CEO Library

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 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 report provides details on the data, samples, methods, and analyses for the Youth CareerConnect (YCC) impact study. Rigorously evaluating the effects of the YCC program on student outcomes required that multiple technical pieces be put in place, from selecting districts to participate in the evaluation to collecting and processing high-quality data and measuring impacts to conducting rigorous analysis to estimate impacts. This report provides details of these processes.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, there have been unprecedented changes in employment for America’s workforce. Many businesses ceased or scaled back operations and many state governments issued stay-at-home orders. Using key labor force statistics from the Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey (CPS) researchers with the U.S. Department of Labor’s Office of Disability Employment Policy (ODEP) sought to provide insight into the recent changes.

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 brief provides findings from an implementation study of the Evaluation of Community College Interventions for Youth and Young Adults with Disabilities, funded by the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL), Chief Evaluation Office (CEO). In 2014, DOL’s Office of Disability Employment Policy (ODEP) awarded two community colleges with 5-year Pathways to Careers: Community Colleges for Youth and Young Adults with Disabilities (Pathways) grants to increase their capacity to provide inclusive integrated education and career development and training services to young adults with disabilities.

The literature review updates and expands the findings of the Career Pathways Design Study that included the Career Pathways Research and Evaluation Synthesis, an analysis of career pathways research as of February 2017, that found a substantial amount of research and evaluation studies would be published in the near future. The findings from the updated scan will inform the project’s planned meta-analysis, which will examine the extent to which different career pathways program components drive impacts found in this body of evidence.

Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, there have been unprecedented changes in employment for America’s workforce. Many businesses ceased or scaled back operations and many state governments issued stay-at-home orders. Using key labor force statistics from the Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey (CPS) researchers with the U.S. Department of Labor’s Office of Disability Employment Policy (ODEP) sought to provide insight into the recent changes.

Developed under the Trade Adjustment Assistance Community College and Career Training (TAACCCT) national evaluation, the brief highlights employers’ perspectives on community college relationships and offers insights for leaders and practitioners that can help them tailor their own approaches to helping colleges and employers in their local communities develop and maintain strong and productive relationships.

The brief uses data from the 2018 Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) Employee Survey to summarize findings on employee leave-taking rates and characteristics of leaves taken. The survey asked about family and medical leave, both for qualifying FMLA reasons and for care of non-immediate family members with serious health conditions (which does not typically qualify). Other medical reasons that are not serious health conditions, such as a sick day for a cold, are not included.

The brief provides reflections from four evaluation technical assistance (TA) liaisons based on their experiences in working with grantees awarded as part of a Federal interagency initiative, Partnership Pilots for Disconnected Youth (P3). The brief, (1) describes the P3 program’s TA supports, (2) reviews the roles and responsibilities of different types of P3 partners, and (3) describes the hurdles faced when working with partners and strategies to mitigate those hurdles.

The report is one in a series of implementation study papers of the Performance Partnership Pilots for Disconnected Youth (P3) National Evaluation, which was contracted by the U.S. Department of Labor’s (DOL) Chief Evaluation Office (CEO) on behalf of the Federal partners supporting P3. It assesses P3 four years after its initial authorization, and is based on data collected from interviews with Federal agency staff and two rounds of site visits to the nine original (Cohort 1) pilots, conducted between 2016 and 2018.

The methodology report appendices to the 2018 Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) surveys that include employee survey materials, employer survey materials, revision matrices, nonresponse follow-up employee survey materials, and employer survey response option experiment (detailed findings).

The paper compares leave experiences of low-wage and non-low wage workers using data from the 2018 Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) Employee Survey. It finds that in some ways experiences are similar—both groups take needed leave at similar rates for similar reasons. In other ways experiences are very different and worse for low-wage workers—they less commonly have access to paid leave or are eligible for FMLA protections and more commonly face adverse financial and job consequences from taking leave.

In an effort to evaluate the Workforce Online Learning Information Portal (WOLIP) project in four states and to learn more about how best to implement online learning in state-driven workforce investment systems, Employment and Training Administration (ETA) funded the Rutgers University Center for Women and Work to conduct a formative evaluation of the WOLIP demonstration project and to provide technical assistance. The report summarizes the findings and observations from the evaluation research, which concluded September 2011.

The report—one component of the Performance Partnership Pilots for Disconnected Youth (P3) National Evaluation—synthesizes findings from the local evaluations of the Cohort 1 pilots. This report assesses the extent to which the local evaluations established a causal impact between the studied intervention and participant outcomes and, for interventions that had such evidence, whether the evidence indicated the intervention had improved outcomes for youth.

The supplemental results from the 2018 Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) surveys that provide key definitions and detailed survey results, including both more detailed information underlying exhibits presented in the technical report and additional exhibits not displayed in the technical report.