Potential Assistance for Disadvantaged Workers: Employment Social Enterprises
Nan L. Maxwell () and
Dana Rotz ()
Additional contact information
Nan L. Maxwell: Mathematica Policy Research
Dana Rotz: Mathematica Policy Research
Journal of Labor Research, 2017, vol. 38, issue 2, No 1, 145-168
Abstract:
Abstract By integrating a business mission into a transitional jobs program, employment social enterprises (ESEs) provide temporary work and a supported work environment to reduce the barriers facing disadvantaged workers while generating revenue to cover production costs. This study uses surveys of workers in and financial statements from seven ESEs to provide information for three sets of complementary analyses: a pre-post analysis examines changes in employment between the time a person starts ESE work and about one year later; a case study uses propensity score methods to compare changes in employment between ESE workers and similar people who did not work in an enterprise; and a cost-benefit analysis estimates the potential value of ESE jobs. Results suggest that individuals have close to 21% gain in employment one year after starting ESE work; taxpayers gain at least $0.42 for every dollar spent on an ESE job; the return to society of developing an ESE is at least 34%; and the social returns to converting a profit-driven business into an ESE exceed 100%. Although the study cannot control for many of the factors that would allow estimation of causal impacts, it provides some of the first preliminary evidence of the value of the ESEs’ public-private approach to increase workforce skills and employment and stabilize lives of individuals with employment barriers.
Keywords: Employment social enterprises; Work integrated social enterprises; Transitional jobs; Job training; Employment barriers (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D61 D64 I38 J38 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)
Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s12122-017-9248-5 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.
Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.
Export reference: BibTeX
RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan)
HTML/Text
Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:jlabre:v:38:y:2017:i:2:d:10.1007_s12122-017-9248-5
Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/12122
DOI: 10.1007/s12122-017-9248-5
Access Statistics for this article
Journal of Labor Research is currently edited by Ozkan Eren
More articles in Journal of Labor Research from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().