Challenges and Strategies Used to Operate Unemployment Insurance Programs During the Great Recession Summary of Literature Review
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About the Literature Review
The literature review summarizes key challenges and strategies of states operating unemployment insurance (UI) programs during the Great Recession and its aftermath. Except when noted otherwise, “states” is used to refer to the 53 UI jurisdictions in the United States. This includes the 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. It is based on a targeted literature review for the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) that focuses on UI operations during and after the Great Recession, which extended from December 2007 to June 2009 (National Bureau of Economic Research 2010). Based on guidance from DOL, the literature review focused on a subset of presentations made during the National Association of State Workforce Agencies (NASWA)–UI Directors Conference, 2017. NASWA is a national organization that represents state workforce agencies, strives to enhance the agencies’ ability to accomplish their goals, and advocates for advances in workforce development policy. Researchers also included other relevant literature, but DOL did not intend for the literature review to include a systematic, exhaustive search of all possible relevant evidence that is publically available. The review also highlights strategies that UI programs implemented when unemployment and the number of UI claims were relatively low, to position their UI programs to better meet the demands of their workloads during future economic downturns. Three limitations are that researchers did not uncover any causal studies that assessed the effectiveness of different strategies, the experiences of states’ UI programs that are reported in the literature are not necessarily representative of the experiences of all states’ UI programs, and the strategies used by one or more states might not be appropriate in other states.
Citation
Lee, J., Needels, K. (2018). Mathematica. Summary of Literature Review: Challenges and Strategies Used to Operate Unemployment Insurance Programs During the Great Recession. Chief Evaluation Office, U.S. Department of Labor.
The Department of Labor’s (DOL) Chief Evaluation Office (CEO) sponsors independent evaluations and research, primarily conducted by external, third-party contractors in accordance with the Department of Labor Evaluation Policy and CEO’s research development process.