Working Paper: NBER ID: w19446
Authors: Fredrik Andersson; Harry J. Holzer; Julia I. Lane; David Rosenblum; Jeffrey Smith
Abstract: 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 U.S. 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.
Keywords: job training; WIA; employment; earnings; nonexperimental estimates
JEL Codes: I38; J08; J24
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| WIA training (M53) | earnings (J31) |
| WIA training (M53) | employment (J68) |
| WIA training (M53) | propensity to obtain jobs at desirable firms (M51) |
| WIA training (M53) | industry of employment (L89) |
| WIA training (M53) | negative impacts for dislocated workers (J65) |