Public Employment Programs Research Articles

On the conveyor belt of public employment programs between 2009 and 2013 in Hajdúböszörmény

Present study focuses on the national and European popularity of public employment programs within the Active Labour Market Policies (ALMP) between 2009 and 2013, and emphasizes the lack of their transitive effects by two national empirical researches. It is a crucial question at either the governmental level or the local level or even at the level of the people that after the participation whether the supported employees can find a job, whether the programs have transitive effects or the possibility of re-employment is greater. 50% one-time participation defined in the first hypothesis was examined in two empirical studies. In the first case this ratio was verified neither in input sampling (45,6%) nor in output sampling (40,83%). In case of the sampling in 2013 it was successful (78%). In Hajdúböszörmény revealing the situation of the labour market we concluded that practically people after the supported employment have minimal chance to find a job, there are still negative tendencies in the primary market, and local government tries to struggle with the price by utilizing public employment as a single tool. The two empirical sampling drew the attention that the lower the transitive effects of the examined programs are, the stronger the phenomenon of locking-in and rotating is.

The effect of public employment on children’s work and school attendance: evidence from a social protection program in Argentina

I assess the short-term impact of a public employment program on child labor and school attendance in Argentina. Public employment increases opportunities for adults outside the household, and may correspondingly raise the returns to children’s productive activities at home. The effect of public employment on school attendance may thus be small. However, I find that the program substantially increased children’s school attendance in addition to reducing child labor. My empirical strategy exploits an arbitrary enrollment cutoff date to compare program beneficiaries with a propensity-matched group of applicants not receiving benefits.JEL classificationJ22; J13; J68; 015

Public Service Employment: Full Employment Without Inflation

For the last few decades, monetary policy has been geared toward raising the unemployment rate as a means of achieving stable prices. However, it is possible to have stable prices as well as full employment, via a federal public service employment (PSE) program that provides jobs for those ready, willing, and able to work at the established wage.Such a program would not be inflationary; on the contrary, under some circumstances it would even reduce inflationary pressures. It could lead to an increase in federal government spending, possibly even a deficit; however, the irrational horror of deficits should not be allowed to stand in the way of the generation of full employment.Moveover, such a program would result in the reduction or elimination of current welfare payments, such as food stamps, unemployment insurance, and (if health benefits are included) Medicaid expenses. There would also be a positive, albeit hard-to-measure, impact on family wellbeing (less crime, divorce, child abuse, etc.). Thus, the real cost of the program in terms of the deficit and of society in general would certainly be less than the nominal cost. This paper describes the operation of a PSE program; examines the implications for employment, the federal budget, wages, and prices; and addresses objections to initiating and administering such a program.

Közfoglalkoztatás, mint a munkanélküliség csökkentésére alkalmas egységes rendszer bemutatása

It is important to investigate labour market tools as employment policy is expected to reduce unemployment and the segmentation of the labour market, to decrease the intensifying unfavourable situation of vulnerable social groups, to help the geographical, employment and branch labour mobility and to improve productivity. I examine the role of public employment of the labour market tools. I introduce the development of public employment tools and detail that what effects the public employment has on the tendency of unemployment. The literature review in my research was compiled with the aim of a secondary research objective. In the literature review I deal with the introduction of the public employment as a tool for handling labour market crises in the countries of the European Union, as well as with the characteristics of the new system of public employment in Hungary. The numbers of those who are involved in the public employment program both at national and sub-regional levels forecast its significance and necessity under the present condition of the Hungarian economy.

Do Public Employment and Training Programs Work?

Abstract We estimate impacts on earnings and employment of the two primary adult workforce support and training programs under the U.S. Workforce Investment Act (WIA) using administrative data on 160,000 participants from 12 states for up to four years following program entry. We find that participants in the WIA Adult program, who typically enter with poor work histories, realize improved employment levels and increased average quarterly earnings of several hundred dollars. Earnings gains for Dislocated Worker program participants are appreciably smaller, although these participants do experience employment gains. JEL codes I38, J08, J24

Children's Welfare and Short-term Migration from Rural India

Few papers in the literature provide quantitative analysis of the difficult circumstances faced by children of short-term labour migrants. This article uses new survey data from rural northwest India to study both children who migrate and those left behind. It finds that, unlike in other contexts, children who migrate rarely work when they accompany adult migrants. Additionally, this article reports a robust, previously unquantified negative relationship between children's migration and educational outcomes and investments. It calls for further research about externalities of migration for children and suggests that the expansion of a large public employment programme might help these children.

Social welfare through guaranteed wage employment: experience of National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme in an Indian state

Recognition of the significance of public wage employment programmes in tackling unpredictable community “covariate” shocks and ensuring livelihood security of the rural poor has led to the enactment of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, with state guarantee of work. Implementation of the Act, our empirical findings tell us, has become the site of tangible exchanges between state and society, with factors such as the level of material support for it, the balance of power between the local state and the poor on the ground, and the larger socio-economic structure determining programme outcomes.

Beyond Full Employment: The Employer of Last Resort as an Institution for Change

Over the past decade and a half the ability of the employer-of-last-resort (ELR) proposal to deliver full employment and price stability has been discussed at length in the literature. A different issue has received relatively little attention — namely, the concern that even when the ELR produces these macroeconomic benefits, it does so by offering “low-paying” “dead-end” jobs, further denigrating the unemployed. In this context, the important buffer stock feature of the ELR is misconstrued as a hydraulic mechanism that prioritizes macroeconomic stability over the program’s benefits to the unemployed.This paper argues that the two objectives are not mutually exclusive by revisiting Argentina’s experience with Plan Jefes and its subsequent reform. Plan Jefes is the only direct job creation program in the world specifically modeled after the modern ELR proposal developed in the United States. With respect to macroeconomic stability, the paper reviews how it exhibits some of the key stabilizing features of ELR that have been postulated in the literature, even though it was not designed as an unconditional job guarantee. Plan Jefes also illustrated that public employment programs can have a transformative impact on persistent socioeconomic problems such as poverty and gender disparity. Women — by far the largest group of program beneficiaries — report key benefits to their communities, families, children, and (importantly) themselves from participation in Jefes. Argentina’s experience shows that direct job creation programs that offer employment at a base wage can have the unique capacity to empower and undermine prevailing structures that produce and reproduce poverty and gender disparities. Because the latter two problems are multidimensional, the ELR cannot be treated as a panacea, but rather as an important policy tool that remedies some of the most entrenched and resilient causes of poverty and gender inequality.The paper examines survey evidence based on narratives by female participants in Jefes to assess these potentially transformative aspects of the ELR proposal.

Inflationary and Distributional Effects of Alternative Fiscal Policies: An Augmented Minskyan-Kaleckian Model

This paper augments the basic Post-Keynesian markup model to examine the effects of different fiscal policies on prices and income distribution. This is an approach a la Hyman P. Minsky, who argued that in the modern era, government is both “a blessing and a curse,” since it stabilizes profits and output by imparting an inflationary bias to the economy, but without stabilizing the economy at or near full employment. To build on these insights, the paper considers several distinct functions of government: 1) government as an income provider, 2) as an employer, and 3) as a buyer of goods and services. The inflationary and distributional effects of each of these fiscal policies differ considerably. First, the paper examines the effects of income transfers to individuals and firms (in the form of unemployment insurance and investment subsidies, respectively). Next, it considers government as an employer of workers (direct job creation) and as a buyer of goods and services (indirect job creation). Finally, it modifies the basic theoretical model to incorporate fiscal policy a la Minsky and John Maynard Keynes, where the government ensures full employment through direct job creation of all of the unemployed unable to find private sector work, irrespective of the phase of the business cycle. The paper specifically models Minsky’s proposal for government as the employer of last resort (ELR), but the findings would apply to any universal direct job creation plan of similar design. The paper derives a fundamental price equation for a full-employment economy with government. The model presents a “price rule” for government spending that ensures that the ELR is not a source of inflation. Indeed, the fundamental equation illustrates that in the presence of such a price rule, at full employment inflationary effects are observed from sources other than the public sector employment program.

Improving Education and Employment for Disadvantaged Young Men: Proven and Promising Strategies

Low high school graduation rates and sharply declining employment rates among disadvantaged youth have led to an increasing number of youths who are disconnected from both school and work. What programs and policies might prevent these disconnections and improve educational and employment outcomes, particularly among young men? The authors review the evidence base on youth development policies for adolescents and young teens; programs seeking to improve educational attainment and employment for in-school youths; and programs that try to “reconnect” those who are out of school and frequently out of work, including public employment programs. The authors identify a number of programmatic strategies that are promising or even proven, based on rigorous evaluations, for disadvantaged youths with different circumstances and conclude that policy efforts need to promote a range of approaches to engage and reconnect youths, along with ongoing evaluation efforts to improve our understanding of what works, including which program components, for whom.

Active Labour Market Policy Evaluations: A Meta‐Analysis

This article presents a meta-analysis of recent microeconometric evaluations of active labour market policies. We categorise 199 programme impacts from 97 studies conducted between 1995 and 2007. Job search assistance programmes yield relatively favourable programme impacts, whereas public sector employment programmes are less effective. Training programmes are associated with positive medium-term impacts, although in the short term they often appear ineffective. We also find that the outcome variable used to measure programme impact matters, but neither the publication status of a study nor the use of a randomised design is related to the sign or significance of the programme estimate.

El gobierno como empleador de última instancia: una alternativa de programa público de empleo (PPE)

Ante el creciente nivel de desocupación laboral y la imposibilidad de creación de empleos por parte de la iniciativa privada, se hace necesario que el gobierno establezca un programa de empleo público que pueda incentivar la reactivación económica. El desempleo es seriamente costoso para una economía y resulta ilógico que, teniendo la posibilidad de disminuirlo, no se instrumente un plan gubernamental con ese fin. La razón para no crearlo encuentra al menos dos impedimentos: la escasez de recursos para llevarlo a cabo y la posibilidad de que pueda resultar inflacionario. Con este documento se intentan aportar argumentos a favor de un programa de empleo público que arroje necesariamente más beneficios que los perjuicios que le puedan ser imputados.

Lessons from the New Deal Public Employment Programs

The following essay is adapted from the concluding chapter of the new edition of Nancy Rose's Put to Work, just published by Monthly Review Press. The book is an examination of the various work programs implemented by the New Deal during the Great Depression. This second edition is especially appropriate, as we are now experiencing the most severe economic crisis since the 1930s, what some are calling the "Great Recession," and there is once again much talk about putting people to work. Nothing before or after the 1930s has matched the magnitude of the FERA, CWA, and WPA-programs that provided work each month for several million people, paid decent wages, and developed innovative projects in construction, the arts, and the production of consumer goods.This article can also be found at the Monthly Review website, where most recent articles are published in full.Click here to purchase a PDF version of this article at the Monthly Review website.

New Estimates of Public Employment and Training Program Net Impacts: A Nonexperimental Evaluation of the Workforce Investment Act Program

This paper presents nonexperimental net impact estimates for the Adult and Dislocated Worker programs under the Workforce Investment Act (WIA), the primary federal job training program in the U.S, based on administrative data from 12 states, covering approximately 160,000 WIA participants and nearly 3 million comparison group members. The key measure of interest is the difference in average quarterly earnings or employment attributable to WIA program participation for those who participate, estimated for up to four years following entry into the program using propensity score matching methods. The results for the average participant in the WIA Adult program show that participating is associated with a several-hundred-dollar increase in quarterly earnings. Adult program participants who obtain training have lower earnings in the months during training and the year after exit than those who don't receive training, but they catch up within 10 quarters, ultimately registering large total gains. The marginal benefits of training exceed, on average, $400 in earnings each quarter three years after program entry. Dislocated Workers experience several quarters for which earnings are depressed relative to comparison group workers after entering WIA, and although their earnings ultimately match or overtake the comparison group, the benefits they obtain are smaller than for those in the Adult program.

Active Labor Market Policy Evaluations: A Meta-Analysis

This paper presents a meta-analysis of recent microeconometric evaluations of active labor market policies. Our sample consists of 199 program estimates drawn from 97 studies conducted between 1995 and 2007. In about one-half of these cases we have both a short-term impact estimate (for a one-year post-program horizon) and a medium-term estimate (two-year horizon). We characterize the program estimates according to the type and duration of the program, the characteristics of the participants, and the evaluation methodology. Heterogeneity in all three dimensions affects the likelihood that an impact estimate is significantly positive, significantly negative, or statistically insignificant. Comparing program types, subsidized public sector employment programs have the least favorable impact estimates. Job search assistance programs have relatively favorable short-run impacts, whereas classroom and on-the-job training programs tend to show better outcomes in the medium-run than the short-run. Programs for youths are less likely to yield positive impacts than untargeted programs, but there are no large or systematic differences by gender. Methodologically, we find that the outcome variable used to measure program effectiveness matters. Evaluations based on registered unemployment durations are more likely to show favorable short-term impacts. Controlling for the outcome measure, and the type of program and participants, we find that experimental and non-experimental studies have similar fractions of significant negative and significant positive impact estimates, suggesting that the research designs used in recent non-experimental evaluations are unbiased.

Public Employment and Women: The Impact of Argentina's Jefes Program on Female Heads of Poor Households

In 2002, Argentina implemented a large-scale public employment program to deal with the latest economic crisis and the ensuing massive unemployment and poverty. The program, known as Plan Jefes, offered part-time work for unemployed heads of households, and yet more than 70 percent of the people who turned up for work were women. The present paper evaluates the operation of this program, its macroeconomic effects, and its impact on program participants. We report findings from our 2005 meetings with policymakers and visits to different project sites. We find that Jefes addresses many important community problems, is well received by participants, and serves the needs of women particularly well. Some of the benefits women report are working in mother-friendly jobs, getting needed training and education, helping the community, and finding dignity and empowerment through work.

Education and Employment Opportunities for the Roma

The Roma more than anyone else lost out in the transition to the market economy in the countries of Central and South Eastern Europe. Their unemployment rate is 100 per cent in some rural areas and the Roma's dependence on government benefits is widespread. This article takes a look at unemployment and employment among the Roma on the basis of two surveys completed in 2002 and 2004. It is shown that lack of formal education cannot provide a full explanation of the relatively high unemployment rates faced by Roma and that at least part of the problem arises from discrimination in employment. Roma are also disproportionately employed in low-quality jobs in the informal sector. The paper argues that programmes aimed at combatting labour market and income disadvantages of the Roma must be based on the development of opportunities for autonomous income generation rather than the public works temporary employment programmes currently prevalent.

Active labor market policy in Germany—Is there a successful policy strategy?

Each year, Germany and many other developed economies spend tens of billions of euros on active measures of employment promotion with the explicit aim of contributing to the reduction of unemployment. Yet, high unemployment has universally been a persistent problem throughout the last two decades, raising the question as to the actual effect of the measures of employment promotion. This paper contributes to the received literature by investigating whether a specific strategy of active labor market policy measures can contribute to a significant reduction of unemployment on the (semi-)aggregate level of the local labor offices in Germany. To this end, we analyze ALMP in Germany in a spatially augmented regression framework. Our results suggest that a policy strategy focusing on monetary incentive schemes rather than on public employment programs is more successful.

Employer of Last Resort: Could It Deliver Full Employment and Price Stability?

Proposals under the headings of employer of last resort (ELR) and job guarantee have been made under which jobs would be available to all at a basic wage. These schemes promise a combination of full employment and price stability. This paper examines whether they would be able to deliver on such a promise. The paper discusses the notion of ‘functional finance’ which forms an important element of ideas on ELR. The nature and role of money as envisaged in the tax driven money approach which is often associated with the ELR proposals is critically examined. It is argued that whilst the ELR budgetary costs may be relatively small, this would also be the case from any public sector employment program. The question is raised as to whether there would be jobs of a type which could fit in with the ELR proposals, and what the nature of these jobs might be. The paper considers the extent to which ELR would involve underemployment and unemployment by another name. The possible inflationary implications of the ELR are next considered. This has two aspects: first to consider whether inflation would result from unemployment falling below any form of supply-side inflation barrier (such as a NAIRU), and second to consider whether the use of a base wage would bring price stability as claimed. In the subsequent section, the idea that ELR employment would form a buffer stock is critically examined.

How Accurate is Food-for-Work Self-Targeting in the Presence of Imperfect Factor Markets? Evidence from Ethiopia

Effective targeting of transfers is a key issue in public policy to combat poverty. Much faith is presently placed in self-targeting mechanisms such as public employment schemes supported by food-for-work transfers. Where targeting errors have been observed, these are usually attributed to mismanagement of key operational details, such as the project's wage rate. Using a unique data set from rural Ethiopia, we demonstrate that targeting errors may also have structural causes in some low-income countries. We hypothesise that imperfect factor markets generate a predictable dispersion across households in reservation wage rates that breaks down the unconditionally positive relation between income and shadow wages on which the theory of self-targeting public employment programmes rests. Our results confirm that the inaccuracy of FFW targeting stems from the fact that, in rural Ethiopia, higher income households are endowed with more labour per unit of land or animal. Due to poor factor markets in land and livestock these labour-abundant households have lower marginal labour productivity on farm, thereby depressing the reservation wage rates they find acceptable for FFW participation.