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Project Description

Jobs-Plus involves three broadly conceived elements: work incentives, culture supporting work, and best practices in preparing people for sustained employment and in linking people with jobs.

This is a seven-and-one-half year demonstration program aimed at dramatically increasing employment, earnings and job retention among the working-age residents of family housing developments, a large percentage of whom are on public welfare (70 percent in inner-city areas) or at risk of dependency. It supports the planning, development, implementation and evaluation of locally-based approaches to providing saturation-level employment opportunities and supportive services. This comprehensive community initiative incorporates a combination of state-of-the-art employment, training and supportive services; financial and other incentives (occasioned by the welfare reform and new public housing policies); and vigorous efforts to rebuild and strengthen the community in support of work.

Project duration: Jan 1997 - Dec 2004

Sites studied include Los Angeles, California
Baltimore, Maryland
St. Paul, Minnesota
Cleveland, Ohio
Dayton, Ohio
Chattanooga, Tennessee
Seattle, Washington

Sample Characteristics and Sites Studied

The specific target population is heads of households (which consist largely of single mothers), as well as working-age children and other unemployed, working-age individuals living in the development, including non-custodial parents (usually fathers) and other who may or may not be on the lease.

The evaluation design combines experimental and quasi-experimental methods for studying the effectiveness of a place-based comprehensive social intervention utilizing randomly-selected sets of treatment and comparison sites. The study will employ administrative records data as well as survey data covering a wide variety of outcomes to help examine whether the program's impacts vary across sites and whether certain program strategies are likely to yield better results. The evaluation will include comprehensive cost and benefit-cost analyses.

Number in sample and sampling method not reported.

Recent Findings in Brief

10/27/05: JOBS-PLUS Community Revitalization Initiative for Public Housing Families: Raising Hope with Jobs-Plus: Promoting Work in Seattle Public Housing During a HOPE VI Redevelopment

Final Impact Findings:

• Before the HOPE VI relocation and demolition process was fully underway, Seattle implemented a strong Jobs-Plus program with good results. In the first year of full program operations, residents’ earnings were about 7 percent higher than they would have been in the absence of Jobs-Plus. This effect grew to nearly 11 percent (a gain of $1,050) in the following year.
• Seattle’s positive earnings impacts were comparable to the early impacts of three other Jobs-Plus sites that implemented relatively strong programs.
• Under HOPE VI, the responsibilities of Seattle Jobs-Plus expanded to include assisting all residents (including elderly and disabled residents who were not in the Jobs-Plus target group) with social service and relocation needs, which competed with the core employment focus of Jobs-Plus.
• Seattle Jobs-Plus’s positive earnings effects disappeared around the time the site’s HOPE VI resident relocation process was fully underway. In contrast, the other Jobs-Plus sites with strong programs had sustained and growing earnings effects.
• In Seattle, as in all the sites, the estimated effects of Jobs-Plus on employment rates are less striking than those for earnings. Although Jobs-Plus increased employment rates for some residents, for many others it achieved its earnings effects by improving employment retention, hours worked, or job quality.

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