Solving the Reemployment Puzzle: From Research to Policy

Ch 3 - Enacting Worker Profiling and Reemployment Services

73 3 Enacting Worker Profiling and Reemployment Services FROm RESEARCh TO POLICy TO LEgISLATION For research to have a direct impact on public policy, a number of planets have to align, as they did for the enactment of Worker Profiling and Reemployment Services (WPRS) in 1993. The New Jersey Experiment and related research about job search assistance (JSA) had been completed, and their evaluations had been published and widely disseminated . The research findings used a methodology that all researchers and policymakers could agree upon—random assignment methods. The research had been widely read by researchers and policymakers. The new Clinton administration selected a number of political appointees for posts at the U.S. Department of Labor who knew and understood the research findings. Discussion between the political appointees and key career staff at the department revealed agreement about the effectiveness of providing comprehensive job search assistance through the employment and training system. The department proposed enacting WPRS to the White House, and key political appointees in the White House, along with career staff at the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), supported the initiative. WPRS could not have been enacted unless the budget gatekeepers at OMB and at the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) accepted the budget savings derived from JSA recipients’ returning to work sooner. The budget assessments of both agencies accepted the New Jersey Experiment’s findings. Finally, Congress needed to enact legislation that included WPRS provisions. All of these things happened in March and again in November of 1993. The planets were aligned. 74 Wandner ThE NEW JERSEy ExPERImENT It took four years after the New Jersey Experiment results were published before the WPRS system was enacted. Although three secretaries of labor—Ann McLaughlin, Elizabeth Dole, and Lynn Martin— had supported the ongoing UI experiments during their tenures between 1988 and 1992, no political leaders in the executive branch advocated any legislative initiatives based on the results of the New Jersey Experiment . Nonetheless, staff interest as well as congressional and executive branch activity continued to focus on the New Jersey Experiment’s evaluation findings. Between 1989 and 1993, the USDOL, OMB, and members of Congress expressed convictions about the need to provide dislocated workers with reemployment services and additional UI benefits. High unemployment lingered after the 1990–1991 recession. The continuing dislocated worker problem was spreading from manufacturing into white collar and service occupations. The interest in reemployment services was due, in part, to briefings and reviews of the New Jersey Experiment’s evaluation results. Staff from all of these organizations had received both the design report for the experiment and its evaluation reports. Many from both the legislative and the executive branches of government had attended meetings at the department on the demonstration , including on its evaluation designs and the draft of the final evaluation report. Early on, they were given a chance to make recommendations about the project and evaluation designs and later for the final evaluation report. The published final evaluation report (Corson et al. 1989) was widely distributed. In 1991, a four-year follow-up report was published on the employment experiences of the treatment and control groups, as well as reestimates of the net impacts and benefitcost results. Acting Chairman Thomas Downey (D-NY) of the House Ways and Means Committee’s Subcommittee on Human Resources, which has legislative authority over the UI program, called a hearing in February 1991 to focus on the reemployment of dislocated UI claimants. Much of the questioning of witnesses was done by Rich Hobbie, then a committee staffer. He had formerly worked on employment and training issues for the Congressional Research Service and had followed the New Jersey Enacting Worker Profiling and Reemployment Services 75 Experiment closely. The hearing featured the New Jersey Experiment and its findings.As part of the research panel, staff members from Mathematica Policy Research, the research contractor that had conducted the experiment, were asked to testify. While no permanent legislative proposal flowed from the hearing, in November 1991 Congressman Downey successfully proposed adding a Job Search Assistance Demonstration to the bill (the Emergency Unemployment Compensation Act of 1991, or P.L. 102-164) that initially enacted Emergency Unemployment Compensation (EUC), a program that provided additional UI benefits to long-term unemployed workers during and after the 1990–1991 recession.1 The Job Search Assistance Demonstration replicated the New Jersey Experiment, and its goal was to prepare the way for later...