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Program developers and program staff need to understand how participant characteristics relate to training completion so that they can identify strategies and services needed for success and design programs to encourage training completion. The H-1B TechHire Partnership Grants (TechHire) and the Strengthening Working Families Initiative (SWFI) were designed to provide funding for programs that would make training more accessible to individuals who might otherwise experience barriers to training and employment.

This issue brief explores the question: Which job training participants are most and least likely to complete training? Classification and regression trees (CART), a statistical modeling approach, was used to identify subgroups of participants with low and high training completion rates.

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Research Questions

• Which job training participants are most and least likely to complete training?

Key Takeaways

• Six participant characteristics were related to training completion in order of importance: education, race/ ethnicity, age, income, employment at program entry, and duration of unemployment.
• Participants with at least some college or technical education had the highest training completion rate.
• Youth ages 16 to 24 who had a high school diploma or less, were non-Hispanic, low income, and unemployed for less than 27 weeks at program entry had the lowest training completion rate.

Citation

Gasper, J., Baier, K. (2024). Westat. Participant Characteristics Associated with Completion of Training for High-Tech Jobs. 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.