Absence of conflict of interest.
Citation
Highlights
- The study’s objective was to examine the impact of the New Orleans Office of Workforce Development’s (OWD’s) Career Pathways job training program on employment and earnings.
- The study was a randomized controlled trial that compared the employment and earnings outcomes of job trainees assigned to the Career Pathways training and those assigned to a comparison group. The primary data sources were a baseline survey of study participants and employment, earnings, and industry records from the Louisiana Workforce Commission (LWC). The authors used a statistical model to compare the outcomes of treatment and control group members.
- For the full sample of study participants, the study did not detect any statistically significant associations between assignment to the Career Pathways intervention and subsequent earnings and employment.
- The quality of causal evidence presented in this report is high because it was based on a well-implemented randomized controlled trial. This means we are confident that the estimated effects are attributable to the Career Pathways intervention and not to other factors.
Intervention Examined
New Orleans Office of Workforce Development’s (OWD’s) Career Pathways job training program
Features of the Intervention
Active Labor Market Programs (ALMP) were created to improve worker outcomes and training for unemployed or underemployed workers. High attrition and mismatching skills and labor demand are two of the greatest challenges facing these programs. In an effort to address these challenges, the New Orleans Office of Workforce Development (OWD) implemented the Career Pathways ALMP for medium-skilled jobs in manufacturing, health care, and information technology to fill market gaps. OWD intentionally designed the Career Pathways curriculum in consultation with local employers to help ensure that training was driven by labor market demand. The Career Pathways training program included 20 hours of classroom training each week for two months. At the end of training participants were offered industry-based credential certification.
The program served unemployed and underemployed individuals in New Orleans deemed likely to successfully complete the program from 2016-2018. Eligible candidates were screened via a mandatory orientation, drug tests and background checks, literacy and numeracy tests, and a 45-minute interview. Once deemed eligible, job trainees were randomly assigned to either the Career Pathways intervention or to a comparison group.
Features of the Study
The study was a randomized controlled trial that compared the employment and earnings outcomes of job trainees who were assigned to receive the Career Pathways training and those assigned to a comparison group. The study analyzes data from 20 cohorts of job trainees, comprising 197 individuals who were randomly assigned to the treatment group and 192 individuals who were randomly assigned to the comparison group. An additional 28 individuals who underwent random assignment (and who were assigned evenly across the two groups) could not be matched to employment records and were excluded from the analytic sample.
Individuals assigned to the comparison group could still receive additional employment training and support outside of the Career Pathways intervention. Additionally, individuals initially assigned to the comparison group could re-enter the randomization pool in subsequent cohorts, and some of these individuals were later assigned to receive the Career Pathways intervention. To guard against possible self-selection into multiple cohorts, all individuals were analyzed based on their initial random assignment status using an intent-to-treat framework.
Just over half of study participants were male and the average age of study participants was about 40 years old. Approximately 60 percent of the sample had earned at least $5,000 in the previous year. About 90 percent of study participants identified as Black. Approximately half of the sample was employed at baseline, and the other half of the sample was unemployed at baseline (close to 30 percent experienced a spell of short-term unemployment and close to 20 percent experienced a spell of long-term unemployment).
The primary data sources for the analysis were a baseline survey of study participants and quarterly employment and earning records from the Louisiana Workforce Commission (LWC) for the period spanning the first quarter of 2014 through the first quarter of 2019. The baseline survey gathered data on employment, earnings, and demographic information. The authors used a statistical model to compare the outcomes of treatment and comparison group members. The authors also conducted a subgroup analysis that examined whether intervention impacts varied depending on the employment status of study participants at baseline (e.g., employed at baseline vs. short-term unemployed at baseline vs. long-term unemployed at baseline).
Findings
Employment
- A pooled analysis of all participants (regardless of employment status at baseline) did not detect a statistically significant association between assignment to the Career Pathways intervention and rates of post-intervention employment.
Earnings
- A pooled analysis of all participants (regardless of employment status at baseline) did not detect a statistically significant association between assignment to the Career Pathways intervention and average post-intervention earnings.
Considerations for Interpreting the Findings
Additional subgroup analyses by baseline employment status suggested that assignment to the Career Pathways intervention had a favorable and statistically significant impact on earnings for individuals who were unemployed at baseline, but not for individuals who were already employed at baseline.
The authors report that many individuals assigned to the Career Pathways intervention did not ultimately complete all of the intervention trainings. Additionally, given the study’s design, some individuals assigned to the comparison group did receive some or all of the Career Pathways intervention. Relatively low rates of treatment group take-up and relatively high rates of comparison group crossover might make it more difficult to measure the impact of the Career Pathways intervention, if any exists. To address this issue, the authors also estimate local average treatment effects (LATE) in an attempt to measure the impact of receiving Career Pathways training that is attributable to random assignment status. Though somewhat larger in magnitude, the LATE estimates are generally consistent with the intent-to-treat estimates presented in the study and summarized in this profile.
Causal Evidence Rating
The quality of causal evidence presented in this report is high because it was based on a well-implemented randomized controlled trial. This means we are confident that the estimated effects are attributable to the Career Pathways intervention and not to other factors. However, the study did not find statistically significant effects.