CEO Library

The Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA) of 2014 included multiple provisions to strengthen service quality, access, accountability, and coordination across many programs. The report describes early WIOA implementation efforts, based on data collected during pilot site visits to four states and eight local areas in fall 2017. The purpose of the site visits was to help inform the design of the WIOA implementation study and to identify key stakeholders’ initial perspectives on WIOA requirements across five domains.

In 2021, the Chief Evaluation Office (CEO) partnered with the Employment and Training Administration (ETA) and commissioned contractor Summit Consulting, LLC (Summit) to explore issues related to future research on application or user fees in programs administered by ETA based on a review of regulations, guidance, and selected research concerning such fees under the Administrative Data Research and Analysis portfolio of studies.

The Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA) of 2014 included multiple provisions to strengthen service quality, access, accountability, and coordination across many programs. The report focuses on implementation of WIOA’s changes to various aspects of performance accountability and in other data-driven areas under the law, as related to the “core” workforce programs for Titles I and III.

The Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA) of 2014 included multiple provisions to strengthen service quality, access, accountability, and coordination across many programs. The report focuses on implementation of key changes to the Title I Adult and Dislocated Worker programs under WIOA. Discussed are the successes and challenges, promising practices, and possible areas for further technical assistance related to WIOA for these two programs.

The Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA) of 2014 included multiple provisions to strengthen service quality, access, accountability, and coordination across many programs. The report focuses on implementation of WIOA’s changes to various aspects of the WIOA Title I Youth program administered by the U.S. Department of Labor. The report covers changes regarding funding, service delivery approaches, performance accountability, and program elements.

The technical appendix to the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA) Implementation Study that focused on the core workforce programs authorized under WIOA Title I (Adult, Dislocated Worker, and Youth Services) and Title III (Employment Services) and examined integration with programs under Titles II (Adult Education and Family Literacy) and IV (Vocational Rehabilitation), and other partners.

In 2014, the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) awarded $107 million in four-year grants to 24 applicants for the Youth CareerConnect (YCC) program. At its core, the YCC program was designed to strengthen America’s talent pipeline by putting high school students on a pathway to complete postsecondary education, obtain industry-recognized credentials, and secure a job in middle- to high-skilled fields that often rely on foreign workers.

In 2014, the Chief Evaluation Office (CEO) partnered with the Office on Disability Employment Policy (ODEP) to fund contractor Westat to conduct an evaluation of the Pathways to Careers project.

In 2017, the Chief Evaluation Office (CEO) partnered with the Office of Disability Employment Policy (ODEP) to fund contractor Abt Associates to conduct the Stay at Work/Return to Work (SAW/RTW) Models and Strategy Study. The study aims to document and expand the knowledge base of SAW/RTW strategies and identify promising models and best practices. The final study also includes evaluation design options, which could be implemented to build on and add to the evidence produced.

Stay-at-Work/Return-to-Work (SAW/RTW) programs intend to help a worker who experiences an illness or injury to remain at work, or if the worker has left the labor force, to return as soon as medically possible. The report describes programs that were operating in the U.S. in 2018.

Profiles of nine Round 4 Trade Adjustment Assistance Community College and Career Training (TAACCCT) Grant grantees—four single-institution and five consortia—whose grant-supported programs were included in the outcomes Trade Adjustment Assistance Community College and Career Training (TAACCCT) Grant Program - Round 4 Early Outcomes Study. The profiles use data collected during site visits conducted in April and May 2017.

Stay-at-Work/Return-to-Work (SAW/RTW) programs intend to help a worker who experiences an illness or injury to remain at work, or if the worker has left the labor force, to return as soon as medically possible. The report includes a review of evidence published between 2008 and 2018 on the effects of SAW/RTW or related programs on employment and the receipt of federal disability benefits.

Paper that directly addresses the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) topic areas of “Improving Equal Employment Opportunities for Targeted Populations” and “Innovative Approaches to Evaluating the Impact of Department of Labor Worker Protection Programs and Policies Using Existing Administrative or Other Data” through each of its three main objectives. Multiple meetings with Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP) staff helped to shape and refine the components of this study to best address the current needs of OFCCP, employers, and individuals with disabilities.

Paper that presents a study of consumer learning in the context of payroll accounts, a simple financial technology that is currently being rolled out to millions of workers worldwide in response to demands for increased supply chain transparency and as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic. The researchers conducted a field experiment with a population of salaried factory workers in Bangladesh who, prior to the study, received their wages entirely in cash.

Paper that presents results of a randomized controlled trial with 3,136 salaried factory workers in Bangladesh employed at two large garment factories which, at the beginning of the study, paid all wages in cash. The researchers randomly and individually assign workers within the same factory to either continue receiving their wages in cash or receive electronic wage payments through either a bank or mobile account.

To evaluate the impacts of Seattle’s Secure Scheduling legislation on the work schedule experiences of Seattle workers, the researchers who developed this paper surveyed a set of workers paid by the hour and employed at businesses covered by the Secure Scheduling Ordinance. The researchers collected pre-implementation, baseline survey data from Seattle workers in the Spring of 2017. The researchers then collected follow-up survey data from Seattle workers between Fall of 2017 and Spring of 2018, after the law had gone into effect.

The report of the Trade Adjustment Assistance Community College and Career Training (TAACCCT) national evaluation, describes early outcomes of Round 4 TAACCCT colleges, describes education, earnings, and self-sufficiency outcomes of participants about 15 months after entry into 34 programs at nine selected Round 4 grantees. It also describes the implementation of those grantees’ programs.

More than 70 million Americans have some form of criminal record, which can limit their access to employment opportunities, eligibility for occupational licensure, and public benefits. The use of criminal background checks in the hiring process has also dramatically increased over the past decade, and there is reason to think that many criminal records are inaccurate. Prior research has not determined the extent of errors on criminal records.

The report presents findings of the Pathways to Careers: Community Colleges for Youth and Young Adults with Disabilities (Pathways) evaluation consisting of an implementation study and a descriptive outcomes study. The evaluation is descriptive only, given the small numbers of participants included in the Pathways project and lack of a comparison group to measure impacts. The evaluation incorporates an overall design based on mixed data collection methods to support two interrelated and interwoven studies focused on implementation processes and programmatic outputs and outcomes.

The report presents the results of an empirical study of ten years of employee misclassification summary judgment decisions by U.S. district courts, in which judges were asked to determine whether a worker was an employee or an independent contractor. Using text mining, machine learning classifiers, and regression analysis, the research reveals among 747 opinions that the judge ruled that the plaintiff was an independent contractor in thirty-eight percent of cases, and that the plaintiffs’ occupation was a strong predictor of outcomes.

The researchers who produced this paper evaluate health outcomes for workers subject to incentivized compensation in an effort to better understand the effects and implications of modern day performance and piece rate pay in the growing gig economy sector. This paper is the first to explore the effects of pay type on worker health outcomes in a large and representative longitudinal and cross-sector panel of the U.S. workforce.

The report of the Trade Adjustment Assistance Community College and Career Training (TAACCCT) national evaluation synthesizes findings implementation and impact findings from 71 Round 4 third-party evaluations. It summarizes what has been learned from the fourth and final round of the grant program to support a growing body of evidence on strategies that encourage accelerated learning, college persistence and completion, and connections to employment. The synthesis provides implications for future community college and workforce development initiatives and how to evaluate them.

The report analyzes the impact of President Obama’s 2014 executive order forbidding federal contractors to discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI). Researchers use data from charges of SOGI discrimination filed with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission or a state nondiscrimination agency from 2013-2016. The charge data for private sector employers are matched to the EEOC’s EEO-1 of establishments to create a pooled cross section dataset of establishments with and without charges.

Healthcare workers are well known to be at high risk of musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs) from patient handling. In 2011, California passed the Hospital Patient and Health Care Worker Injury Protection Act (AB 1136) that requires acute care hospitals to implement safe patient handling policies and programs to prevent patient handling injuries (PHIs). In 2014, the California Division of Occupational Safety and Health (Cal/OSHA) established regulations to implement the safe patient handling law.

Appendices to the Trade Adjustment Assistance Community College and Career Training (TAACCCT) Grant Program - Round 4 Early Outcomes Study Final Report that include Baseline Data, Follow-up Survey Data, Unemployment Insurance Wage Data, Service Impacts, Methodology for Estimating Outcomes by Program, Implementation Data Collection, and Expanded Results.