Effectiveness of Employment-Related Programs for Youth

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Introduction
Profile
General Lessons Learned
Programs for In-School Youth
Programs for Out-of-School Youth
Program Implementation and Evaluation

Introduction

This study is part of the Lessons Learned series produced by Human Resources Development Canada (HRDC). The series uses previous evaluations and research findings to identify what works and what does not in the development of public policies and programs.

This particular study summarises and updates what we have learned about employment-related programs for youth over the period 1977 to 1995. The new Youth Employment Strategy launched by the federal government in February 1997, used the information produced for this report in its design.

Profile

Where once a university degree virtually guaranteed a steady, middle-class income, we can now point to a large number of unemployed or underemployed graduates. Also, where once a strong back and a will to work guaranteed steady employment for the less-educated, these people now find themselves in low-paid, high-turnover service sector jobs. While it is true that young people have always faced the formidable challenge of discovering their capabilities and skills, they must now also try and guess as to which skills will still be in demand in the future.

In comparison with adults, youth have had lower labour force participation rates and higher unemployment rates and as anticipated, during the last recession we saw the gap in unemployment rates grow between these two groups. However, what is troubling is the fact that the gap has failed to close in the post-recession period. Upon closer examination, there are two relatively new features of youth labour markets that are emerging — the increased volatility of employment and increased underemployment.

General Lessons Learned

1. Educational attainment is correlated with labour market success.

Over the past 15 years, high-school drop-outs are increasingly worse off while those who have higher degrees are increasingly better-off. The reason for this is that the skills learned in school are vocationally relevant and because the possession of higher degrees is seen by employers as implying the possession of other qualities – intelligence, motivation, persistence, and the capacity for hard work – that are also useful in the labour market.

2. Even when programs produce positive results, their impacts are generally modest in size.

This does not mean that programs are not worthwhile. Programs may still be cost-effective and may play a crucial role in turning around the lives of particular young people.

3. The needs of young people are many and varied.

Therefore, no single intervention can be expected to deal with the whole range of problems. This heterogeneity of client needs means that what works for some people will not work for others. In examining program effectiveness, attention needs to be paid to variations among sub-groups.

4. Most effective programs provide sustained adult contact.

The key factors are that there be ongoing contact with an adult over an extended period of time and that it includes elements of monitoring, as well as support. The overall goal is to provide the participants with structure and the motivation to do well.

5. The modest program impacts mentioned can result from two very different targeting strategies.

When designing a program, it is necessary to decide whether it is more important to provide broad coverage or to provide help to those who need it the most. In the case of the former, a program can make a modest impact in the lives of many people whose employment problems are not too serious. In the case of the latter, those persons who face multiple barriers to employment, the average impact may still be modest, after taking into consideration those who drop out or those who fail despite the more intensive intervention. Thus, the overall impact of the two programs will be similar, despite their different foci.

6. The most effective strategy would be one that is multi-faceted.

For disadvantaged youth, any program needs to combine a training component with strong links to the employer community. For the most disadvantaged, job search assistance and wage subsidies may be needed.

7. It is important to intervene as soon as possible when youth drop out of school.

The later the intervention, the greater likelihood that the self-reinforcing dynamics of low education, few skills, chronic unemployment, poverty, welfare dependency, and declining self-esteem will make the problem almost insurmountable.

8. Better preparation will help youth obtain and retain employment – but only if jobs exist.

Supply-side measures, on their own, cannot solve youth labour market problems. Parallel strategies on the demand-side, to ensure the availability of and access to employment opportunities, must be part of any coherent set of labour market policies. In this respect, government needs to engage the private sector in the provision of job opportunities for youth.

Programs for In-School Youth

School-based programs are an attempt to focus on prevention rather than remediation. The principal source of labour market preparation for young people remains the school system. As it is known that people with more education do better than those with less, the most effective strategies reviewed here are built around keeping people in school. In addition, using the mainstream education system as much as possible is more efficient than building alternate program delivery infrastructures to deal with youth after they drop out.

While these programs aim at keeping students in school, they also try to build bridges to the work world as part of the academic lives of these same students, keeping a particular eye on those students not destined for post-secondary education. In general, two broad approaches have been used:

efforts to raise the high school graduation rate, by helping students with poor academic performance and providing alternative curricula (particularly with a labour market focus); and
efforts to provide work experience to students to improve their transitions to work when they leave school.

Help With Academic Performance

In general, programs that are designed to provide on-going help during the school year have been particularly successful in increasing the graduation rate among disadvantaged youth. On the other hand, programs that provide remedial assistance during the summer have produced short-term gains but have not had much impact on their graduation rates or on their subsequent employment.

Alternative Work-Oriented Curricula

Implementing alternative, labour-market-focused curricula has produced mixed results. While there are no rigorous Canadian studies of this approach, the US experience demonstrates that the inclusion of work elements can either reinforce the value of schooling or it can reinforce the notion of work as a substitute for school. These approaches tend to be more successful with young women, with them benefiting from the program while staying in school.

School-To-Work Transition Programs

In Canada, experience is based on specific transition programs, usually small in scale when compared to the European apprenticeship experience which is more a combination of basic education and vocational preparation. Nevertheless, when looking at the Canadian co-operative experience, the evidence suggests that the effectiveness of such programs, at both the secondary and post-secondary levels, in significantly affecting the employment and earnings of participants relates directly to the quality of job experiences that are provided. Thus, the key is to provide young people with experiences which will be valued in the full-time labour market.

Programs for Out-of-School Youth

Once a student has dropped out of school, the evidence indicates that the earlier an intervention occurs, the better. In the US, programs that have focused on severely-disadvantaged youth have had mixed results. Those that were intensive and somewhat expensive have had modest success while cheaper and less intensive programs have had little or no impact. Canadian programs for out-of-school youth generally have not focused on a severely-disadvantaged clientele. The few that have, have had disappointing results as well. It is in large part due to these results that a renewed interest has been placed on prevention , using school-based programs, as opposed to relying on remedial approaches. Nevertheless, once young people have left school, six general approaches have been used.

Job Search Assistance

These programs do seem to be able to accelerate the process of finding a job. Although they do nothing to better prepare youth to participate and advance in the labour market, these programs are relatively inexpensive to operate, and they are usually cost-effective since even modest benefits offset their costs.

Work Experience (Job Creation) Projects

The experience gained from these programs is that they generally produce disappointing long-term results. What has become clear over time is that just any job does not work. What is needed, is meaningful employment in growth sectors.

Wage Subsidy Programs

Wage subsidies can increase the probability that disadvantaged people will be hired to fill available jobs. On the other hand, there is little evidence that wage subsidy programs increase the number of jobs available. Therefore, those who are hired will, for the most part, simply displace others who would have been hired without the program. However, such a redistribution of job opportunities may be justified on equity grounds.

Self-Employment Assistance

In general, qualitative studies have pointed out the importance of combining financial assistance with other types of support. In Canada, there is limited experience with such programs that specifically target youth. However, the limited experience with the Student Business Loans suggests that a selectively applied program, operated in co-operation with the private sector, can stimulate young people's interest in entrepreneurial activities.

Training Programs

The evidence suggests that well-designed training programs can make a difference. However, the increases in the employment and earnings of trainees will likely be modest, particularly for young men and the disadvantaged. Also, training is much more effective when combined with other services. It should be noted that the benefits from training take time to appear and may accrue slowly. As such, without a sufficiently long follow-up period, such programs are unlikely to appear to be cost-effective.

Not surprisingly, training programs are most likely to be successful when they are focused on skills in demand. Admittedly, this is not easy to do as skill needs change rapidly over time. Consequently, it may be difficult to anticipate requirements with any degree of precision where lengthy training periods are involved.

Return to School

Given the importance of education to employability and lifetime earnings, an obvious strategy for helping high school drop-outs is to help them go back to school. While evidence suggests that high school academic upgrading on its own produces little in the way of employment and earnings gains, a high school diploma can provide additional options since so many other programs require a diploma as a prerequisite. And of course, it permits entry to post-secondary education which does increase subsequent employment and earnings.

Program Implementation and Evaluation

The evidence from evaluation studies suggests that putting effective programs in place is not easy. The variation in impacts across similar programs that have been implemented in different places and at different times indicates that programs are not easy to set up, operate, and maintain over time. A good program design, on its own, is no guarantee of success. In addition, the variability of results may also reflect differences in economic environments. Thus, a program may be a success in one labour market context but a failure in another.

Finally, conducting research to determine what works is also not an easy matter. Well-designed program evaluations require the collection of a great deal of information over a considerable period of time. Constraints in terms of time, money, and data availability can result in program impact evaluations that are weaker than one would like to see.

Last Modified: 2000-03-20	Important Notices