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The Evaluation of the Reemployment and Eligibility Assessment (REA) Program aimed to estimate the impact of the U.S. Department of Labor’s REA program, which supported states to address the reemployment needs of Unemployment Insurance (UI) claimants and to prevent and detect UI improper payments. The evaluation included both an implementation study and an impact study. The report presents the results of the impact study.

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Research Questions

• What was the overall impact of the REA program—on UI duration, employment, and earnings?
• How did that impact vary with claimant characteristics?
• What was the role of the different components of the program in achieving those impacts? In particular, what was the relative role of assistance (as reflected in “Reemployment” in the program name), enforcement of ongoing eligibility requirements (as reflected in “Eligibility Assessment” in the program name), and, the procedural requirement to attend the in-person REA meeting (which was mandatory, per DOL guidance), where any assistance and enforcement were delivered?

Key Takeaways

• Findings show that REA reduced UI duration by about 1.3 weeks, on average. About half of that decrease was due to an increase in employment, and the other half was due to claimants spending more time neither employed nor receiving UI.
• The study found that REA increased short-term employment and earnings by a small amount, about 2% overall.
• Impacts are consistently larger for those with lower earnings in the previous year and those with lower weekly benefit amounts. However, impacts were not consistently larger for those predicted to be more likely to exhaust their benefits.
• The study found that both assistance and enforcement actions impact UI duration. Most of the impact was due to the requirement to attend an initial in-person meeting, in which claimants review their eligibility with a case manager and receive reemployment assistance. Some of the impact was due to job search assistance, and little came from the ongoing enforcement of eligibility requirements.
• While the direct REA program cost was about $100 per UI claimant, it decreased UI benefit expenditures by about $350 per person and increased earnings by $470 per person. Researchers recommend a more formal cost-benefit analysis to further explore these issues.
• Researchers experienced some challenges in executing this study that may inform the development of future studies. First, the very large sample size (nearly 300,000 claimants across four states) was necessary to detect impacts in such a low-cost and low-intensity program, but researchers were still unable to detect some impacts, including how employment and earnings varied with claimant characteristics. Future studies might benefit from an even larger sample size. Second, states found it difficult to align their programs and data management processes for the evaluation. The research team provided some technical assistance while setting up the study and during implementation.

Research Gaps

• This section considers implications of the study findings for future research in three areas: enforcement, assistance, and cost-benefit… Though the REA programs in the studied states did not include a strong classic enforcement component, conversations with state UI leadership in other states suggest that some states are doing so. In order to test the impacts of stronger enforcement, those programs might be worthy of rigorous evaluation.... It is possible that more intensive assistance would have larger impacts on earnings. The REA evidence is not informative on that conjecture. Rigorous evaluation of a program with more intensive assistance also seems worthwhile... More careful cost-benefit analyses seem worthwhile. In particular, it seems possible that even if the average REA program passes a cost-benefit test, that some programs—perhaps those with smaller impacts, perhaps those with higher costs—would not. (page 103)

Citation

Klerman, J.A., Saunders, C., Dastrup, E., Epstein, Z., Walton, D., Adam, T. (2020). Abt Associates. Evaluation of Impacts of the Reemployment and Eligibility Assessment (REA) Program: Final Report. Chief Evaluation Office, U.S. Department of Labor.

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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.