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OCR for page 161
8
Effectiveness of
Job Placement Programs
The final type of program reviewed by the committee attempted to
aid youths directly in finding employment. The programs usually
offered some services in addition to job referral: workshops on
preparing resumes, instruction in appropriate behavior during a job
interview, and support groups for job seekers supplemented the more
traditional job referral activities. While these programs offered some
services that overlapped those we have previously termed labor market
preparation, they are distinguished by their very concrete focus on
securing employment, within a specified time period, for the youths in
the program. In addition, wage subsidies (sometimes to employers and
sometimes to the youths themselves) were occasionally used as a
transitional device to get youths situated in suitable jobs; the hope
was that the job would continue after the subsidy ended.
Overall, the evaluation reports in the job placement category were,
with one exception, generally weaker in methodological rigor than those
addressing other program goals. As a consequence, conclusions about
the effectiveness of job placement efforts are at best tentative.
PROGRAMS FOR OUT-OF-SCHOOL YOUTHS
Among the reports that passed our initial screening were those of
four projects that represented job placement efforts serving out-of-
school youths: 70001, Job Factory, Job Factory Voucher Program, and
Job Track. Table 8.1 details the characteristics of each of these
programs; Table 8.2 details the research design and results of the
evaluations of the programs.
70001
70001 was a job search program for out-of-school youths aged
16-21. Enrollment was 60 percent female and 87 percent minority; the
average participant was 18 years old; only 1 percent held high school
degrees. The program consisted of an average of 32 hours of treatment
involving job preparation workshops, job search training, and the
like. Similar to other job search programs, it attempted to teach
161
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164
youths what employers expected, to teach them job search skills, and to
motivate them. Unlike some other programs, the evaluation report
indicates that the staff did some (unspecified) amount of follow-up
with the youths after they had found a job.
The research design by the Corporation for Public/Private Ventures
(CPPV) is a matched comparison of youths in five program cities; all of
the evaluations were operated by the central organization. The sample
size was approximately 500 participants (all program entrants in the
five cities between January 1979 and April 1980) and 400 comparisons
drawn from a variety of sources, including Employment Service registers,
school dropout lists, and other sources. The report notes that an
earlier evaluation with a shorter follow-up period found significant
initial gains followed by equally large decay effects for a similar job
search program (Jobs For Youth), while the initial gains for 70001 did
not appear to decay. An important question was whether this effect was
an artifact of the sampling procedure (program termination dates are
uncertain and the follow-up may work to keep youths in jobs) or whether
the effects persisted.
The placement rate was 50 percent, and the cost per enrollee (in
1979) was $1,351. The initial difference in earnings between
participants and comparisons ($12 per week more or 35 percent higher)
is statistically significant, but by 24 to 40 months after starting the
program there is no significant difference between the earnings of
participants and comparisons. The evidence thus suggests that the
program may provide a brokering or screening function in helping youths
to obtain job placements and that this effect decays with time as
nonparticipants' earnings eventually reach parity. The decay effect
persists in multiple regression analyses controlling for various
individual characteristics and does not change for various age, sex, or
race groups.
With respect to job quality, at the 24- to 40-month follow-up, 25
percent of the male participants and 5 percent of the female partici-
pants held skilled jobs. For the comparison group, the figures were 21
percent and 19 percent. The authors attribute the female pattern to a
higher rate of childbearing by the participants, but even when the
analysis is limited to women with no children, the comparison group
does as well as the participants.
The program stressed completion of the General Equivalency Diploma
(GED), and there appears to be a significant long-term impact: 31
percent of the participants received a GED compared with 12 percent of
the comparison group. However, only 3 percent of the participants
received a regular high school degree compared with 9 percent of the
comparison group. Hence, the comparative results for educational
attainment are slightly lower than the GED results imply, but still
favor the participants by a statistically significant amount. There
are no other noticeable effects with respect to training, military
service, crime reduction, or the like.
The report cautions that the evaluation sites were known to perform
better in terms of job placement than sites not chosen. Thus, the
sample may not be representative of all 70001 programs operating during
the 1979-1980 period. The response rate at 24-40 weeks postprogram was
OCR for page 165
165
87 percent, and there appears to be no substantial attrition bias
(efforts were made to control for attrition bias).
Participants and comparisons appeared to be matched closely in
terms of most demographic characteristics with the exception that at
entry female participants had significantly fewer dependents than
comparison group females. The difference was no longer significant at
the 24- to 40-month follow-up, apparently because of higher rates of
childbearing among participants. Female participants were also
significantly younger than nonparticipants.
Overall, we believe that the results of the evaluation of the 70001
sites studied are reliable, but the results may not be generalizable to
all sites because the sample sites were known to be better than average
prior to selection.
Job Factory
Brandeis University evaluated job search assistance programs that
operated in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania,
from 1979 to 1980. However, because of severe implementation diffi-
culties with the program in Wilkes-Barre, we disregarded the portion of
the report dealing with that program. The Cambridge program, the Job
Factory, enrolled 50 youths in each of five cycles. The first and last
cycles were for graduating high school seniors and began the first week
in June of 1979 and 1980, respectively. The middle cycles were for
dropouts. Youths in the first cycle and one of the middle ones received
stipends of $3.10 per hour while the others did not. Each cycle lasted
four weeks and youths received an average of 83 hours of motivation,
job search preparation, and role-playing.
The research design used random assignment. The sample size was
approximately 203 participants and 165 control individuals. Data were
collected on a variety of outcomes including the job finding rate, job
characteristics, job-finding methods used, and results of various tests
in YEDPA's Standardized Assessment System (SAS) battery.
Data from the first follow-up interview at 6 weeks postprogram
indicated that, overall, participants were about one-third more likely
to be employed than controls (64 percent and 48 percent). By the time
of the final follow-up, at 36 weeks postprogram, the job finding rates
was slightly higher for the controls (82 percent were employed compared
with 79 percent of participants).
The quality of the first postprogram job did not differ a great
deal between the two groups. A somewhat larger proportion of partici-
pants were employed full time (67 percent compared with 53 percent).
Differences in hourly wages appeared to favor participants slightly
($3.50 compared with $3.40 per hour). Although the participants' jobs
appear to be slightly better, this may be understood by the slightly
larger percentage of participants in jobs that were subsidized by
public funds (20 percent and 16 percent). Of the seven psychometric
scale items in the SAS battery only three were statistically sig-
nificant at the .05 level and none was correlated with outcomes.
OCR for page 166
166
The results for the seniors in the first cycle who received stipends
exhibited the same time pattern as did the results for dropouts. A
slightly higher percentage of the seniors held jobs over the course of
the follow-up, but the differences were not great: e.g., at the final
follow-up, job holding for seniors was 83.3 percent for participants
and 84.2 percent for controls; for dropouts, the numbers were 73.9
percent and 78.6 percent, respectively.
Various cost calculations indicate that the average cost per par-
ticipant was $989, the cost per employed youths was $1,441, and the net
short-run cost per new job (i.e., jobs that would not have otherwise
been found within the first 6 weeks postprogram) was $4,468.
Attrition in the analysis sample was substantial. Responses to the
interview at 6 weeks postprogram were obtained from 64 percent of the
participants and 52 percent of the controls; at 20 weeks postprogram
response rates were 41 percent and 34 percent, respectively; by 36
weeks postprogram the response rates were 26 percent and 20 percent,
respectively, with a total of 53 observations for participants and 33
for controls.
Significance tests of the differences in the mean characteristics
of jobs between controls and participants were not presented in the
evaluation report. Given the small sample size, it is unlikely that
the reported differences are statistically significant at conventional
levels, and we therefore cannot be very confident about program effects,
especially after 6 weeks.
Job Factory Voucher Program
The Job Factory Voucher Program was a variation of the Job Factory
model in which youths received a wage subsidy if they found employment
quickly. The supplement was $1.50 an hour for the first 2 weeks of
work and $1 an hour extra for weeks 3-12. Youths were recruited for
each of six 4-week cycles of the program between November 1980 and
December 1981 and randomly assigned to one of three treatments: Job
Factory plus voucher, voucher only, or no treatment.
The results show a peculiar pattern of effects. At 4 weeks post-
program the full-treatment group does better than the voucher-only
group and the control (no-treatment) group. By 12 weeks the
full-treatment and voucher-only groups are equal, and by 20 weeks the
voucher-only group does better than the full-treatment group. Fifty-
eight percent of the full-treatment group worked between the second and
third follow-up compared with 70 percent of the voucher-only group and
51 percent of the control group.
HA Wilkes-Barre program that provided subsidies to employers was also
evaluated, (Rivera-Casale et al., 1982) but because it experienced
severe implementation problems and did not use a comparison group of
youths not participating in the program, the committee decided that the
results did not provide reliable evidence.
OCR for page 167
167
Attrition and resulting small sample sizes may account for some of
the findings. Between the initial data collection and 20 weeks after
enrollment, attrition among participants in the full-treatment group
was 20 percent, among the voucher-only group it was 82 percent, and
among the control group it was 38 percent. Final analyses are based on
observations for 60 controls, 23 participants in the voucher-only
group, and 128 in the full-treatment group.
A number of other methodological problems in the evaluation are
cause for concern: administrative implementation difficulties,
changing characteristics of the youths over the course of the program,
and interaction among youths in the different treatment groups.
Consequently, we are not confident in the results of the Job Factory
Voucher Program evaluation.
Job Track
Job Track was a job search assistance program that offered 2 days
of job search training followed by 3 days of support services to
out-of-school youths who applied to local Employment Service offices.
Participants were 16- to 21-year-old, out-of-school youths. The
program operated from July to December 1980 in San Francisco. Olympus
Research Centers was responsible for both operating the program and
doing the evaluation.
Participant outcomes were compared with those of a matched compari-
son group of nonparticipants. The evaluation sample was originally
composed of 136 comparison group members and 103 participants, but the
analyses were actually based on 88 participants and 76 comparison group
youths at the 6-week follow-up and 80 participants and 69 comparison
group youths at the 12-week follow-up. The regression-adjusted results
at 6 weeks postprogram suggest that participants were more likely than
nonparticipants to be employed (46 percent compared with 28 percent).
At the 12-week postprogram follow-up, the employment rates of the two
groups were 66 percent and 49 percent, but the difference was not
statistically significant. There were no apparent differences in job
search intensity or the number of methods used. About 50 percent of
the youths in the program found employment without going through a
formal interview procedure.
Comparison group members differed from participants in two major
respects that would suggest that comparisons were more employable: 30
percent of comparison group members compared with 18 percent of
participants were independent (that is, neither family heads nor family
members), and 22 percent of comparison group members and 13 percent of
participants had some college training. We have limited confidence in
the findings of the effects of the original Job Track program.
A modified program, Job Track II, operated for 10 weeks between
March and June 1982. The new program offered a stipend of $50, extended
the program to 2 weeks, and differed from the earlier version in several
other respects. The Job Track II evaluation did not use a comparison
group, but compared the outcomes of participants in the new program
with those in the earlier one. Therefore, we did not consider the
findings of the Job Track II program.
OCR for page 168
168
PROGRAMS FOR IN-SCHOOL YOUTH S
The committee reviewed reports on three programs that provided job
placement services for in-school youths: Jobs for Delaware Graduates,
Jobs for America's Graduates, and Project Best. Table 8.3 details the
characteristics of each of these programs; Table 8~4 details the
research design and results of the evaluations of the programs.
Jobs for Delaware Graduates
Jobs for Delaware Graduates is a school-to-work transition program
for high school seniors. Begun in Delaware, it is currently being
replicated throughout the country by a central organization, Jobs for
America's Graduates. We reviewed two evaluations: one of the original
Delaware program done by Temple University (discussed in this section)
and one based on four sites done by Northeastern University (discussed
in the next section).
In the Jobs for Delaware Graduates (and Jobs for America's
Graduates) program, high schools first develop lists of seniors who are
in the bottom of their class and who are eligible for the program. The
seniors participate in as many as three rounds of interviews and then
are selected to enter the program (34 percent of those interviewed were
selected in the programs that Temple University examined). The program
consists of job preparation workshops (e.g., resume writing and
interview techniques), a support club, assistance in job finding, and
follow-up after job finding by program counselors.
The Temple evaluation for 1980 Delaware graduates used comparison
groups drawn from other Delaware high schools that were considered
comparable but did not have the program. By 1981 too many high schools
in Delaware had the program, so for the evaluation of that year Temple
examined the estimated changes in program effects from 1 year to the
next. This latter evaluation was of limited usefulness both because
further changes may have occurred and because this methodology cannot
eliminate effects of changes in the economy between the two periods.
Hence our analysis focused only on the study of 1980 graduates.
The researchers conducted follow-up interviews 3 and 8 months after
graduation, but the program was still in effect even after 8 months
because the counselors maintained some follow-up contact. Also, given
the findings from other projects concerning decay, 8 months may not be
a long enough follow-up period to assess postprogram effects.
The differences in outcomes between participants and comparison
group members at the time of the 3-month interview are all significant
at the 1 percent level or better. The results indicate that partici-
pants were more likely to be employed full time at the time of the
interview (56 percent compared with 36 percent), more likely to have
held a full-time job (75 percent compared with 49 percent), and more
likely to have been employed since graduation, (84 percent compared
with 73 percent). The results at 8 months postprogram indicate that
participants still fared significantly better than nonparticipants in
terms of employment, though the difference was smaller than at 3 months
OCR for page 169
169
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171
attitudes, or self-esteem
measure of iob-seekinc' sk
postprogram (e.g., 58 percent of participants and 48 percent of nonpar-
ticipants were employed full time at the 8-month interview).2
The jobs held by participants and nonparticipants were similar in
terms of hours per week, skill level, and tenure. However, at 3 months
postprogram participant wages on the most recent job were insignifi-
cantly below those of the comparison group, but at 8 months the
participants had an edge of 38 cents an hour (participants received
$3.90 an hour in the late fall of 1980), and this was statistically
significant at the 10 percent level. Unfortunately, this is the only
instance of a statistically significant difference in the nature of
jobs held and hence should be viewed cautiously.
There were no differences between the two groups in terms of the
Educational Testing Service's (ETS) measures of job knowledge, work
There was a significant difference in a
~ _ _ ills at 8 months postprogram that favored
participants. The job-holding gains of the participants were offset by
the nominally higher but statistically insignificant postgraduation
school attendance rates of the comparison group.
Participants in the Jobs for Delaware Graduates programs differed
in important respects from those in other programs whose evaluations we
reviewed. All were high school seniors, so no dropouts were included,
and potential dropouts may have been screened out. Only 20 to 25
percent of participants were economically disadvantaged. The program
involved an extensive preselection process that may lead to creaming,
i.e., selection of those applicants who might be easiest to place. At
the same time, the youths in these programs were not in college prepara-
tory or vocational programs and were at the bottom of the class ranking
in the general curriculum.
The sample of participants was 25 percent economically disadvan-
taged, 37 percent minority, and 56 percent female; 25 percent had pre-
viously had a skilled or semiskilled job, and 72 percent had previously
worked in a job paying at least $3.17 an hour. Participants' scores
for the SAS reading test indicated a reading level of eighth grade or
higher. The comparison group had a higher percentage of minority
youths (47) and a higher percentage of limited English speakers (6.3
compared with 2.6), both of which might bias the results in favor of
the program, but the comparison group had a better work history (81
percent had previously worked and 48 percent had held skilled or
semi-skilled jobs).
While the results were less favorable at 8 months than at 3 months,
attrition may play an important role. Attrition among participants was
24 percent 3 months after graduation and 28 percent 8 months after
graduation; among comparison group youths attrition was 31 percent at 3
2 The summary of the published report (Eleey and Leone, 1982) states
that some key findings are insignificant while the body of the text
states that they are significant (Eleey and Leone, 1982~; these incon-
sistencies were corrected in an errata sheet from the authors that says
the findings are statistically significant.
OCR for page 172
172
months and 33 percent at 8 months after graduation. There is no indica-
tion that attempts were made to adjust for possible attrition bias.
Thus, differences in attrition rates may contribute to the measured
differences in postgraduation experiences between participants and
nonparticipants. Another potentially troubling issue on which the
report is silent is the treatment of dropouts. Since the participant
sample includes only graduates, the appropriate comparison would be
nonparticipant graduates. Inclusion of nongraduates in the comparison
sample would probably tend to overstate program effects on employment.
The report presents what we found to be convincing evidence of
short-term, i.e., 3-month, postprogram effects in increasing employment.
The 8-month findings indicate a smaller effect and are less convincing.
Because of sample attrition it is possible that what appears as a decay
effect is due at least in part to attrition.
Jobs for America's Graduates
The Northeastern University study of Jobs for America's Graduates
was sponsored by Jobs for America's Graduates and was a 6-month
follow-up of spring 1982 graduates in four states: Arizona, Massachu-
setts, Missouri, and Tennessee. The study used a matched comparison
group methodology with a sample of 1,106 participants and 410 compari-
sons. The total sample was 53 percent female, average family income
was $11,000, and 95 percent of the sample were high school graduates.
Data on participants were collected by program counselors during the 9
months of postgraduation follow-up visits.
The results indicate that during fall 1982 participants fared sig-
nificantly better than nonparticipants with respect to the probability
of being employed, weeks employed, hourly wage rates, and weekly earn-
ings. No analysis of intersite differences is provided, but based on
other studies there is reason to believe that there would be
substantial variation across sites.
Several considerations make us skeptical of accepting the results
of the evaluation of Jobs for America's Graduates. First, the attrition
rate at the 6-month follow-up was 6 percent for participants but 40
percent for the comparison group; no adjustments were made for possible
attrition bias, and no data are presented that allow examination of the
effect of attrition on the match between participants and nonpartici-
pants. Even if the results reported were robust, studies of similar
programs indicate that a 6-month follow-up period is too short to allow
valid inferences to be drawn about long-term program effects, which are
susceptible to decay. Finally, the extensive preselection procedures
used may have produced a participant group that is not generally
representative of non-college-bound high school seniors.
Project BEST
The Better Employment through Skills Training Project (Project
BEST) involved 1 hour per day of labor-market oriented classroom
OCR for page 173
173
training in conjunction with counseling and "job shadowing n for disad-
vantaged minority high school seniors in an inner-city Philadelphia
high school. The Temple University study of the project is of interest
because it did not find employment gains for participants relative to
the comparison group at 3 and 11 months postprogram.
The program operated during the 1979-1980 and 1980-1981 academic
years and served about 350 students. While the study suggests that the
project's job placement strategy was ineffective, its findings cannot
be taken as conclusive, inasmuch as the comparison group was not ran-
domly selected (they were students at other Philadelphia high schools)
and program participants were self-selected. While the evaluators
acknowledged the selectivity bias inherent in this approach, they made
no explicit correction for it.
SUMMARY
While most of the evaluations of programs offering job placement
services to youths found the programs to be effective in securing
employment for participants, most of the evaluations had serious
methodological flaws and therefore do not provide reliable evidence on
the question of effectiveness. Consequently, we do not believe one can
draw strong inferences about program effects on the basis of these
studies.
Of all the evaluations of YEDPA job placement programs serving
out-of-school youths, the CPPV study of 70001 comes closest to providing
trustworthy evidence of program effectiveness. The program reported a
50 percent success rate in placing participants in jobs, and program
costs averaged $1,351 per enrollee. For the demographic characteristics
reported in the evaluation, there is a reasonably close match between
the comparison and the participant groups. The only major difference
between groups was that female participants in the 70001 program had
fewer dependents than the comparison group.
Even for this study, however' we have questions. Besides the con-
cerns generated by the use of a constructed comparison (rather than a
randomly assigned control group), the selection of sites in the 70001
evaluation is a cause for concern. The chosen sites were known to be
better performers in terms of job placement. The resultant evaluation
data may thus provide an upper-bound estimate of what the 70001 programs
achieved.
While the design of the 70001 evaluation is somewhat problematic,
the execution and reporting of the research were rigorous (see CPPV,
1983~. In contrast to most of the studies we reviewed, the CPPV
evaluators and their subcontractor, Institute for Survey Research,
Temple University, obtained an 86 percent response rate at 24+ months
postprogram. Moreover, the report is appropriately candid about the
design problems of the study, and it presents detailed calculations and
discussions of the potential effects of selection and attrition bias.
Nine months after completion of 70001, participating youths earned
an average of $12 per week more than the comparison group. This
difference in earnings arose from increased employment rather than
OCR for page 174
174
differences in wage rates: 41 percent of 70001 youths and 29 percent
of the comparison group were employed. A subsequent follow-up
conducted 24-40 months after participation in 70001 found that this
program effect had decayed entirely: employment rates were 38 percent
for 70001 participants and 42 percent for the comparison group.
On the basis of the 70001 study and other evaluations, there is
evidence that the effects of job placement programs decay over time, so
that after 24 months there is no discernible difference between
participants and nonparticipants on most outcomes.
Two highly regarded programs for in-school youths, Jobs for Delaware
Graduates and Jobs for America's Graduates, served a segment of the
youth population that was least in need of assistance in locating
suitable employment--high school graduates, 75 percent of whom came
from families that were not economically disadvantaged. While we found
the evidence of short-term program effects convincing, any inference
that results from such a program could be realized with economically
disadvantaged populations or with school dropouts is highly speculative.
Representative terms from entire chapter:
job search
