Does Federally-Funded Job Training Work? Nonexperimental Estimates of WIA Training Impacts Using Longitudinal Data on Workers and Firms

88 Pages Posted: 24 Sep 2013 Last revised: 19 Feb 2023

See all articles by Fredrik Andersson

Fredrik Andersson

Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC)

Harry J. Holzer

Georgetown University - Public Policy Institute (GPPI); National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER); IZA Institute of Labor Economics

Julia Lane

Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA); Wagner Graduate School of Public Service

David J. Rosenblum

Cornell University

Jeffrey A. Smith

University of Wisconsin - Madison; National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER); Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA)

Multiple version iconThere are 2 versions of this paper

Date Written: September 2013

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.

Suggested Citation

Andersson, Per Fredrik Daniel and Holzer, Harry J. and Lane, Julia and Lane, Julia and Rosenblum, David J. and Smith, Jeffrey Andrew, Does Federally-Funded Job Training Work? Nonexperimental Estimates of WIA Training Impacts Using Longitudinal Data on Workers and Firms (September 2013). NBER Working Paper No. w19446, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2330064

Per Fredrik Daniel Andersson (Contact Author)

Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) ( email )

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Harry J. Holzer

Georgetown University - Public Policy Institute (GPPI) ( email )

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National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER)

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IZA Institute of Labor Economics

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Julia Lane

Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) ( email )

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Bonn, D-53072
Germany

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Wagner Graduate School of Public Service ( email )

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David J. Rosenblum

Cornell University ( email )

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Jeffrey Andrew Smith

University of Wisconsin - Madison ( email )

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Madison, WI 53706-1481
United States

National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER)

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United States

Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA)

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Bonn, D-53072
Germany

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