An Impact Evaluation of ReHire Colorado

ReHire Colorado is an enhanced transitional jobs program administered by the Colorado Department of Human Services (CDHS) that pairs access to subsidized employment with wraparound case management services. The program places participants in temporary jobs with local employers and pays the full cost of their wages for up to 30 weeks. Case managers are encouraged to match participants to jobs they believed were especially well-suited for the individual, with the explicit goal of having successful participants transition to unsubsidized employment with the host-site employer after program exit. ReHire also provides financial assistance to address other barriers (e.g. lack of transportation or lack of a required certification) and offers coaching toward new career opportunities and preparation of job application materials. The program has been operating at scale in multiple counties since January 2014, and it recruits and serves a diverse set of participants—eligibility requires only Colorado residency, legal authorization to work in the US, an ability to pass a drug test, household income below 150 percent of the poverty line, and being unemployed or underemployed for at least four consecutive weeks. From July 2015 through December 2018, program access was allocated randomly among recruited applicants on a rolling basis.

2015-07-01

2018-12-31

employment, earnings

Quarterly employment and earnings measured in UI wage records. Aggregate outcomes into an in-program period (Q0-Q4) and post-program period (Q5-Q8), where Q0 is the calendar quarter during which an individual applied to ReHire and was randomized. Construct 5 main outcomes: indicator for any employment during the period, employment rate during the period, indicator for having worked in every quarter during the period, average quarterly earnings during the period, share of quarters in which earnings exceeded 130% of the federal poverty line during the priod

SNAP and TANF receipt, employment measured in 18-month follow-up survey, domain indices from follow-up survey (job quality, well-being, employment barriers, workplace behaviors, expectations about future), and indices for in-program and post-program credit outcomes from administrative credit data from Experian

Monthly SNAP/TANF receipt measured in administrative data from Colorado Benefits Management System. Aggregate outcomes into in-program (M0-M12) and post-program (M13-M24) periods, where M0 is the month in which an individual applied and was randomized. Construct 3 outcomes for each program in each period: indicator for any benefit receipt during the period, share of months during the period with any benefit receipt, and average monthly benefit received during the period.

Follow-up survey domains constructed from outcomes measured in attached survey instrument.

Applicants were randomly assigned to either a treatment group who received access to ReHire-funded services or a control group who continued to receive usual workforce services. To ensure that the treatment and control groups were well-balanced across sites and that case workers had a steady workflow, randomization was stratified at the service agency level (and for a couple of agencies by rural and urban areas within the service agency to allow the randomization probability to be higher in the rural areas), and the randomization method ensured that treatment and control assignments were balanced over small sets of arriving applicants. The probability of treatment was set to 50 percent at the start of the RCT and was adjusted to be as high as 66 percent for service agencies in rural areas and during time periods where enrollment was low.

A list of daily applicants was constructed by program staff in the CDHS office. Each applicant was assigned a sequential program ID the moment their record was created. CDHS staff sent the list of newly created IDs to the research team. Within the next business day after program application, treatment assignments were assigned to each ID based on a random sequence of 0s and 1s. Applicants were separated by site and slotted into the next available 0 or 1 in the sequence in the order of their program ID (i.e., their order of appearance in the database). The list of IDs and treatment assignments were then sent to CDHS. Based on their assignment, the central office program staff then toggled the treatment status in the program database for each applicant, which alerted the local program staff of the treatment determination and sent an email to the applicant regarding their treatment assignment and available next steps.

Individual

No

2496

2496

Treatment = 1385
Control = 1111

Assuming 80% power, 5% alpha, Nc=1,111, Nt=1,385 Quarterly Employment (Q5-Q8): MDE=5.64pp (c.g. mean=0.486) Quarterly Earnings (Q5-Q8): MDE=$350 (c.g. mean=2,354 / sd=3,102)

Evaluation Progress Update - April 2015