Skip to sections below

Share this intervention

PrintEmail

Summary

Standard Job Club offered workplace behavior skills, job search skills, and job search assistance to help participants move from receiving Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) cash assistance to working. This evaluation directly compared Standard Job Club with a separate intervention, Fast Track Job Club, to understand which of the two interventions might be more effective; the distinctive features of Standard Job Club are its group classes on workplace behavior skills, duration of group classes on job-search skills, and supervised job search.

Standard Job Club was an eight-week program broken into three-week and five-week segments. The first segment required enrollees to attend one week of daily, eight-hour group classes on workplace behavior skills and two weeks of daily, eight-hour group classes on job search skills. The second segment required enrollees to complete five weeks of supervised job search. During this time, enrollees had to make daily trips to the Standard Job Club office, where they received individual assistance from program staff. Enrollees also had access to supportive services during the program, employment retention services after finding employment, and additional employment services for those who did not find employment after five weeks. Noncompliance with the program could lead to enrollees losing part of their public welfare benefits. This intervention served people who received cash assistance via the California Work Opportunity and Responsibility to Kids (CalWORKs) program, California's county-administered TANF program. Standard Job Club was implemented in Sacramento, CA.

The effectiveness of Standard Job Club when compared to Fast Track Job Club indicates the effect of being referred to a set of services that includes those unique to Standard Job Club, or how much better the offer of Standard Job Club meets participants’ needs than the offer of Fast Track Job Club. In contrast with Standard Job Club, Fast Track Job Club participants attended three days of group classes on job search skills and one half day of individual meetings and activities with Fast Track Job Club staff. They then participated in seven weeks of an independent job search with weekly check-ins. They had access to the same supportive services as Standard Job Club participants.

90002-Standard Job Club ve
Populations and employment barriers: Cash assistance recipients

Effectiveness rating and effect by outcome domain

Need more context or definitions for the Outcome Domain table below?
View the "Table help" to get more insight into terms, measures, and definitions.

View table help

Scroll to the right to view the rest of the table columns

Outcome domain Term Effectiveness rating Effect in 2018 dollars and percentages Effect in standard deviations Sample size
Increase earnings Short-term Little evidence to assess support $0 per year 0.000 0
Long-term No evidence to assess support
Very long-term No evidence to assess support
Increase employment Short-term Supported favorable 7% (in percentage points) 0.178 477
Long-term No evidence to assess support
Very long-term No evidence to assess support
Decrease benefit receipt Short-term Little evidence to assess support favorable $-83 per year -0.030 479
Long-term No evidence to assess support
Very long-term No evidence to assess support
Increase education and training All measurement periods No evidence to assess support
* This intervention was assessed as supported for this domain, meaning it achieved one or more statistically significant, favorable effects. However, the intervention has an average effect size that is unfavorable because the average includes all effects in this domain - both statistically significant and favorable effects and statistically insignificant but unfavorable effects.

Effectiveness rating key:

  • Well-supported Well-supported   
  • Supported  Supported   
  • Not supported  Not supported   
  • Mixed support  Mixed support   
  • Insufficient evidence  Insufficient evidence   
  • No evidence  No evidence
Effectiveness rating terms?

Studies of this intervention

Study quality rating Study counts per rating
High High 1
Back to top

Implementation details

Dates covered by study

The Sacramento County Department of Human Assistance (DHA) operated Standard Job Club from 2016 to 2018. Evaluators followed participants for six months after enrollment.

Organizations implementing intervention

DHA operated Standard Job Club in six of its CalWORKs offices.

Populations served

The intervention served CalWORKs recipients with children who (1) were not exempt from and not otherwise satisfying federal work requirements, (2) had not participated in DHA’s prior Job Club program, and (3) were appropriate for job search assistance services, as determined by a DHA human services specialist. Participants were required to engage in the intervention and could be sanctioned for noncompliance by receiving a reduction in their cash assistance award.

The population served was 70 percent female. About one-third (35 percent) of participants identified as Black, not Hispanic; 34 percent identified as White, not Hispanic; 15 percent identified as being of Hispanic, Latino, or Spanish origin; and 15 percent identified as being of another race. Seventy-six percent had a high school diploma or the equivalent, including 42 percent with an associate’s degree or higher. Half had worked during the year before enrollment (47 percent) or were currently working (3 percent).

Description of services implemented

During the first segment of Standard Job Club, which lasted three weeks, participants attended classes for four days a week and participated in less structured activities such as working on application materials on the fifth day. During the first week, a social worker taught a course on soft skills, which included financial education topics. For the remaining two weeks, three facilitators taught a course focused on work readiness activities adapted from the Job Information Seeking Training curriculum.

After completing both courses, participants met with their site’s job developer to search for jobs, complete an employability assessment and interest tool, and create an individualized job search goal plan. For the next five weeks of the intervention or until they found employment, participants were required to:

  • Complete 25 contacts with employers each week.
  • Check in at the DHA office daily. Participants could also stay at the office to use its computer lab or other resources to job search.
  • Meet weekly with the job developer to review their progress in their job search, discuss any obstacles, and receive referrals to job openings. Participants could meet with the job developer more frequently if desired.
  • Attend weekly talks by employers held at the DHA office.

Each site’s social worker, as well as participants’ assigned DHA human services specialists, provided supportive services as needed, including monetary assistance with child care and transportation and referrals to other services.

Once participants found employment, the job developer provided employment retention services, contacting them once a month for the next two months to ensure they were still employed, provide any needed assistance, and offer other job leads.

If participants did not find employment after five weeks, intervention staff assigned them to another activity, usually subsidized employment, an unpaid work experience, or vocational training.

The intervention was largely implemented according to its design. Intervention staff exercised discretion over some requirements, including the number of days per week participants were required to check in and the number of required contacts per week. In addition, facilitators differed in their delivery of the curriculum, and some included their own supplemental activities.

Service intensity

During the first three weeks of the intervention, participants were required to engage in programming for eight hours per day, five days a week. During the job search assistance phase, participants were supposed to spend 35 hours a week job searching and check in at the DHA office daily.

Three-quarters of participants received at least some services. More than half of participants—51 percent—attended at least one day of classes per week. On average, participants engaged in job search assistance services for 19 hours a week and independently searched for jobs for 14 hours a week. Participants who engaged in job search assistance, on average, engaged in job search assistance services for 27 hours a week and independently searched for jobs for 19 hours a week.

Intervention staff gave participants some flexibility. They rescheduled participants who did not show up for the beginning of classroom instruction to the next cohort and excused absences that were for good cause. Thirty-four percent of participants were sanctioned for not meeting the intervention’s participation requirements.

Comparison conditions

The study used a randomized controlled design that compared participants assigned to the Standard Job Club intervention to those assigned to the Fast Track Job Club. This intervention considers the Fast Track Job Club group as the comparison condition.

The Fast Track Job Club consisted of 28 hours of classroom instruction over 3.5 days, followed by up to 7 weeks of independent job search for 35 hours per week. The condensed classroom instruction focused solely on work readiness activities. After the classroom instruction, participants had access to the same services as Standard Job Club participants and were subject to the same requirements except for the frequency of check-ins, which were weekly for Fast Track Job Club participants (compared with daily for Standard Job Club). Standard Job Club and Fast Track Job Club participants received the same post-employment services and supportive services, and all were reassigned to another activity if not employed after eight weeks.

The proportion of Fast Track Job Club participants who took part in any activity was similar to the share of Standard Job Club participants who engaged. Moreover, among participants who engaged in job search assistance activities, the average number of hours spent each week in those activities was similar for Fast Track and Standard Job Club participants. Fast Track Job Club participants were also sanctioned for not meeting participation requirements at similar rates to Standard Job Club participants.

Partnerships

The study did not discuss any partners involved with implementing the Standard Job Club intervention or the Fast Track Job Club comparison group.

Staffing

The Standard Job Club had the following staff:

  • Human services specialists conducted intake and assessment, provided supportive services, and enforced sanctions.
  • Facilitators (three per sites) delivered the workforce readiness instruction and provided one-on-one support.
  • Job developers (one per site) worked one-on-one with participants to provide job search assistance and post-employment services. They also organized the weekly talks by employers. When applicable, they found subsidized placements for participants who were not employed at the end of the intervention.
  • Social workers (one per site) taught the one-week social skills course and worked one-on-one with participants as needed to provide supportive services.
  • Job Club supervisors (one per site) provided immediate oversight and ongoing technical assistance to staff.
  • County-level DHA administrator (one for both the intervention and comparison group) oversaw all sites and provided support.

Intervention staff received two days of training before the start of the intervention and received ongoing training through monthly team meetings and periodic refresher trainings. The study authors did not include information on staff degrees or certifications.

The Fast Track Job Club had the same positions, staffing levels, and staff training as the Standard Job Club. It was implemented at two CalWORKs offices not operating a Standard Job Club.

Fidelity measures

The study did not discuss any tools to measure fidelity to the intervention model.

Funding source

DHA delivered Standard Job Club and Fast Track Job Club as part of Sacramento’s CalWORKs program.

Cost information

The study did not discuss a cost per participant or a comparison of costs and benefits.

The information contained here reflects how the intervention was implemented at the time of the evaluation.

Local context

This intervention took place in Sacramento County, CA. The economy was strong at the time of the intervention, but the county unemployment rate was higher than the national rate, decreasing from 6.0 percent in 2015 to 4.6 percent in 2017. During the same period, the national unemployment rate went from 5.3 percent to 4.4 percent.

Characteristics of research participants
Black or African American
35%
White, not Hispanic
34%
Unknown or not reported
15%
Hispanic or Latino of any race
15%

The race and ethnicity categories may sum to more than 100 percent if the authors reported race and ethnicity separately; in these cases, we report the category White, rather than White, not Hispanic.

State(s) where implemented

AL AK AZ AR CA CO CT DE DC FL GA HI ID IL IN IA KS KY LA ME MD MA MI MN MS MO MT NE NV NH NJ NM NY NC ND OH OK OR PA RI SC SD TN TX UT VT VA WA WV WI WY Canada

The Pathways Clearinghouse refers to interventions by the names used in study reports or manuscripts. Some intervention names may use language that is not consistent with our style guide, preferences, or the terminology we use to describe populations.

Back to top