pandemic; 3) a brief report and collection of evidence briefs about RESEA program components, including selecting claimants and meeting attendance, basic career services, and individualized services; and 4) an options report for building evidence on RESEA programs.

This brief draws on a range of currently available sources of evidence and summarizes the state of the evidence for individualized career services—a category of reemployment services—to help UI claimants return to work. The available sources include evidence from the RESEA’s predecessor program, the Reemployment and Eligibility Assessment (REA) program; the Worker Profiling and Reemployment Services (WPRS) program; and services funded by the Workforce Investment Act (WIA), the predecessor to the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA). The second section considers evidence from programs that typically serve other populations yet could suggest options for RESEA programs. The brief closes with a discussion of gaps in the current evidence base and implications of evaluating these kinds of RESEA program components.