CEO Library

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 2012, the U.S. Department of Labor’s (DOL) Chief Evaluation Office (CEO) contracted with IMPAQ International, LLC and its partners, the Burton Blatt Institute (BBI) and Universal Designers and Consultants (UD&C), to measure the accessibility of American Job Centers (AJC) for people with disabilities. The bulk of previous research on AJC accessibility involved case studies or limited surveys focused on specific issues. Prior to this study, there had been no comprehensive survey of AJCs.

Individuals who lose their jobs may have the skills and desire to start their own businesses. Some states have taken action to help unemployed workers create their own jobs by establishing Self-Employment Assistance (SEA) programs, which allow Unemployment Insurance (UI) eligible individuals who meet SEA program requirements to receive a weekly self-employment allowance while they are setting up their businesses. This allowance is equal in amount and duration to regular UI benefits.

The report of the Evaluation of the Reemployment and Eligibility Assessment (REA) Program, and as a precursor to an impact study analysis, describes the implementation of the REA program in the four states in which the evaluation study was conducted: Indiana, New York, Washington, and Wisconsin. This report and its analysis support the broader impact evaluation in two distinct ways. Most important, this report describes in detail the REA program as it was implemented across the four participating states during the study period.

In 2015, the Chief Evaluation Office (CEO) partnered with the Employment and Training Administration (ETA) and funded contractors Mathematica Policy Research and Social Policy Research Associates to conduct the Linking to Employment Activities Pre-Release (LEAP) Program Evaluation. The evaluation aims to examine program implementation at each of the 20 LEAP pilot locations through site visits at each location, phone interviews, focus groups, and analysis of grantees’ quarterly performance reports.

The Homeless Veterans Reintegration Program (HVRP) is intended to provide services to assist in reintegrating homeless veterans into meaningful employment. In May 2014, U.S. Department of Labor's (DOL) Chief Evaluation Office (CEO) contracted with Avar Consulting, Inc. to conduct a formative evaluation of the HVRP program.

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.

The report details a study that uses the introductions of California’s Paid Family Care Leave Act (CA-FLI) and New Jersey’s Family Leave Insurance (NJ-FLI) to examine the effects of paid-leave laws on labor market outcomes for individuals who are likely to provide care to an elderly parent. A 2012 survey of employees in the United States showed that work leaves related to the health of a family member (parent, spouse, or child) were almost as common as leaves related to caring for a newborn child (Klerman, Daley, and Pozniak, 2014).

The report examines expansions to the unemployment compensation system that followed the onset of the Great Recession. Before the recession, eligible workers losing a job could collect up to 26 weeks of unemployment insurance (UI) benefits in most states. Near the end of 2009, up to 99 weeks were available in high-unemployment states through the UI program, the Emergency Unemployment Compensation Act of 2008 (EUC08) program, and the Extended Benefits (EB) program. The researchers' main analysis used administrative and survey data on 2,122 recipients in 12 states.

For many Americans, the recession that began in 2007 led not only to job loss, but also to losing health insurance for themselves and their families. Three-quarters of nonelderly Americans who have health insurance receive coverage through an employer. In most cases, the employer pays for a relatively large portion of the cost of the coverage. Given the predominance of health insurance that is sponsored and subsidized by employers, the loss of a job is often accompanied by the loss of health care coverage.

The report summarizes the results of Eastern Research Group, Inc. (ERG)’s project to estimate the social and economic effects of minimum wage violations in California and New York. This project represented an exploratory effort to determine the appropriate approach and data to use to estimate the impacts of state and federal minimum wage and overtime pay violations; however, data limitations related to overtime pay violations required a focus only on minimum wage violations.

Abstract of the Social and Economic Effects of Wage Violations: Estimates for California and New York Final Report.

To understand the connections between Workforce Data Quality Initiative (WDQI) grants and state efforts to develop Consumer Report Card Systems (CRCSs), the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) contracted with IMPAQ International, LLC (IMPAQ) to conduct the Feasibility of Using WDQI and Eligible Training Provider Lists (ETPLs) Data for Consumer Reports project. The report has three main objectives:

Over the past several decades, job search support groups, commonly referred to as “job clubs,” have evolved into one of several important activities used by the public workforce system and faith- and community-based organizations to enhance worker readiness and employability, as well as to provide ongoing support to unemployed and underemployed individuals as they search for jobs. The U.S. Department of Labor's (DOL) Chief Evaluation Office (CEO) contracted in September 2012 with Capital Research Corporation, Inc.