CEO Library

This brief provides recommendations for implementing administrative data collection practices that support the research needs of federal departments and agencies. The brief describes the process and feasibility of using administrative data to conduct an implementation study of the National Construction Safety and Health Achievement Recognition Program (SHARP) Pilot (NCSP).

The U.S. Department of Labor’s (DOL) Employee Benefits Security Administration (EBSA) seeks to identify approaches to measure the impact of its work. The objectives of EBSA and CEO for this Health Outcomes Metrics project were 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/interventions.

The Navajo Nation Research Brief of the Black Lung Incidence Study identifies the current state of knowledge on black lung disease as it relates to coal mining and residential coal use in the Navajo Nation. It identifies prevalence rates in the U.S. counties that overlap with the Navajo Nation borders, estimates prevalence rates in those counties, and discusses data limitations specific to the Navajo Nation.

The report presents the findings of a literature review ad quantitative analysis conducted under the Black Lung Incidence Study. The study was designed to examine black lung incidence in the United States, exploring both cases and deaths. Within this scope, the study examined whether black lung incidence is higher among specific subpopulations of interest, including miners, mining communities, the Navajo Nation, and residents of Appalachia.

One component of the Mine Safety and Health Administration’s (MSHA’s) mission to “prevent death, illness, and injury from mining and promote safe and healthful workplaces for U.S. miners” is protecting coal miners and coal mining communities from black lung disease (“Mission”). In support of that mission, the literature review expands the U.S.

In 2023, the Chief Evaluation Office (CEO) partnered with the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) and commissioned Westat to examine the feasibility of using administrative data to conduct an implementation study of the National Construction Safety and Health Achievement Recognition Program (SHARP) Pilot (NCSP) under the Administrative Data Research and Analysis portfolio of studies.

In early 2023, The U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) Chief Evaluation Office (CEO) partnered with DOL’s Bureau of International Labor Affairs (ILAB) to fund contractor The Manhattan Strategy Group (MSG), LLC to help DOL understand available information regarding the fundamental labor rights, working conditions, and access to employment for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and intersex (LGBTQI+) individuals in Latin America. MSG produced a literature scan and provided an accompanying briefing for DOL.

In 2018, the Chief Evaluation Office (CEO) partnered with the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) and funded contractor Eastern Research Group, Inc (ERG) to conduct a study focused on the use of consensus standards for occupational safety and health management systems (Employer Adoption of Voluntary Health and Safety Standards).

The report relates to an effort by the U.S. Department of Labor’s (DOL) Chief Evaluation Office (CEO), in collaboration with the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), to understand how and why employers adopt voluntary consensus standards for occupational health and safety (OHS) management. This final report describes the processes governing the development of standards for occupational safety and health management systems.

In 2022, the Chief Evaluation Office (CEO) partnered with the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) and commissioned contractor Summit Consulting, LLC (Summit) to conduct the Black Lung Incidence Study under the Administrative Data Research and Analysis portfolio of studies.

In 2022, the Chief Evaluation Office (CEO) partnered with the U.S. Department of Labor’s (DOL) Women’s Bureau (WB) to fund contractor Mathematica, and its partner Social Policy Research Associates, to conduct the Fostering Access, Rights, and Equity (FARE) Grant Navigators Implementation Study under the Navigator Evidence-Building Portfolio of studies.

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 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.

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.

The report relates to an effort by the U.S. Department of Labor’s (DOL) Chief Evaluation Office (CEO), in collaboration with the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), to understand how and why employers adopt voluntary consensus standards for occupational health and safety (OHS) management. This report focuses on the institutions, organizations, and processes that have emerged to support the certification of occupational health and safety management systems (OHSMS), both in the U.S. and globally.

In 2019, the Chief Evaluation Office’s Evaluation Technical Support contract, implemented by Manhattan Strategy Group, partnered with the W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research to conduct a two-part paper series on trends in contingent work and alternative work arrangements in the United States under the Evaluation Technical Support portfolio of studies. The analysis describes the characteristics of workers in these arrangements, and the implications of these arrangements for worker outcomes.

The Contingent Worker Supplement (CWS) to the Current Population Survey (CPS), fielded six times between 1995 and 2017, was designed to measure jobs that were temporary in nature as well as work arrangements thought to be associated with less commitment between workers and employers. The latter includes independent contractor and platform work, temporary help and other intermediated contract work arrangements, and on-call work, which captures a certain type of unpredictable work schedule.

The Contingent Worker Supplement (CWS) to the Current Population Survey— administered six times between 1995 and 2017—is uniquely valuable in providing detailed information on a consistent set of work arrangements in a large, nationally representative survey. Drawing on data from all six CWS waves, researchers provide an in-depth picture of the nature of contingent and alternative work and whether and how employment arrangements are changing in the United States.

In 2021, the Chief Evaluation Office (CEO) partnered with the Social Security Administration (SSA) and the Office of Disability Employment Policy (ODEP) and funded contractor Mathematica to support the ongoing evaluation of the Retaining Employment & Talent After Injury/Illness Network (RETAIN) demonstration projects. CEO’s contract supports enrollment data collection and the random assignment of study participants for phase 2 of the RETAIN demonstration.

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.

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.

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 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.

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 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.