Citation URL: http://www.urban.org/KellySMikelson

The Jobs for Veterans Act of 2002 (Public Law 107-288) has the overall objective of "revising and improving employment, training, and placement services furnished to veterans." One provision of the Act requires workforce development programs funded in whole or in part by the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) to provide priority of service to veterans and, under certain circumstances, spouses of veterans. DOL's Employment and Training Administration contracted with The Urban Institute to synthesize information about service delivery for veterans among some programs that are already providing veterans with priority of service. Through hands-on exploration of electronic tools, discussions with experts, and site visits, various strategies were identified that can be applied to a broad range of programs.

The federal Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) and the Food Stamp program (FSP) are the largest means-tested transfer programs for low-income working parents in the United States. This study examines how these two programs interact, particularly the potential impact of the EITC on participation in the FSP during the latter half of the 1990s. Although EITC payments do not reduce the potential size of a household's food stamp allotment under FSP rules, EITC adds to a household's resources and thus could affect a household's willingness to participate in the FSP. The paper tests this hypothesis with monthly data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation for 1996 through 1999. Although the findings are mixed, there is evidence of a negative impact of EITC on FSP participation.

This study was conducted by The Urban Institute over a six-month period from mid-May to mid-November 2003 and was commissioned by the Virginia Workforce Council (VWC). This study provides the VWC with information to help them make important incumbent worker policy decisions over the next several years. This study analyzes the current and changing characteristics of Virginia's workforce, examines trends in workforce demand in future years, reviews policies, approaches, and strategies for integrating emerging and diverse groups into the workforce, and recommends public and private sector policies and strategies that might be appropriate for Virginia in the coming decades.

Welfare reform became a major priority in New York City in the 1990s. Policies were work-centered throughout, but the focus and programs evolved over time. This report describes the work components of welfare as of late 2001, but does not analyze the quality of services provided or the effect on individuals or services. Various perspectives are incorporated, including HRA administrators, managers and staff, contractors, and community representatives.

This report examines the development, current structure, and likely future of Continuums of Care (CoCs) for homeless people throughout the United States. It describes how communities organize themselves to respond to homelessness, how they identify needs and plan their strategies, and how the U. S. Department of Housing and Urban Development's requirement that communities submit a single, community-wide, coordinated application for funding has affected the development of homeless networks and services. Involvement of mainstream agencies (e.g., housing, mental health, veterans affairs) and the ease or difficulty of navigating the service system from a client's perspective is also examined. Information comes from case studies of a sample of 25 CoCs scoring highly on ratings of their annual funding applications.

In the past thirty-five years, there has been a dramatic evolution in welfare employment and training programs. During this period, there have been numerous efforts to evaluate the effectiveness of these programs. In simple terms, the welfare reform research and evaluations of the past thirty-five years can be described in three major waves: (1) Work Incentives (WIN) Program evaluations conducted by states and others between the implementation of WIN in 1967 and 1988 when the Family Support Act (FSA) of 1988 was passed; (2) Evaluations of the Job Opportunity and Basic Skills Training Program (JOBS), passed under the FSA, between 1989 and 1996; and (3) Welfare evaluation from the mid-1990s to the present, after enactment of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) welfare evaluations from the mid-1990s to the present. The welfare reform research and evaluations presented in this annotated bibliography focus on the two latter waves of welfare reform evaluation with a particular emphasis on recently completed and ongoing research and evaluation projects.

The role of alternative work arrangements - temporary help, independent contractors, on-call workers, and contract company workers - has caught the attention of both policymakers and academic researchers alike. Current research indicates that 1 in 10 workers are employed in one of these four alternative work arrangements and employment in the temporary help services industry grew five times as fast as overall non-farm employment between 1972 and 1997.

This paper provides new evidence to inform the policy debate about the effect of a newly important industry -- the temporary help industry –- on the labor market outcomes of low-income workers and those at risk of being on public assistance. We use several years of CPS data to document differences in characteristics and employment outcomes between temporary help workers and those in traditional work arrangements. We then use a model-based approach, exploiting SIPP data and using propensity score matching techniques, to compare outcomes for low-income and at-risk workers in the temporary help industry both with those of similar workers in traditional employment and of nonworkers. The analysis shows that workers who are at risk of welfare recipiency are more than twice as likely to be in alternative work arrangements as other workers. An examination of outcomes one year later, including wages, employment duration, and benefits, indicate that, not surprisingly, temporary workers had worse earnings and employment outcomes a year later than did similar individuals initially working in standard employment. Temporary workers fared substantially better one year later than did those who were initially not employed; temporary workers are nearly twice as likely to be working one year later. Although temporary workers do fare worse than those employed in traditional work, their outcomes one year later are much closer to those of standard workers than those of unemployed workers.

Changes to the welfare system brought about by the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA), and state and local welfare reform efforts, carry serious implications for Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TNF) recipients with disabilities and barriers to employment. Specifically, work participation and time limit requirements are two key provisions of the federal welfare law which provided a new sense of urgency encouraging states to develop strategies to assist clients with their transistions from welfare to work. As a first step in this process, TANF agencies are considering strategies to identify the barriers that are inhibiting or prohibiting this transition. PRWORA offers unprecedented flexibility to develop such strategies and design programs and services to assist with the transition from welfare to work. This paper is merely a first step in considering some of the many challenges associated with identifying unobserved barriers to employment.

This paper examines the W-2 participants who have come within 3 months of the 24-month time limit in one of two paid employment categories-the W-2 Transitions and Community Service Jobs-and those who had an extension. Those who left before the 21 months or who moved to other W-2 employment positions by the end of the 24 months are not included in this analysis.

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