CEO Library

Technical supplement to the Evaluation of the Transition Assistance Program (TAP) Impact Study Report that provides study details on propensity score matching, study sample, data elements and sources, data analyses, labor market context, outcomes of the overall sample, main impact analyses, subgroup analyses, associational analyses, and references.

The report describes the quasi-experimental study using administrative data from the U.S. Army and the National Directory of New Hires that examined the impact of the Transition Assistance Program (TAP) on the employment and wages of recently separated Veterans. The study used a matched comparison group design to compare the outcomes of Veterans who participated in TAP to similar Veterans who did not participate. It presents the estimated impacts of participating in TAP up to 36 months post-separation.

Appendices to the Using Behavioral Insights to Increase Youth Use of Workforce Services in Virtual Contexts Final Report: Appendix A: Resources for Learning More About Behavioral Insights and How to Use Them for Continuous Improvement, Appendix B: Supplementary Details on Study Context and Design, Appendix C: Technical Details on Impact Estimates, and References.

Improving career readiness and job access for youth and young adults is vital. Millions of low-income Americans need better access to high-quality career pathways to escape poverty. This is no easy task— economic opportunity has shrunk dramatically in the United States in the past half-century (Chetty et al. 2016). Meanwhile, employers face rising shortages in the supply of skilled workers, making it harder to compete on the global market (World Economic Forum 2021).

The U.S. Department of Labor (DOL), Employment and Training Administration (ETA), Office of Workforce Investment (OWI) supports state and local workforce agencies in providing information to help job seekers successfully search for work. As part of this support, OWI asked the DOL Chief Evaluation Office (CEO) and the DOL Behavioral Interventions (DOL BI) team to explore whether applications of behavioral science could improve the usefulness of the information that job seekers use when searching for positions, investing in training, and considering career options.

In 2019, the Chief Evaluation Office (CEO) partnered with the Employment and Training Administration (ETA) to fund contractors Urban Institute, Mathematica Policy Research, and Capital Research Corporation to design and conduct analysis to build and expand the evidence portfolio on apprenticeships, including models, components, partnerships, and strategies that often include the work of community colleges. 

In the paper, the researcher aimed to study the major predictors of disability onset for older workers in the United States and the role of various employer accommodations in retaining newly disabled workers in the workforce using nationally representative data.

Are female, Black, Hispanic, Asian, and American Indian claimants for unemployment insurance (UI) more likely than white non-Hispanic claimants to see their claims disputed by an employer? And are these UI claimants ultimately more likely to have their UI claims denied, either by the UI agency or following a dispute? In the paper, the researchers address these questions by examining UI administrative wage and claim records from Washington state during 2005:Q1–2013:Q4.

The paper examines the effect of increasing the size of unemployment insurance (UI) transfers on Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) in the U.S. from April 5 to May 2, 2020. As part of the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act signed on March 27th, 2020, the Federal Pandemic Unemployment Compensation (FPUC) program increased UI payments by $600 per week (Courtney, 2020). It took states different amounts of time to comply with the U.S.

The environmental scan sets the stage for a series of briefs that will be published under the State Apprenticeship Systems Capacity Assessment study. The study will conduct a deep dive into state-level Registered Apprenticeship systems in the United States, exploring how the public sector and its partners are supporting and implementing Registered Apprenticeship programs, including the use of more inclusive and equitable strategies and models.

The report provides background on youth apprenticeship programs in the U.S. to provide context for finalizing the design of the implementation evaluation of the Youth Apprenticeship Readiness Grants (YARG). The report also summarizes the planned activities of the 14 grantees and the key features of each grantee’s youth apprenticeship model and discusses key issues to include in the implementation evaluation.

The brief develops a typology of five different models of youth apprenticeship expansion used by Youth Apprenticeship Readiness Grants (YARG) grantees across their registered apprenticeship programs. The typology is based on information collected from the YARG grantee applications, follow-up clarification calls with grantees, and the grantees’ quarterly narrative reports to the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL). The models are not proscriptive templates for individual registered apprenticeship program standards.

In 2023 the Chief Evaluation Office (CEO) partnered with Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP) and funded contractors Insight Policy Research and Urban Institute to conduct a series of analyses presented in Building an Equitable Construction Workforce: Understanding and Increasing the Proportion of Women and People of Color in Construction under the Administrative Data Research and Analysis and

The brief describes the experiences of 54 veterans in Homeless Veterans’ Reintegration Program (HVRP), the services they most appreciated, and gaps they perceived in the services. It describes veterans’ pathways to HVRP and their perceptions about the accessibility and responsiveness of HVRP grant staff, the helpfulness of the services, and how they were treated (such as whether they were treated respectfully). It concludes with their suggestions for improving HVRP.

The report provides findings from the implementation study for the Evaluation of the Homeless Veterans’ Reintegration Program (HVRP), which relied on data from (1) a survey of all program year 2020 HVRP grantees, (2) semi-structured interviews with key stakeholders from eight deliberately selected grantees and their community partners, and (3) in-depth interviews with veterans who received services from one of those eight grantees.

Using data from the Homeless Veterans’ Reintegration Program (HVRP) grantee survey administered to grantees from program year 2020 and supplemented with interviews with staff from eight site visit grantees and their American Job Center (AJC) partners, the brief addresses three topics: (1) the AJC program in which a majority of HVRP participants were co-enrolled; (2) the percentage of participants receiving services at the AJC; and (3) the processes grantees used to co-enroll participants.

The brief describes the types of services Homeless Veterans’ Reintegration Program (HVRP) participants received at America's Job Centers and compares the service receipt of HVRP participants with other veterans experiencing homelessness who were not participating in HVRP. The data are from the Workforce Integrated Performance System (WIPS) and include all HVRP participants and other veterans experiencing homelessness across the United States who enrolled in the Wagner-Peyser Employment Service at AJCs during program year 2019 or 2020.

The brief uses implementation study data from the Homeless Veterans’ Reintegration Program (HVRP) Evaluation to discuss four main areas of HVRP with potential gaps and opportunities for improvement. The four areas, which emerged from an analysis of qualitative and grantee survey data, are (1) coordination with other public workforce development programs, (2) expansion of HVRP eligibility to other veterans, (3) emphasis on veterans’ skills and interests for employment opportunities, and (4) coordination with the homeless response system.

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.

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.

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 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 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.

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.

Graphic highlighting several Career Pathway program milestones and improvements from the 1980's through the 2020's.