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In this chapter we present qualitative evidence of the perceived efficiency and cost-effectiveness of Labour Market Development Agreement (LMDA) programs and services, as well as objective measures of program efficiency based on a review of survey and administrative data related to the costs and number of successes for each of the different Employment Benefits and Support Measures (EBSMs).

Respondents to the qualitative components of the evaluation had few suggestions of how the efficiency and cost-effectiveness of LMDA programs and services could be improved. One government respondent, however, felt that although most third-party deliverers are good, the delivery of some generic services by some third-party agents may not be the most cost-effective means of delivering services because so little competition exists among delivery agents.

The relative cost of the various EBSMs was explored by analyzing administrative and survey data in conjunction with overall budget information for each EBSM to derive the average cost per intervention. The average cost per intervention was calculated by dividing the total actual²⁶ budget used for each EBSM in the 1998-99 fiscal year by the total number of interventions in the population of participants that occurred within this fiscal year.²⁷

As shown in Table 6.1, the average cost per intervention was highest for Training Purchases clients ($5,676), a figure which is far above the average cost per intervention for the Enhanced Feepayers program that replaced Training Purchases ($1,491) and which also had the lowest cost per intervention. This finding is consistent with expectations, as the primary distinction between Training Purchases and Enhanced Feepayers is that the latter program provides "negotiated financial assistance" to clients which usually results in a larger financial contribution to the cost of training on the part of the client. Another finding of note was the relatively high cost per intervention of the Targeted Wage Subsidy (TWS)²⁸ and Self-Employment (SE) programs compared to the Job Creation Partnerships (JCP) program ($4,906 and $4,534 versus $2,802, respectively). Once again, this finding is consistent with expectations based on the funding structure of the programs (TWS and SE programs are typically longer in duration).

Table 6.1 also shows the number of successes for each program on each of three measures of employment success: ever employed in the post-program period, employed 12 consecutive weeks in the post-program period, and employed at the time of the survey. These measures of success are presented in order from the least difficult to achieve (ever employed) to the most difficult (employed at time of survey); for most EBSMs (with the exception of TWS), the number of successes decreases with the difficulty of the employment outcome measure. Nonetheless, even with the most stringent measure of success, the majority of participants in all EBSMs were successful.

It should be noted that these analyses are restricted in so far as they provide only short-term information on the number of employment successes. The nature of some interventions (for example, Enhanced Feepayers, Training Purchases, etc.) is such that we would expect outcomes to manifest themselves over the longer term if the notion holds that participants are obtaining skills that will help their careers over time. In the case of Enhanced Feepayers, this program was already observed to be the least costly intervention and it is likely that the effectiveness of this intervention will be manifested over the longer-term. Thus, while these analyses provide a glimpse of program cost-effectiveness as it stands now, these results can be expected to change at the summative stage of the evaluation.

View Table 6.1

Footnotes

26	Actual budget refers to the total Part II funds that were spent on the EBSM, as opposed to the total Part II funds that were available to be spent on the EBSM.
27	Actual budget figures for each EBSM take into account all Part II funds used in the delivery of the program, including contracts, extensions to Employment Insurance claims and all allowances/payments that go directly to the clients.
28	It is important to note that the small number of TWS program respondents upon which these figures are based means that these results should be interpreted with caution.