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Key Findings

• There was measured progress in Employment Insurance (EI) claimants accessing Employment Benefits (Targeted Wage Subsidy [TWS], Self-Employment Assistance [SEA], Job Creation Partnership [JCP], Training). Over the period July 1996 to March 1998, there was a decline in the lapsed time between the establishment of EI benefit and commencement of an Employment Benefit and Support Measures (EBSM) intervention.
• Take-up of EBSM was spread across the key demographic groups. The demographic profile of clients varied among the EBSM components. Visible minority and disabled populations were under represented in comparison to their share of the unemployed in Ontario.
• The average proportion of active EI claimants and reachback was 80/20 percent. There is an absence of information on the reachback population to obtain a profile of take-up and participation for this important client group.

This chapter provides background on EBSM program components, resources and participation during the period covered by the evaluation. It also describes the profile of participants who used EBSM.

2.1 Program Description

The objectives of EBSM are to assist clients to find work, maintain employment² and reduce their dependence on insurance benefits and other income transfers. There are two types of unemployed clients who are eligible for EBSM:

• active EI claimants, i.e., those who are currently receiving EI benefits;
• previous EI claimants (referred to as reachback clients). Reachbacks comprise two groups of recent EI claimants, i.e., those who received EI benefits within the last three years but who are not currently in receipt of EI, or those who received maternity/paternity benefits within the last five years and are now seeking to re-enter the workforce.

The following are the five EBSMs delivered in Ontario Region and the base of this formative evaluation. These are briefly described in Appendix C:

• Targeted Wage Subsidy (TWS);
• Self-Employment Assistance (SEA);
• Job Creation Partnership (JCP);
• Training Purchases; and
• Employment Assistance Services (EAS).

Local Labour Market Partnerships (LLMP) is another support measure. This program provides resources to enhance community capacity in the labour market area. Projects funded under LLMP include, for example, labour market/economic research, community planning and conferences.

In Ontario, as in other regions, the Human Resources Development Canada (HRDC) principle of local accountability means varied service delivery across the province. Examples of different approaches to service delivery are direct delivery by federal staff in the Human Resources Centre of Canada (HRCCs), of which there are 30 principal and secondary office sites in Ontario; contracted service delivery agreements as in EAS, where services are delivered on-site at the HRCC or off-site by third parties; and collocation of service delivery with other provincial, municipal government or community-based organizations.

Exhibit 2.1 presents total Human Resource Investment Fund (HRIF) expenditures to fiscal year 1997/98 by program. Training purchases represent the largest proportion of expenditures — almost 30 percent and a further four percent of funds were dedicated to feepayers.

There was a great deal of variation of expenditures at the HRCC level. For example, the proportion of funds devoted to EAS at the regional level overall is 19 percent. However, for individual HRCCs, this percentage is as low as four percent and as high as 71 percent.

Similarly, for training, the proportion of expenditures ranges from 5 to 72 percent. This variation attests to the principle of local flexibility built into EBSM delivery and with it importance of local business planning (referred to in Chapter 3).

Cost per participant shows a considerable variation across program components. This variation is not surprising given the differences in objective and design among the benefits and measures. Self-Employment Benefit (SEB) and JCP, considered the most resource intensive EBSM benefits, had the highest cost per participant at between $ 11,800 and $ 10,800. The EAS support, measure, associated with the least intensive support, had the lowest cost per client at $545. At the time of the evaluation, calculation and reporting of these unit costs was limited by Management Information System (MIS) capacities and the availability of data that consistently identified the number of clients against specific activities and services received.³ For this reason, the use of cost per client measures (and as well, cost per client result measures) as a management tool is limited at both the regional and HRCC level.

2.2 Program Activity

As noted above, the evaluation focused on the activities of participants who "terminated" an EBSM intervention between January 1, 1997 and March 31, 1998. The following descriptions of activity and client profile therefore reflects clients who terminated. It is expected that the distributions are similar for 1997/98 New Starts.

Exhibit 2.2 describes the pattern of program participation based on the administrative data for the entire population of participants. According to these data, all EBSMs are being used in Ontario. Considering only case-managed clients, by far the most common intervention among EBSM participants was training (including feepayers); 62 percent of clients participated in training programs during the period under study. Participation rates in each of the TWS, JCP and SEA were low (six percent of the participants). When short-term group session participants are included in the program profile, the percentages shift dramatically given the significant size of this group. EAS now represents the majority of EBSM participants at 73 percent.

The following are characteristics of participants' program activity:

• Just over one-third of clients (34 percent) were reported to have committed to an action plan.
• On average, EBSM participants started their (first) intervention 19 weeks into their EI claim. This figure was higher for SEA and TWS participants and slightly lower for EAS.
• Those who started their program later in the period under study (i.e., after March 31, 1997) had a quicker entry into their program compared to those who participated earlier (16 versus 20 weeks).
• SEA was by far the intervention having the longest duration, at 35 weeks. Case-managed EAS clients had the shortest intervention (two weeks on average).
• The majority of EBSM clients participated in one intervention only.

2.3 Profile of EBSM Participants

The profile of participants indicates that there are important differences in the kinds of individuals who participate in different EBSMs. Differences are partially explained by the focus of the intervention on specific clients as in the case of SEA and JCP. However, limited administrative data collected on client characteristics to monitor participation would also suggest these profiles also reflect random take-up. Difference among the programs include:

SEA Participants

• are drawn from the more established portion of HRDC's clientele, that is participants are older, are more likely to have an established household and family and have a stronger educational profile and labour market history than other participants;
• males account for a greater share of participants, while equity groups comprise a lower share;
• prior to becoming unemployed, these participants held stable, well-paying jobs;
• participants used EI or social assistance less in the past than their counterparts in other programs.

JCP Participants

• represent a younger clientele;
• higher representation of equity group members and Francophones;
• despite a relatively strong educational profile, this group exhibits a weak prior attachment to the labour force with prior employment concentrated in seasonal or causal/contract positions with lower earnings and income;
• reachback clients are overrepresented in this group.

TWS Participants

• represent younger, less established portion of HRDC's clientele;
• weaker educational profile and labour market history compared to participants in other programs;
• most likely to have been on social assistance prior to program participation and reachback clients are overrepresented.

EAS Participants

• The only distinguishing characteristic for EAS participants was that females comprise a larger share than males.

Training Participants

Given the preponderance of participants in Training, there is also relatively little to distinguish this group from the overall client profile. However, compared to other program participants, training participants were:

• less likely to be on social assistance and not surprisingly;
• indicate a higher interest in entering a training or education program prior to their intervention.

Short-Term Group Session Participants

• have a larger share of males compared to EBSMs overall;
• have comparatively lower-levels of education.

To gauge take-up of EBSM by the eligible population the socio-demographic profile of EBSM participants was compared to the overall unemployed population.⁵ The socio-demographic profile of EBSM participants differs from that of the overall unemployed in that (case managed) EBSM participants have a higher proportion of females and participants have higher education. The age distribution of EBSM participants reasonably parallels that of the unemployed (adjusting for the fact that the EBSM target and EI and Reachback target population have proportionately fewer youth then the general population). The participation of equity groups in EBSM is below that of the group's share of the unemployed in Ontario, particularly for visible minority and disabled clients.

The EI claimant to reachback ratio was 80 percent to 20 percent.⁶ The majority of reachback clients had received EI within one year prior to their EBSM intervention. In terms of program participation, reachback clients are under-represented among training and EAS participants and are more likely to have participated in programs involving job placements such as JCP or TWS.

The reachback group in Ontario appears highly heterogeneous, and as a result no clear image of this group emerges from the data. The group appears variously composed of youth, homemakers re-entering the labour market, social assistance recipients, EI exhaustees and those who are under-employed or in poor jobs and looking to improve their employment situation. Women are somewhat over-represented in the reachback group. Compared to EI claimants, reachback clients have less recent employment experience and also have lower earnings and have relied more on EI and social assistance benefits in the past.

Footnotes

2	The terms "found work" and "maintain employment" also encompass self-employment.
3	For example, EAS funds a variety of services where the number of participants and the specific program they used are either not captured or are not easily extracted from administrative files.
4	Terminations up to February 28, 1999 for Short-Term Group Sessions.
5	Contrasting EBSM clients with the unemployed population is used as a proxy measure of take-up. The ideal comparison would be with the target population — EI and reachback. A profile of the target population is restricted by the limited client characteristics retained on HRDC administrative systems for EI claimants and the challenge of inferring a current reachback profile from Statistics Canada's Labour Force survey.
6	EI claimants here are defined as those who received an intervention during their EI claim. If the start date or end date of any intervention received by the participant during the time period under study fell within an EI claim, the individual was defined to be an EI claimant.