Citation
Hamilton, J., & Chen, E. (2014). Evaluation of the NYC Business Solutions Customized Training Program. New York: New York City Center for Economic Opportunity.
Highlights
- The study’s objective was to examine the impact of the New York City Business Solutions Customized Training program on earnings.
- The authors used administrative data on training and payroll to compare the earnings of participants in the customized training program to those of three different matched comparison groups.
- This review was conducted in collaboration with the Employment Strategies for Low-Income Adults Evidence Review (ESER). Because ESER did not report findings for studies that received a low causal evidence rating, the CLEAR profile does not report the findings either.
- The quality of causal evidence presented in this report is low because the authors did not show that the groups were similar before the intervention, and they did not sufficiently account for potential differences in their analysis. This means we are not confident that the estimated effects are attributable to the customized training program; other factors are likely to have contributed.
Intervention Examined
The New York City Business Solutions Customized Training Program
Features of the Intervention
The NYC Business Solutions Customized Training program sponsored eligible businesses that competed for funding by proposing specific trainings and presenting expected benefits for their selected trainees and trainers. Eligible trainees were workers who would work full time upon completion of the training and who earn $15 or less per hour. Program participants could receive customized training that includes activities that occurred outside of an employee’s regular job description or on-the-job training that aimed to improve employees’ skill in productive work.
Features of the Study
The authors used a statistical technique called propensity score matching to create comparison groups that were as similar as possible to participants in the customized training group. The three different comparison groups were: (1) people who received Individual Training Grants from Workforce1 Career Centers, (2) people who participated in Workforce Investment Act (WIA) training, and (3) all incumbent workers in New York City during the same period. The sample included 814 customized training participants who were matched to 727 Workforce1 participants, 412 WIA participants, and 78,642 incumbent workers. The authors used administrative data on training and payroll for the period of May to November 2011 to estimate impacts on earnings between the treatment group and each of the comparison groups after adjusting for demographic characteristics and wage data collected immediately before the intervention began.
Findings
This review was conducted in collaboration with the Employment Strategies for Low-Income Adults Evidence Review (ESER). Because ESER did not report findings for studies that received a low causal evidence rating, the CLEAR profile does not report the findings either.
Causal Evidence Rating
The quality of causal evidence presented in this report is low because the authors did not show that the groups were equivalent before the intervention, and they did not sufficiently control for potential differences in their analysis. This means we are not confident that the estimated effects are attributable to the customized training program; other factors are likely to have contributed.