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The brief describes the challenges associated with helping low-income parents with children under the age of 13 pursuing training and employment to access affordable child care. It also proposes solutions that programs may undertake to increase their effectiveness in assisting parents with accessing and paying for appropriate child care. Further, it identifies barriers that remain to be addressed at the systems level.

The brief is based on lessons from an evaluation: a randomized controlled trial (RCT) of a small subset of the 53 TechHire and Strengthening Working Families Initiative (SWFI) programs—three TechHire programs and two SWFI programs—that explored the implementation and short-term impacts of TechHire and SWFI. In particular, this brief focuses on findings from the implementation analysis that was part of the RCT; data sources for the implementation analysis included observations of TechHire and SWFI programs, interviews with staff members, and a review of program participation data.

The report of impact evaluations aimed to assess the effectiveness of behaviorally-informed communications – such as a pop-up alert and emails – in increasing unemployment insurance (UI) claimants’ compliance with work search requirements.

The report from a Job Corps pilot focused on enrolling students in college to prepare for a career in healthcare or information technology, conducted February 2017 through June 2019 with 488 students from the Pacific Northwest (ages 16-21) with at least a sixth-grade level of competency in reading and math) enrolled in Job Corps’ Cascades College and Career Academy (CCCA).

The report from a Job Corps pilot focused on enrolling students in college to prepare for a career in healthcare or information technology (IT), conducted February 2017 through June 2019 with 488 students from the Pacific Northwest (ages 16-21) with at least a sixth-grade level of competency in reading and math) enrolled in Job Corps’ Cascades College and Career Academy (CCCA). This report describes the pilot vision and the pilot contract, summarizes the findings of the evaluation, and considers some discussion.

Technical appendix to the Evaluation of the Cascades Job Corps College and Career Academy (CCCA) Final Report: Appendix A: Theoretical Roots of the Cascades Job Corps Model, Appendix B: Cascades Pilot Evaluation Data Sources, Appendix C: Survey Methods for the 18-Month Follow-Up Survey, Appendix D: Additional Technical Information on Methodology, Appendix E: Definitions of Outcomes, Appendix F: Definitions of Baseline Measures, Appendix G.

The brief describes how Job Corps and community colleges serve young people, how Job Corps currently works with colleges, and how partnerships between Job Corps and colleges could benefit students, Job Corps, and the colleges. The brief also describes the evaluation’s methods and shares what the Job Corps centers identified as the core principles and practices undergirding their successful college partnerships. These core principles and practices include shared goals, clear roles and responsibilities, constant communication, and accommodating each organization’s different requirements.

In 2017 the Chief Evaluation Office (CEO), in close collaboration with the Bureau of International Labor Affairs (ILAB), contracted Mathematica to evaluate the effect of the Increasing Economic and Social Empowerment for Adolescent Girls and Vulnerable Women Project, (EMPOWER). EMPOWER aimed to reduce child labor in Eastern Province, Zambia by addressing skills gaps that constrain adolescent girls’ and women’s work and livelihood opportunities and facilitating pathways to employment that aligned with participants’ improved skills.

The report features findings from an evaluation of EMPOWER that used quantitative pre-post and descriptive analyses to measure changes in the outcomes for adolescent girls and women and qualitative analysis to contextualize findings. The evaluation’s primary objectives were to determine whether EMPOWER increased participants’ skill levels and, in turn, increased adolescent girls’ access to acceptable work and adolescent girls’ and women’s involvement in self-employment and paid work.

In 2022, the Chief Evaluation Office (CEO) partnered with the Employee Benefits Security Administration (EBSA) to fund contractor Manhattan Strategy Group and subcontractor American Institutes of Research to conduct the EBSA Health Outcomes Metrics Study. The study aims to better understand the current landscape, best practices, and data sources related to approaches that federal and state agencies and the insurance industry use to estimate the impacts of their health-related enforcement actions and interventions.

The paper documents key patterns of community-level disparities in access to unemployment insurance (UI) during the pandemic. To operationalize the notion of access to UI, researchers rely on a comprehensive conceptual framework that allows them to track a jobless worker’s access to UI benefits across three discrete stages in the lifecycle of a potential UI claim. To document the degrees of disparities in access throughout the lifecycle of a UI claim, the analysis develops and compares measures for each stage of access both across states and at more local levels within California.

In the paper, using data from before and during the Covid-19 pandemic, the researchers show that the expansion of benefits under the CARES Act only modestly increased self-reported unemployment insurance (UI) recipiency among UI eligible workers, from 27% in 2018 to 36% in 2020/2021. They find that the same demographic groups that historically are less likely to report receiving benefits (less educated, younger, and racial and ethnic minorities) continued to be less likely to receive benefits during the pandemic.

The Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) provides eligible employees with up to 12 weeks of unpaid, job-protected leave per year. Existing evidence has documented that FMLA is associated with higher leave-taking and improved maternal and child health.

The paper presents how the researcher conducted a study to examine the association between labor market changes and disability among working-age Americans at the county-level. The researcher theorized that deindustrialization—or the decline of industrial capacity due to social and economic change—created a polarized workforce in which economic and social circumstances are driving up rates of disability among marginalized American workers affected by these changing conditions.

The U.S. Department of Labor’s (DOL) H-2A guest worker program plays a critical role in supporting agricultural employment and production in the United States. Under Executive Order 13985, President Joe Biden has provided an opportunity for federal agencies to assess equity challenges under their purview. In this report, the researchers investigate equity issues related to legal oversight of the H-2A program.

The report presents American Apprenticeship Initiative (AAI) implementation study findings. The primary data source is interviews conducted during in-person site visits to 10 AAI grantees in spring 2019 and follow-up telephone calls with grant staff in fall 2020. The report documents the design and operation of grant activities and identifies potentially promising practices, implementation challenges, and lessons for future initiatives.

In 2022, the Chief Evaluation Office (CEO) funded contractor Urban Institute to conduct the project Advancing Behavioral Interventions in Labor Programs. Advancing Behavioral Interventions in Labor Programs aims to advance the application of behavioral sciences - or understanding how people realistically make and act on decisions - to improve the design of public policies and programs in ways that reflect a deeper understanding of human nature.

In 2022, the Chief Evaluation Office (CEO) partnered with the Employment and Training Administration (ETA) to fund Trewon Technologies, LLC to conduct the Strengthening Community Colleges (SCC) Training Grants Study. The implementation study and impact evaluability assessment aim to understand the implementation of SCC grantees—community college-based workforce development and career pathways programs in partnership with local employers—as they address disparities in workforce outcomes and build institutional capacity.

In 2022, the Chief Evaluation Office (CEO) partnered with Veterans' Employment and Training Service (VETS) and funded independent contractor Westat and its subcontractors Westat Insight, American Institutes for Research, and Manhattan Strategy Group to conduct an Evaluation of the VETS Employment Navigator and Partnership Pilot (ENPP). The implementation and outcomes study aims to understand and build evidence on the use of VETS employment navigators to improve outcomes for transitioning service members (TSMs) and military spouses.

In 2022, the Chief Evaluation Office (CEO) partnered with the Wage and Hour Division to fund contractor Westat to conduct the National Worker Survey project. This survey is intended to gather data to understand the prevalence and nature of violations of workers’ rights under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), with a focus on wages, pay, and hours worked, as well as other topics.

In 2022, the Chief Evaluation Office (CEO) partnered with the Women’s Bureau, the Office of Unemployment Insurance, and the Office of Trade Adjustment Assistance to fund contractor Mathematica, and its partner Social Policy Research Associates, to conduct a series of studies as part of the Navigator Evidence-Building Portfolio p

The career pathways approach to workforce development emerged to help less educated workers advance to better paying jobs by earning in-demand postsecondary credentials. The approach involves articulated steps of education, training, and employment within an industry sector, combined with other services, to support participant success.

In 2020, the Chief Evaluation Office (CEO) funded contractors Mathematica and the University of Connecticut Health Center to conduct a study of factors associated with opioid use among U.S. workers.

The first report from this study, Factors Contributing to Variation in Nonmedical Use of Prescription Pain Relievers Among U.S. Workers: 2004-2014, analyzed secondary data to understand how nonmedical use of prescription pain relievers varied across states, industries and occupations, and other worker characteristics.

In 2021, the Chief Evaluation Office (CEO) partnered with the Employment and Training Administration (ETA) to fund contractor Manhattan Strategy Group to conduct the Navigators in Social Service Delivery Settings: A Review of the Literature with Relevance to Workforce Development Programs under the Evaluation Technical Support portfolio of studies.

In 2022, the Chief Evaluation Office (CEO) partnered with the Employment and Training Administration (ETA) to fund contractor the Urban Institute and its partners Mathematica and Social Policy Research Associates to conduct the Evaluating Registered Apprenticeship Initiatives. The Evaluation aims build and share evidence about registered apprenticeship initiatives through evaluating strategies under the Apprenticeship Building America (ABA) grants program, conducting an impact and cost-benefit evaluability assessment of pre-registered apprenticeship prog