CEO Library

The 2024 Veteran Employment Data Catalog is a document-based catalog of existing datasets that could be used to answer research questions related to veterans’ employment outcomes. The U.S. Department of Labor’s (DOL) Chief Evaluation Office (CEO) collaborated with the Veterans’ Employment and Training Services (VETS) to commission Insight Policy Research (now Westat) to identify both public and restricted datasets that align with topic areas derived from VETS’ mission.

In 2022, the Chief Evaluation Office (CEO) partnered with the Veteran Employment and Training Service (VETS) to fund contractor Westat to conduct the 2024 Veteran Employment Data Catalog under the Administrative Data Research and Analysis portfolio of studies. The data catalog aims to assist researchers by identifying existing public and restricted datasets related to the post-separation civilian transition, racial equity, and support for underserved veteran communities.

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.

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.

The brief provides a summary of information about the Stay at Work/Return to Work (SAW/RTW) Models and Strategy Study, the process, and findings from each study report.

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.

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 analyzes public data to estimate the characteristics of the SAW/RTW target population and examine pathways from illness/injury to federal disability benefits as a way to identify opportunities for intervention.

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 presents five options for new research to build evidence about the target populations for SAW/RTW and to test the effects of interventions on employment outcomes.

In 2018, the Chief Evaluation Office (CEO) partnered with the Office of Workers’ Compensation Programs (OWCP) and funded contractor Summit Consulting to conduct Return-to-Work Outcomes for Federal Employees in the Office of Workers’ Compensation Disability Management Program under the Administrative Data Research and Analysis portfolio of studies.

The report provides descriptive statistics and associations between case characteristics (injury, claim, and claimant characteristics) and the outcomes of interest (return-to-work and disability management duration). Process diagrams and survival models complement the descriptive statistics. This report also assesses the similarities and differences in return-to-work rates and duration in disability management across case characteristics and timing and sequence of disability management services.

Worker moral hazard has been shown in some empirical studies to influence workers’ compensation insurance claims patterns. According to moral hazard theory, temporary help services workers would be expected to file a greater number of spurious claims than traditional, directly-hired employees as a result of greater safety information asymmetry between staffing agencies and the temporary help services workers they place in third party workplaces than between employers and their directly-hired employees.

A crucial question for the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) and other regulatory agencies in the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) is the extent to which enforcement inspections lead to general deterrence—that is, improve compliance and performance at non-inspected workplaces. The magnitude and scope of spillovers has major implications for how OSHA should target its enforcement resources to maximize their impact on the health and safety of workers. However, identifying spillover effects of inspections entails overcoming several substantial empirical challenges.

Assuring that all workers in the United States have safe and healthful working conditions is the mission of the U.S. Department of Labor’s (DOL) Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). The Site-Specific Targeting (SST) program, a planned inspection program managed by OSHA, aims to improve health and safety of workplaces under OSHA's jurisdiction by targeting enforcement actions on establishments with historically high injury and illness rates.

There are concerns that Hispanic workers disproportionately under report workplace injuries, perhaps out of fear of reprisal from employers. This type of underreporting would place an especially high burden on Hispanic workers who are employed in riskier industries and occupations and who have among the lowest rates of health insurance.

Workplace injuries have negative consequences for individuals, families, organizations, and society as a whole. In the paper, the researchers expand upon the job demands-resources (JD-R) model to include family demands and resources, as well as individual resources, and test longitudinally both between- and within-person antecedents of workplace injuries. They use nine waves of data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY79) and follow the same individuals over a 12-year period.

The report of a study first to examine the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s (OSHA’s) Federal Agency Targeting (FEDTARG) inspection program. Under the FEDTARG program, OSHA targets Federal worksites that have high lost time case (LTC) counts. The goal of the program is to reduce hazards, injuries and illnesses, and the costs associated with injuries and illnesses in Federal worksites.

The U.S. Department of Labor’s (DOL) Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) runs a voluntary program that provides free and confidential advice to small and medium-sized establishments on approaches to avoiding workplace injuries and illnesses. This effort, known as the On-site Consultation Program (OSC), operates in addition to—but totally separate from—OSHA’s enforcement activities. Nationwide, OSC performs approximately 27,000 consultation visits per year at establishments that collectively employ more than 1.25 million workers.

The Chief Evaluation Office (CEO) works with other Department of Labor (DOL) agencies to conduct Administrative Data Research and Analysis (ADRA) studies. The various studies aim to examine administrative data sets from agencies within DOL and other federal agencies to provide timely responses to changing strategic agency priorities. Completed studies are listed below. New and ongoing studies will occur regularly.

The report provides an overview of the Site Specific Targeting Program (SST11) and a random assignment evaluation design implemented by Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) to assess the short-term impacts of the program.

The empirical literature on union effects on occupational safety and health within firms struggles with two primary obstacles to credibly estimating the effect of unionization on workplace safety. First, unionized employees may be more likely to report occupational risks to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), inducing greater rates of inspection and citation of unionized firms for violations than occurs in otherwise similar nonunion firms. This is a kind of measurement error in commonly-used workplace safety outcomes that is positively correlated with unionization.

The underreporting of occupational injuries and illnesses to worker protection agencies has become a topic of great concern to researchers and policymakers. Although numerous studies have quantified the prevalence of the phenomenon, which specific types of injuries and establishments are most susceptible to underreporting is poorly understood. As a consequence, regulators have very little capacity to “red flag” employers that are likely to underreport the most injuries. The paper begins to fill this gap in existing literature in four interrelated ways.

Appendix A to the Evaluation of Accuracy and Completeness of Nonfatal Injury and Illness Reporting in the Mining Industry Final Report: Selection of Kentucky Case Records for Matching.

Appendix G to the Evaluation of Accuracy and Completeness of Nonfatal Injury and Illness Reporting in the Mining Industry Final Report: Non-linear Regression Results for Targeting Factors.

Appendix F to the Evaluation of Accuracy and Completeness of Nonfatal Injury and Illness Reporting in the Mining Industry Final Report: Sample Size Calculation for Random Audits