Identifying the impacts of job training programs in California

Every year, over a million Californians receive workforce support and training from state and federally funded programs. In an efort to learn more about the impact of these programs and to improve them, an inter-agency partnership led by the California Workforce Development Board (CWDB) created Cross-System Analytics and Assessment for Learning and Skills Attainment (CAAL-Skills). The CAALSkills partnership facilitates data-sharing across seven California state agencies that deliver thirteen workforce programs. Bringing this data together signifcantly improves the state’s ability to observe who is enrolled in these programs and makes it possible, for the frst time, to measure the impacts these programs have on participants’ employment and earnings.This policy brief highlights fndings from the frst causal study to estimate the impacts of ten training programs that report to CAAL-Skills, performed by the California Policy Lab at the University of California. The causal impact measures the efect of receiving training on participants’ employment and earnings, relative to what those same workers would have experienced without training. Training participants are compared to matched individuals with similar demographic and earnings histories who did not receive training, and the impact of training is measured as the diference between the trainees’ outcomes and their matched “twins.” This strategy successfully identifes training impacts for most of the training programs. However, there are a few programs — particularly those that serve distinctive populations with specifc employment barriers, such as Vocational Rehabilitation programs — for which the strategy is not successful at identifying valid comparisons. Of the ten programs that provide training, there was evidence on causal impact estimates available for six programs, suggestive evidence on impacts for two programs, and no evidence available for two programs. Full methodological details and fndings, along with improved research options for all programs and the CAAL-Skills partnership are detailed in the report.This work has been supported, in part, by the University of California Multicampus Research Programs and Initiatives grants MRP-19-600774 and M21PR327