The Chief Evaluation Office (CEO) supports the Department of Labor’s (DOL) efforts to better understand how DOL can improve the well-being of workers from underserved, marginalized and excluded communities. Read more below for the ways that CEO uses research to support DOL equity priorities, aligned with the Department’s latest Strategic Plan and Evaluation and Evidence-Building Plans. For more on how the Department is addressing equity considerations, please see DOL’s Equity Action Plan.
Completed Reports
LGBTQI+ Workers in Latin America
(August 2023)
Career Pathways Descriptive and Analytical Project
(January 2022)
DOL-Sponsored Evidence on Equity
The Department of Labor supports equity-related research efforts within the department and the national workforce. Read below for select research efforts, and find more on CEO’s Current Studies and Completed Reports pages.
In collaboration with DOL agencies, CEO supports research on vulnerable and underserved populations, including employment programs and protections for: justice-involved youth, young adults, and formerly incarcerated adults, individuals with disabilities, and vulnerable workers’ rights violations, benefits non-eligibility and other protections gaps. A few example projects include:
- The Career Pathways Descriptive and Analytical Project studies DOL’s approaches to workforce development that aim to help less educated workers advance to better paying jobs by earning in-demand postsecondary credentials.
- In the Navigator Evidence-Building Portfolio, DOL is examining the potential of Navigators to improve outcomes and equity in workforce programs across three evaluations focused on access, equity, Unemployment Insurance benefits, and workers in the trades.
- A National Worker Survey will help DOL understand the prevalence and nature of violations of workers’ rights under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), with a focus on wages, pay, and hours worked, as well as other topics.
On behalf of the department, CEO leads other initiatives to build the pipeline of labor experts focus on equity, and conducts active outreach to scholars at Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) and Hispanic-Serving Institutions (HSIs) in doing so. Such initiatives include CEO’s Summer Fellowship Program, Intergovernmental Personnel Act Fellowship, Summer Data Challenge on Equity and Underserved Communities, the Department of Labor Scholars Program, and other grants. Across these efforts, scholars use existing data to analyze how federal labor policies, protections and programs reach traditionally underserved communities due to race, gender identity, sexual orientation, ethnicity, income, geography, immigrant status, veteran status and disability status, among others.
CEO, as a government leader in evaluation, collaborates with other federal agencies to support research and evaluation on equity-focused topics, such as:
- Working with the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) on a project to study how to improve the Diversity, Equity, Inclusivity and Accessibility (DEIA) within the federal workforce.
- Collaborating with the National Science Foundation (NSF), the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) and Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to support Phase 1 of the Analytics for Equity Initiative, which will support research examining equity considerations in workplace safety and workers.
CEO is dedicated to building capacity and sharing research-based evidence on equity-focused topics and strategies. Find more in the presentations and trainings listed below: