Los Angeles County Transitional Subsidized Employment Program—On-the-Job Training (OJT) (as compared with Paid Work Experience (PWE))

At the time this evaluation occurred, two Transitional Subsidized Employment programs were active in Los Angeles County: OJT and a paid work experience (PWE) program. OJT placed participants in a partially subsidized, six-month position at a for-profit, private-sector organization, where they were paid $8 an hour by the local Workforce Investment Board (WIB) for the first two months. The intervention aimed to have participants make the transition into unsubsidized positions with the same employer when the subsidy ended. The average placement lasted two and a half months.

TANF recipients who were not exempt from TANF work requirements were referred to Greater Avenues for Independence (GAIN), the county’s welfare-to-work program. (Work requirement exemptions could be due to having very young children, having a disability, or caring for an ill or disabled person.) Participants who were not able to find unsubsidized work during their four-week job search under GAIN were recruited for Transitional Subsidized Employment if they met the following additional criteria: (1) able to work the hours required by OJT or PWE; (2) had at least five months of TANF eligibility remaining; (3) did not participate in Transitional Subsidized Employment in the last year; (4) did not have major employment barriers; and (5) had demonstrated to staff that they could and wanted to work (assessed by staff in various ways across locations). OJT was offered in Los Angeles County, CA.

This evaluation of OJT also analyzes the PWE model, and a comparison of OJT versus PWE. The effectiveness of OJT when compared with the PWE indicates the effect of being referred to a set of services that includes those unique to OJT; the comparison indicates how much better the offer of OJT meets participants’ needs than the offer of PWE. The Workforce Investment Board only paid participants’ wages for the first two months of each OJT job placement, compared to all six months of each PWE placement; this meant that, starting in the third month, employers had to add OJT participants to their payroll and would receive a partial subsidy PWE participants were placed in the nonprofit and public sectors, whereas OJT participants were placed in the for-profit sector. Unlike PWE participants, those in OJT could not receive wages for any time spent searching for jobs, nor did they have access to job search assistance from case managers. The evaluation of OJT as compared with PWE also tested OJT and PWE separately, compared with other services available in the community.