"In Michigan, where the unemployment rate in May was 14.1 percent, the nation’s highest, 78,000 people are enrolled in the state’s No Worker Left Behind program and 7,800 are on the waiting list...
...a little-noticed study the Labor Department released several months ago found that the benefits of the biggest federal job training program (the Workforce Investment Act) were “small or nonexistent” for laid-off workers...
...economists cited several reasons (for why) retraining might not be effective. Many workers who have lost their jobs are older and had spent their lives working in one industry. In need of a job right away, many pick relatively short training programs, which often have marginal benefits. Job retraining is also ineffective without job creation..."
The full article from the NYT is available here. Deatils of Michigan's "No Worker Left Behind" program are available here. Information about the Workforce Investment Act is available here. The study mentioned in the NYT article ("Workforce Investment Act (WIA) Non-Experimental Net Impact Evaluation") was conducted by Impaq International and is available here since December 2008.
Propensity score matching is used in the study to identify individuals in comparison groups who are similar to the individuals who participated in the WIA program. The study uses administrative data from 12 states, dividing the data for each state into three classes: base data, comprising WIA program participants; comparison data, providing information on individuals in other programs who are matched to treated cases; and outcome data, merged by individual identifier. The states in the study are Connecticut, Indiana, Kentucky, Maryland, Missouri, Minnesota, Mississippi, Montana, New Mexico, Tennessee, Utah, and Wisconsin.
1 comment:
One of the author's of that study, Ken Troske, visited Geary some years ago & gave a paper using matching methods. It may have been related work.
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