Measuring Program Impacts On Earnings and Employment

Robert Kornfeld and Howard S. Bloom

JCPR Working Papers from Northwestern University/University of Chicago Joint Center for Poverty Research

Abstract: This paper attempts to determine whether wage records reported quarterly by employers to state Unemployment Insurance (UI) agencies provide a valid alternative to more costly retrospective sample surveys of individuals as the basis for measuring the labor market impacts of employment and training programs for low-income persons. This question is important because of the widespread and growing use of UI wage records for this purpose. We base our analysis on UI data and survey data for a sample of 12,318 low-income adults and out-of-school youths from 12 U.S. cities that were sites in the National Job-Training Partnership Act (JTPA) Study. The National JTPA Study was a Congressionally-mandated randomized experiment designed to measure the labor market impacts of JTPA programs for low-income persons. Our comparison of UI data and survey data indicates that for adult men, adult women, female youths, and all but a small subgroup of male youths, impact estimates based on UI data were comparable to those obtained from survey data, even though average earnings according to the survey data were somewhat higher than they were according to UI wage records. We therefore conclude that UI wage records can provide a valid alternative to surveys for measuring program impacts on many, but not all, groups of low-income persons.

Date: 1997-08-01
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wop:jopovw:11

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