CEO Library

In 2014, the U.S. Department of Labor’s (DOL’s) Chief Evaluation Office (CEO) contracted with Mathematica Policy Research and ideas to explore the potential of using insights from behavioral science to improve the performance and outcomes of DOL programs. In this study, the DOL Behavioral Interventions (DOL-BI) team partnered with the Human Resources Division of DOL (DOL-HR) and the Employee Benefits Security Administration (EBSA) to explore whether low-cost, behaviorally informed emails would result in more DOL employees saving, or saving more, for retirement.

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.

The nature of the employer-employee relationship is drastically changing in the United States, with lead employers employing fewer workers directly and instead relying on intermediaries and contracting firms for providing labor services. In the paper researchers investigate the incidence and effects of outsourcing labor service jobs in food, cleaning, security and logistics (FCSL) to business service firms. They first provide long time series using Census and ACS data documenting large movements of FCSL jobs to business service firms, with an accelerating trend since the Great Recession.

In the paper the researchers analyze if the share of agricultural employment can contribute to strengthening employment resilience in Indian Country. They define Indian Country as all reservation territories within the contiguous United States. They construct employment data by sector for Indian Country based on Zip Code level data from 1990 to 2015. They analyze employment growth in Indian Country across recessions and recovery periods and find Indian Country generally to be less affected by recessions than the United States as a whole.

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.

The brief highlights the goals of the Trade Adjustment Assistance Community College and Career Training (TAACCCT) grant program and provides an overview of evaluation activities for the four rounds of TAACCCT grants. Using information from grantee documents, third-party evaluation plans, and the solicitations for grant applications (SGAs) from all four rounds of grants, the brief describes grant requirements, proposed evaluation designs, and TAACCCT grant funding for evaluations. This brief concludes with a preview of the national evaluation of the TAACCCT grant program.

The brief provides an overview of the types of Trade Adjustment Assistance Community College and Career Training (TAACCCT) grants awarded, the geographic distribution of grant funding, and characteristics of the colleges receiving TAACCCT funding from the grants across the four rounds awarded (2011–14). This brief uses information from grantees’ original proposals and supporting documentation and data from the U.S. Department of Education’s Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System to obtain a richer understanding of the types of institutions participating in TAACCCT.

The brief provides an overview of the various approaches the Trade Adjustment Assistance Community College and Career Training (TAACCCT) grantees planned to implement, the industries targeted at the start of their grants, the degrees and certifications they planned to develop, and the types of partnerships grantees would leverage during the grants. These activities are the core of what the grantees intended to do during their grant period.

The brief presents preliminary results on key outcomes and characteristics of grant-funded program participants from the first four years of Trade Adjustment Assistance Community College and Career Training (TAACCCT). The TAACCCT grant program is primarily focused on capacity building and sustainability, with grant funding directed at institution building rather than at tuition assistance for students to help them pay for education and training.

The brief summarizes a simulation analysis of five different paid family and medical leave model programs based on working programs in three states and a federal proposal, all applied to the national workforce. The analysis simulates worker behavior and estimates how many paid leaves would be taken under each model, the average weekly benefit level for each leave, and the total costs of the benefits paid. The analysis estimates the cost of benefits in dollars and as a share of total payroll for the nation as a whole and across industries and establishments of different sizes.

Analyses show that providing paid sick days under any alternative model policy increases the amount of paid time workers are able to take for medical and family needs, as intended, at reasonable costs to employers, ranging from 0.10 percent to 0.29 percent of payroll according to the generosity of the model. Employers of different sizes and in different industries would experience a range of costs under each model.

The brief explores the distributional impact of three alternative policy models for providing paid sick days taken from actual policies in the states and a federal proposal selected to show a range of generosity of provision. San Francisco was the first U.S. locality to pass paid sick days in 2006. Their Paid Sick Leave Ordinance (PSLO) covers nearly all workers in San Francisco and provides up to five days per year for workers employed in small businesses (under ten employees) and up to nine days per year for workers employed in larger businesses.

In December 2012, the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) Bureau of International Labor Affairs (ILAB) awarded a $1.5 million grant to Colombia’s Escuela Nacional Sindical (ENS) to implement the project Strengthening Protections of Internationally Recognized Labor Rights in Colombia (Workers’ Rights Centers) over three years. In 2015, ENS received a one-year extension with an additional $600,000 in funding for a total of $2.1 million.

In December 2012, the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) Bureau of International Labor Affairs (ILAB) awarded a $1.5 million grant to Colombia’s Escuela Nacional Sindical (ENS) to implement the project Strengthening Protections of Internationally Recognized Labor Rights in Colombia (Workers’ Rights Centers) over three years. In 2015, ENS received a one-year extension with an additional $600,000 in funding for a total of $2.1 million.

Under contract from the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL), Abt Associates conducted a survey of 8,503 workers on issues related to employee classification; i.e., whether those who by law are employees are being treated as self-employed (and vice versa). In addition, the study conducted 17 semi-structured interviews with employers and employer representatives. The report describes the survey which suggests that workers have an imperfect understanding of the implications of employment status.

The report describes the methods used by Abt Associates in conducting the Worker Classification Knowledge Survey for the Department of Labor. The Worker Classification Knowledge Survey is a dual-frame telephone survey that measures American workers’ knowledge about their current job classification and their knowledge about the rights and benefits associated with their job status. Abt conducted this study in support of the U.S.

The document provides information related to the public use files (PUFs) of the Worker Classification Knowledge Survey. (Beyond what is contained in the technical report (Daley et al. 2016); no information from the semi-structured interviews is being released.) The survey instruments are included as Appendix A of the Methodology Report, and are also included in this document as Appendix B. The balance of this document proceeds as follows. Section 2 discusses steps to prevent disclosure. Section 3 provides sample code for analyzing the data using SAS.

Workers who meet the legal definition of employees receive statutory protections such as minimum wage, overtime pay, and Unemployment Insurance coverage. Workers defined as self-employed forgo these protections as well as other employer-provided benefits such as health insurance and retirement plans. In order for workers to make informed choices between employment and self-employment, they need to understand how those rights and benefits vary with classification (i.e., employee vs. self-employed).

There is ongoing policy debate about employee classification; that is, who the law says should be classified as an employee and who should be classified as self-employed. But do workers themselves understand their current status? To explore whether workers understand their current status, a recent Abt Associates survey asked 8,503 workers for their (1) work status (employee or self-employed) and (2) what earnings documentation for tax purposes they received from their main job (W-2 or 1099-MISC). Earnings documentation alone is not definitive as to classification.

To provide context for the discussions with individuals likely to use paid family leave benefits, researchers summarize some of the paid family leave literature. First, they provide an overview of the existing federal and state policies that support leave-taking. Second, they discuss utilization trends associated with state-based paid leave laws. And finally, they delve into barriers to use of these paid leave benefits.

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.

The report provides new evidence on Rhode Island’s (RI) Temporary Caregiver Insurance (TCI) law, which took effect in January 2014, based on a survey of small and medium-sized businesses in the food services and manufacturing sectors in Rhode Island, Connecticut, and Massachusetts that the researchers carried out in December 2013 (just before the law came into effect) and in January/February 2015 (one year after the law came into effect). The researchers collected information about firm characteristics and productivity, employee life events and workflow, and employer provided benefits.

The paper examines changes in patterns of work, poverty, and the relationship between work and poverty between 2005 and 2013. It also explores the implications of heterogeneous work-poverty dynamics for the distribution of poverty risk across race and sex groups. The researchers' analyses address three specific objectives. First, they track changes in work and poverty status among householders during the 2005 to 2013 period.

Stagnant wages, growing inequality, and the deterioration of job quality are among the most important challenges facing the U.S. economy today. Although domestic outsourcing – firms’ use of contractors, franchises, and independent contractors – is a potentially important mechanism through which companies reduce compensation and shift economic risk to workers, surprisingly little is known about the extent of this practice and its implications for wages and working conditions.

The structure and organization of work are continually changing. Changes may be cyclical, reflecting economic and social conditions, including business cycles and labor market structures. Other changes, often resulting from new technologies, may be unidirectional. Whether or not the changes are temporary or permanent, employment arrangements affect worker exposures to workplace hazards and their ability to address them.