Welfare recipients who find employment usually work in service sector positions that are entry level and either temporary or part-time. These low-wage jobs are less likely to include benefits or opportunities for career advancement. In order to leave welfare, move out of poverty, and progress in the labor market, these individuals will need assistance in sustaining and improving the quality of their jobs.

ACF has allocated resources for a multi-site, random assignment evaluation of the most promising employment retention and advancement strategies. The Lewin Group will continue to give technical assistance to states in the project. Manpower Demonstration Research Corporation (MDRC) is conducting the five-year study of impacts and implementation.

Selected Summary Findings in Brief

Employment Retention and Advancement Project (MDRC):

Implementation findings:
• Building on prior studies showing that many welfare recipients are able to retain employment, several of the ERA projects target narrower “hard to employ” groups that have demonstrated difficulty finding or holding jobs. Other projects target low-income working parents and focus specifically on helping participants advance to higher-paying jobs. A final group of projects has mixed goals: Most of these programs target welfare recipients who are seeking work, focusing first on placing participants into good jobs, next on stabilizing their employment, and finally on helping them advance.
• ERA planners sought to learn from earlier projects such as the Post-Employment Services Demonstration (PESD), which found that follow-up case management did not improve employment retention. In most of the ERA projects, Case management is seen not as the main service strategy but as the starting point to deliver other services or activities, such as education and training, financial incentives, career planning, rehabilitation services, and job search assistance. In several projects, case managers aim to build relationships with individuals who are searching for work that will be beneficial in the post-employment phase.
• The ERA evaluation has already demonstrated some of the issues in implementing relatively large-scale retention and advancement programs. Encouraging and maintaining the participation of low-wage working parents is an ongoing challenge; sites are responding with aggressive outreach, tailored services, financial incentives, and advancement strategies that do not rely on traditional classroom-based education and training. The agencies that provide ERA services have restructured staff roles, trained staff to take on new responsibilities, and lowered worker caseloads — even as they forge the new linkages and interagency partnerships that are vital to delivering retention and advancement services.
• Interim impact findings not yet released.

Bridges to Work (P/PV):

• The available report chronicles the implementation of Bridges to Work, as told by the initiative's five local program directors. It is an account of how the organizations faced the challenges of implementing this national reverse-commuting demonstration, and addressed issues that arose around collaboration, race, transportation and random assignment.

GAPS Initiative (Mathematica):

• Most GAPS participants experienced steady economic progress during their first 18 months in the program. During their first year and a half in GAPS, most participants maintained their employment and experienced substantial wage growth. On average, they were employed 80 percent of the time during this period; half were employed continuously throughout the period.
• In spite of economic progress, substantial challenges (transportation, lack of health insurance, workplace conflicts, child care, etc.) remain.
• GAPS participants valued the supportive counseling, personal attention, and advice their case managers provided.
• Supplementing case management with additional tangible services may help gain participants’ trust and, ultimately, improve their economic outcomes.
• Greater emphasis on job advancement (education and training) for newly employed welfare recipients may be needed.

New Visions Program Evaluation (First random assignment of special college program for welfare recipients, Abt Associates):

• 2/3 of volunteers came to orientation. 55% of those who come to orientation graduate.
• Students received substantial exposure to college and career planning assistance.
• Many planned to continue in school but work and life issues intervene.

Post Employment Services Program (Mathematica):

• Extensive outreach and rapid follow up enabled program case managers to reach most clients and establish prompt communication.
• Service needs of clients vary, but PESD programs did not effectively target clients with different needs for different types or levels of services.
• Overall levels of employment among sample members (in both the program and control groups) were fairly high in all four sites. Welfare receipt among sample members varied across the sites and reflected the high level of generosity of the welfare programs in each site.
• Overall, the programs had little effect on increasing earnings, reducing welfare, or promoting the move toward self-sufficiency. Many control group members were able to maintain high levels of employment, partly due to strong economic conditions and partly because programs enrolled less disadvantaged individuals into the demonstration. Obtaining program impacts under such conditions can be difficult.
• The program context and services available to control group members influenced the magnitude of estimated program impacts.

Women's Employment Study (U Michigan):

• Several personal characteristics that might impede employment, including lack of a high school degree, low work experience, few work skills and work norms (also called "soft skills"), perceived experiences of discrimination, lack of access to a car, mental health diagnoses, substance dependence, health problems of the mother and her children, and domestic violence, were examined.
• Women who had a greater number of these problems are more likely to have difficulty finding and keeping a job. The percentage of months worked between February 1997 and Fall 1998 falls from 82% for those who did not have any barriers to only 7% for those with six or more barriers.
• On average, welfare-reliant women had about twice as many barriers as did wage-reliant women. Over half (52%) of welfare-reliant mothers, for example, lacked access to a car or driver's license, compared with 21% of wage-reliant mothers. One-quarter of welfare-reliant women met the diagnostic screening criteria for at least one psychiatric disorder, compared with about one-tenth of wage-reliant women. Similar disparities were evident for most of the barriers examined.
• The two most common barriers to working were lack of a high school degree and transportation, followed by few work skills, and mental health issues. Nearly one-fourth (23%) of wage-reliant mothers had less than a high school degree, while approximately one-third of those combining work and welfare and those neither working nor receiving welfare lacked a high school education (32% and 35%, respectively). Among welfare-reliant women, 46% lacked a high school degree. Lack of work norms was low on the list of barriers; 9% reported fewer than five work norms.