CEO Library

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.

The purpose of the Older Workers Implementation and Descriptive Study is to build evidence about the implementation of the Senior Community Service Employment Program (SCSEP) and other U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) workforce programs serving older workers to inform the continuous improvement of SCSEP. To inform evaluation activities, the report reviews the literature and identifies the state of the evidence on workforce programs, including those that serve older workers and populations with similar employment barriers.

In 2022, the Chief Evaluation Office (CEO) partnered with the Office of Unemployment Insurance to fund contractor Mathematica to conduct the UI Navigators Implementation Study. The implementation study examines UI Navigator grants to seven states to better understand how UI agencies partnered with community-based organizations (CBOs) to reduce disparities in access to UI benefits and services and to explore barriers in implementation.

In 2018, the Chief Evaluation Office (CEO) partnered with the Employment and Training Administration (ETA) to fund contractor The Urban Institute to design and conduct an evaluation that examines critical policy issues, lessons learned, and challenges states faced administering Unemployment Insurance (UI) programs during the Great Recession that began in 2007 and the economic recovery that followed.

The Employment and Training Administration (ETA) funded contractor Abt Associates to develop two evaluation reports for projects funded under the Workforce Innovation Fund (WIF) initiative: The Workforce Innovation Fund (WIF): A Synthesis Report on Evaluation Findings and Experiences and Process Study of the U.S. Department of Labor’s “Pay for Success” Pilots in Two States. The WIF initiative awarded 45 grants, allowing for the implementation of employment-related interventions.

The report identifies the interventions implemented by the 43 Workforce Innovation Fund (WIF) grantees, summarizes findings from the evaluation reports produced between 2015 and 2019, and provides observations regarding the evaluations themselves. Finally, it highlights lessons learned from the experiences with evaluations under WIF and discusses how these lessons might be applied in future initiatives involving grantee-led evaluations.

Appendix to Workforce Innovation Fund (WIF) Evaluations: A Synthesis Report on Findings and Experiences Synthesis Report: Appendix A. Summary Briefs of Workforce Innovation Fund (WIF) Projects, Appendix B. List of All WIF Projects, Appendix C. WIF Background and Context Materials, and Appendix D. Understanding WIF Evaluation Findings.

The report documents the early efforts of Massachusetts and New York as they designed and implemented the Pay for Success (PFS) pilots funded under the U.S. Department of Labor’s (DOL) Workforce Innovation Fund (WIF). This report examines the seven-month period grantees had to develop their grant applications after the Solicitation for Grant Awards (SGA) was announced, the four months of planning once awards were made, and the initial approximately 10 months of operation.

The U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) sponsored a process study of the two Pay for Success (PFS) pilots, conducted by Abt Associates, to document project implementation and provide information on the PFS approach to policymakers and program administrators. This is the process study’s report. An earlier interim report documented the development of the pilots and their initial implementation. This final report updates information about the implementation of the pilots and includes observations based on the entirety of the DOL supported portion, or first phase, of the PFS grants.

The 2018 amendments to the Social Security Act (hereafter “the Statute”) permanently authorized the Reemployment Services and Eligibility Assessment (RESEA) program, required that states’ programs be supported by evidence, and allowed states to use up to 10 percent of their RESEA grant for evaluations. Developed as part of the Evaluation to Advance RESEA Program Evidence, the evidence-building options report aims to serve as a resource for decision makers to understand and weigh options for developing evidence of various types.

The brief summarizes the state of the evidence for individualized career services—a category of reemployment services—to help unemployment insurance (UI) claimants return to work. This brief closes with a discussion of gaps in the current evidence base and implications of evaluating these kinds of Reemployment Services and Eligibility Assessments (RESEA) program components.

The brief summarizes the state of the evidence for basic career services—a category of reemployment services—to help unemployment insurance (UI) claimants return to work. The brief closes with a discussion of gaps in the current evidence base and implications of evaluating these kinds of Reemployment Services and Eligibility Assessments (RESEA) program components.

The brief summarizes the state of the evidence about two Reemployment Services and Eligibility Assessments (RESEA) program components: (1) which unemployment insurance (UI) claimants would benefit the most when selected to participate and (2) changes in scheduling practices to increase meeting attendance rates. This brief closes with a discussion of gaps in the current evidence base and implications of evaluating these kinds of RESEA program components.

The briefs aim to inform states about the current status of evidence on Reemployment Services and Eligibility Assessments (RESEA) programs and strategies. These briefs are intended to be useful to states as they refine their programs and build evidence in response to the legislative and administrative requirements. These briefs describe findings from research on the effectiveness of elements frequently used in RESEA programs. Each of the three briefs reviews and considers the evidence and gaps in one of three subject areas:

The brief explores how the pandemic affected the Reemployment Services and Eligibility Assessments (RESEA) program, including how extensively the pandemic interrupted RESEA operations, how states changed service delivery strategies to maintain or restore program operations, and the extent to which those changes could continue post-COVID.

The report presents the results of the evaluation’s implementation study, a multi-method effort intended to provide an up-to-date understanding of states’ current Reemployment Services and Eligibility Assessments (RESEA) programs, their evaluation plans, and recent programmatic changes in response to new statutory requirements for RESEA established through amendments to the Social Security Act (SSA) and related U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) guidance. Program changes in the wake of the COVID-pandemic are also examined.

The technical appendices to The Ready to Work Partnership Grant Evaluation: Findings from the Interim Impact Study of Four Employment Services Programs for the Long-Term Unemployed Report (Klerman, Herr, Martinson, and Copson 2022): Appendix A: Additional Technical Information on Methodology, Appendix B: Data Sources, Appendix C: Survey Methods for the 18-Month Follow-Up Survey, Appendix D: Definitions of Outcomes, Appendix E: Definitions of Base

The report documents the interim findings from the impact study of the Ready to Work (RTW) grant program. This report describes interim program impacts on service and credential receipt, earnings and employment, public benefits receipt, and a range of other employment-related outcomes through approximately 18 months after random assignment of participants into the study. The evaluation also estimates impacts for subgroups based on age, education level, employment status and gender.

In 2019, the Chief Evaluation Office (CEO) partnered with the Employment and Training Administration, Office of Unemployment Insurance (OUI) to conduct the Behavioral Interventions to Improve Work Search Among Unemployment Insurance Claimants project. The unemployment insurance (UI) program requires claimants to be actively looking for work while they receive benefits to encourage a rapid return to work.

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.

States participating in the Reemployment Services and Eligibility Assessments (RESEA) program use evaluation evidence to continually improve their RESEA programs. The list is an array of resources that states can draw on to support their efforts to grow their capacity, to use existing evaluation evidence, and to develop new evidence. This list is organized by resource type. Some resources are narrowly targeted to a single topic while others cover a multitude of topics.

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 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 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

In 2022, the Chief Evaluation Office (CEO), in collaboration with the Office for Unemployment Insurance (OUI) in the Employment and Training Administration (ETA), funded independent contractor Abt Associates to conduct the Reemployment Services and Eligibility Assessments (RESEA) Evidence Building Portfolio Project. This portfolio project will provide evaluation technical assistance and conduct evidence-building activities to support and complement states’ evaluations.