We study the job training provided under the US Workforce Investment Act (WIA) to adults and dislocated workers in two states. Our substantive contributions center on impacts estimated non-experimentally using administrative data. These impacts compare WIA participants who do and do not receive training. In addition to the usual impacts on earnings and employment, we link our state data to the Longitudinal Employer-Household Dynamics (LEHD) data at the US Census Bureau, which allows us to estimate impacts on the characteristics of the firms at which participants find employment. We find moderate positive impacts on employment, earnings and desirable firm characteristics for adults, but not for dislocated workers. Our primary methodological contribution consists of assessing the value of the additional conditioning information provided by the LEHD relative to the data available in state Unemployment Insurance (UI) earnings records. We find that value to be zero.
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The Consequences of Long Term Unemployment:
Evidence from Matched Employer-Employee Data*
January 2016
Working Paper Number:
CES-16-40
It is well known that the long-term unemployed fare worse in the labor market than the short-term unemployed, but less clear why this is so. One potential explanation is that the long-term unemployed are 'bad apples' who had poorer prospects from the outset of their spells (heterogeneity). Another is that their bad outcomes are a consequence of the extended unemployment they have experienced (state dependence). We use Current Population Survey (CPS) data on unemployed individuals linked to wage records for the same people to distinguish between these competing explanations. For each person in our sample, we have wage record data that cover the period from 20 quarters before to 11 quarters after the quarter in which the person is observed in the CPS. This gives us rich information about prior and subsequent work histories not available to previous researchers that we use to control for individual heterogeneity that might be affecting subsequent labor market outcomes. Even with these controls in place, we find that unemployment duration has a strongly negative effect on the likelihood of subsequent employment. This finding is inconsistent with the heterogeneity ('bad apple') explanation for why the long-term unemployed fare worse than the short-term unemployed. We also find that longer unemployment durations are associated with lower subsequent earnings, though this is mainly attributable to the long-term unemployed having a lower likelihood of subsequent employment rather than to their having lower earnings once a job is found.
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The impact of manufacturing credentials on earnings and the probability of employment
May 2022
Working Paper Number:
CES-22-15
This paper examines the labor market returns to earning industry-certified credentials in the manufacturing sector. Specifically, we are interested in estimating the impact of a manufacturing credential on wages, probability of employment, and probability of employment specifically in the manufacturing sector post credential attainment. We link students who earned manufacturing credentials to their enrollment and completion records, and then further link them to their IRS tax records for earnings and employment (Form W2 and 1040) and to the American Community Survey and decennial census for demographic information. We present earnings trajectories for workers with credentials by type of credential, industry of employment, age, race and ethnicity, gender, and state. To obtain a more causal estimate of the impact of a credential on earnings, we implement a coarsened exact matching strategy to compare outcomes between otherwise similar people with and without a manufacturing credential. We find that the attainment of a manufacturing industry credential is associated with higher earnings and a higher likelihood of labor market participation when we compare attainers to a group of non-attainers who are otherwise similar.
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Escaping poverty for low-wage workers The role of employer characteristics and changes
June 2001
Working Paper Number:
tp-2001-02
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The Impact of Minimum Wages on Job Training: An Empirical Exploration with Establishment Data
February 2003
Working Paper Number:
CES-03-04
Human capital theory suggests that workers may finance on-the-job training by accepting lower wages during the training period. Minimum wage laws could reduce job training, then, to the extent they prevent low-wage workers from offering sufficient wage cuts to finance training. Empirical findings on the relationship between minimum wages and job training have failed to reach a consensus. Previous research has relied primarily on survey data from individual workers, which typically lack both detailed measures of job training and important information about the characteristics of firms. This study addresses the issue of minimum wages and on-the-job training with a unique employer survey. We find no evidence indicating that minimum wages reduce the average hours of training of trained employees, and little to suggest that minimum wages reduce the percentage of workers receiving training.
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Virtual Charter Students Have Worse Labor Market Outcomes as Young Adults
June 2023
Working Paper Number:
CES-23-32
Virtual charter schools are increasingly popular, yet there is no research on the long-term outcomes of virtual charter students. We link statewide education records from Oregon with earnings information from IRS records housed at the U.S. Census Bureau to provide evidence on how virtual charter students fare as young adults. Virtual charter students have substantially worse high school graduation rates, college enrollment rates, bachelor's degree attainment, employment rates, and earnings than students in traditional public schools. Although there is growing demand for virtual charter schools, our results suggest that students who enroll in virtual charters may face negative long-term consequences.
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The Impact of Unemployment Insurance Extensions On Disability Insurance Application and Allowance Rates
March 2013
Working Paper Number:
CES-13-10
Both unemployment insurance (UI) extensions and the availability of disability benefits have disincentive effects on job search. But UI extensions can reduce the efficiency cost of disability benefits if UI recipients delay disability application until they exhaust their unemployment benefits. This paper, the first to focus on the effect of UI extensions on disability applications, investigates whether UI eligibility, extension, and exhaustion affect the timing of disability applications and the composition of the applicant pool. Jobless individuals are significantly less likely to apply to Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) during UI extensions, and significantly more likely to apply when UI is ultimately exhausted. Healthier potential applicants appear more likely to delay, as state allowance rates increase after a new UI extension. Simulations find that a 13-week UI extension decreases SSDI and Medicare costs, offsetting about half of the increase in UI payments; this suggests that the benefits of UI extensions may be understated ' permanent disability benefits are diverted to shorter-run unemployment benefits and, potentially, new jobs, while easing the burden on the nearly insolvent SSDI Trust Fund.
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Preschoolers Enrolled and Mothers at Work? The Effects of Universal Pre-Kindergarten
March 2008
Working Paper Number:
CES-08-04
Three states (Georgia, Oklahoma and Florida) recently introduced Universal Pre- Kindergarten (Universal Pre-K) programs offering free preschool to all age-eligible children, and policy makers in many other states are promoting similar policies. How do such policies affect the participation of children in preschool programs (or do they merely substitute for preschool offered by the market)? Does the implicit child care subsidy afforded by Universal Pre-K change maternal labor supply? I present a model that includes preferences for child quality and shows the directions of change in preschool enrollment and maternal labor supply in response to Universal Pre-K programs are theoretically ambiguous. Using restricted-access data from the Census, together with year and birthday based eligibility cutoffs, I employ a regression discontinuity framework to estimate the effects of Universal Pre-K availability. Universal Pre-K availability increases preschool enrollment by 12 to 15 percent, with the largest effect on children of women with less than a Bachelor's Degree. Universal Pre-K availability has little effect on the labor supply of most women. However, women residing in rural areas in Georgia increase their children's preschool enrollment and their own employment by 22 and 20 percent, respectively, when Universal Pre-K is available.
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The Impact of Childcare Costs on Mothers' Labor Force Participation
April 2025
Working Paper Number:
CES-25-25
The rising costs of childcare pose challenges for families, leading to difficult choices including those impacting mothers' labor force participation. This paper investigates the relationship between childcare costs and maternal employment. Using data from the National Database of Childcare Prices, the American Community Survey, and the Longitudinal Employer Household Dynamics, we estimate the impact of childcare costs on mothers' labor force participation through two empirical strategies. A fixed-effects approach controls for geographic and temporal heterogeneity in costs as well as mothers' idiosyncratic preferences for work and childcare, while an instrumental variables approach addresses the endogeneity of mothers' preferences for work and childcare by leveraging exogenous geographic and temporal variation in childcare licensing requirements. Our findings across both research designs indicate that higher childcare costs reduce labor force participation among mothers, with lower-income mothers exhibiting greater responsiveness to changes in childcare costs.
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The interactions of workers and firms in the low-wage labor market
August 2002
Working Paper Number:
tp-2002-12
This paper presents an analysis of workers who persistently have low earnings in
the labor market over a period of three or more years. Some of these workers manage to
escape from this low-earning status over subsequent years, while many do not. Using
data from the Longitudinal Employer Household Dynamics (LEHD) project at the U.S.
Census Bureau, we analyze the characteristics of persons and especially of their firms and
jobs that enable some to improve their earnings status over time.
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The Impact of Immigration on Firms and Workers: Insights from the H-1B Lottery
April 2024
Working Paper Number:
CES-24-19
We study how random variation in the availability of highly educated, foreign-born workers impacts firm performance and recruitment behavior. We combine two rich data sources: 1) administrative employer-employee matched data from the US Census Bureau; and 2) firm level information on the first large-scale H-1B visa lottery in 2007. Using an event-study approach, we find that lottery wins lead to increases in firm hiring of college-educated, immigrant labor along with increases in scale and survival. These effects are stronger for small, skill-intensive, and high-productivity firms that participate in the lottery. We do not find evidence for displacement of native-born, college-educated workers at the firm level, on net. However, this result masks dynamics among more specific subgroups of incumbents that we further elucidate.
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