About the Report

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With a growing need for a more skilled workforce, providing effective and efficient employment and training services is an important national priority. First authorized under the Workforce Investment Act of 1998 (WIA) and then reauthorized in 2014 under the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA), the Adult and Dislocated Worker programs are two of the nation’s largest publicly funded programs providing employment and training services.

Despite their importance, the Adult and Dislocated Worker programs have not been evaluated using the most rigorous methods. Hence, in 2008, the Employment and Training Administration within the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) launched a national experimental evaluation of the two programs, the WIA Adult and Dislocated Worker Programs Gold Standard Evaluation. The evaluation’s goals are to provide national estimates of the impacts and cost-effectiveness of the Adult and Dislocated Worker programs and to describe their implementation in detail.

The report presents the study’s findings on the effectiveness of WIA-funded, staff-assisted employment services that are classified as intensive services, and WIA-funded training, both separately and together. The effectiveness of these services are measured relative to “core services” available to everyone at American Job Centers and other services in the community. The report presents estimated impacts of the services based on customers’ experiences during the 30 months after they enrolled in the study. The report builds upon an earlier report (McConnell et al. 2016) that discussed estimated impacts in the first 15 months after customers enrolled in the study, as well as an implementation study conducted alongside the impact evaluation (D’Amico et al. 2015).

Research Questions

• Did providing services in the Adult and Dislocated Worker programs improve employment-related outcomes (such as employment, earnings, and use of public assistance)?
  • Did providing core and intensive services improve employment-related outcomes more than providing core services only?
  • Did providing the full set of WIA services, including core, intensive, and training services, improve employment-related outcomes more than providing core and intensive services only?
  • Did providing the full set of WIA services improve employment-related outcomes more than providing core services only?
• Did the benefits from intensive and training services exceed their costs?
• How were the Adult and Dislocated Worker programs implemented?

Key Takeaways

• WIA-funded intensive services were effective.
• Because differences across groups in rates of enrollment in training were small, the study produced inconclusive evidence on the impact of training in the 30 months after study enrollment.
• Though not conclusive, the evidence suggests that WIA-funded training does not have positive impacts in the 30 months after study enrollment.
• Evidence points to areas of improvement for training offered by the Adult and Dislocated Worker programs.
• The findings suggest that policymakers should look to improve training as funded through the Adult and Dislocated Worker programs.
• The findings might have differed if the programs had been evaluated when the economy was stronger or program funding greater.
• The findings appear likely to still be relevant under WIOA.

Citation

Fortson, K., Rotz, D., Burkander, P., Mastri, A., Schochet, P., Rosenberg, L., McConnell, S. (2017). Mathematica. Providing Public Workforce Services to Job Seekers: 30-Month Impact Findings on the WIA Adult and Dislocated Worker Programs. Chief Evaluation Office, U.S. Department of Labor.

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This study was sponsored by the Employment and Training Administration, Office of Policy Development and Research, Division of Research and Evaluation, and was produced outside of CEO’s standard research development process.