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Project Description

Jobs-First GAIN was Los Angeles County's mandatory welfare-to-work program, operated from January 1995 through March 1998 by the County Department of Public Social Services (DPSS) in cooperation with the County Office of Education. Jobs-First GAIN was an innovative, strongly employment-focused program that offered job search assistance as its primary service and encouraged welfare recipients to start working as soon as possible. The program combined services and mandates that had worked in other settings (notably, in neighboring Riverside County) and some that were relatively new. CalWORKs, California's TANF program, replaced Jobs-First GAIN in April 1998, but continues most of Jobs-First GAIN's services, mandates, and messages. Key features include:
1. an unusually intensive program orientation aimed at motivating new enrollees to find work quickly;
2. high-quality job clubs, whose leaders taught job-finding skills and engaged participants in activities aimed at boosting their self-esteem and motivation to work;
3. job development activities to increase job opportunities and match people with prospective employers;
4. a strong Work First message communicated through written handouts and group presentations, and in individual meetings with program staff;
5. a warning, repeated orally and in writing, that California would impose time limits on welfare eligibility for those who did not work;
6. a concerted effort to teach people that California's relatively generous rules for calculating welfare grants would help them increase their income in the short term by combining work and welfare;
and
7. a relatively tough, enforcement-oriented approach to encourage people to complete the activities and find work quickly.

Project duration: Jan 1995 - Jun 2000

Sites studied include Los Angeles, CA

Sample Characteristics and Sites Studied

Based on random assignment of 21,000 single parents and members of two-parent households. It contains nearly every adult who showed up to enroll in the program from April 1 through September 11, 1996.

Recent Findings in Brief

06/01/00: Los Angeles Jobs-First GAIN Evaluation: Final Report on a Work First Program in a Major Urban Center

Final Impact Findings

• Jobs-First GAIN led to substantial two-year increases in employment (that is, in the proportion of people ever employed in the two years of follow-up and in earnings)
• The program produced modest reductions in welfare and Food Stamp receipt (that is, the proportion of people receiving each of these benefits) and large reductions in welfare and Food Stamp payments (that is, actually expenditures for each type of assistance).
• Jobs-First GAIN produced a small net increase in total income in year 2; the results appear more positive for the last month of the year.
• The program did not affect whether people had medical coverage, but did produce a shift from public to private insurers.
• There were few statistically significant impacts on indicators of health and well-being.
• Jobs-First GAIN increased the use of child care and the incidence of child care problems that affected employment.
• For reasons that are unclear, experimental group members reported a higher incidence of food insecurity than control group members.
• Jobs-First GAIN had no effect on marriage, family composition, or amount of recreational time spent on children.
• The program had no systematic effects on the child outcomes examined· Jobs-First GAIN achieved larger employment and earnings gains that the county's previous basic education focused program.
• Many different types of welfare recipients benefited from Jobs-First GAIN. Such consistency in findings is unusual and impressive.
• The program's two year impacts on earnings and welfare expenditures were somewhat larger for members of two parent families than for single parents.
• The program positively affected many subgroups of two parent families but not as consistently as it did single parent subgroups.

• Los Angeles County successfully transformed its previous, basic-education-focused welfare-to-work program into a Work First program. This change was accomplished without a major reorganization of the county's welfare agency and before passage of federal welfare legislation.
• About 42 percent of single parents and 34 percent of members of two-parent families participated in a Jobs-First GAIN activity. Most of these people participated in job club.

• Jobs-First GAIN's costs were more than offset by savings in welfare payments and other types of assistance.

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