What Works to Improve Employment and Earnings for People with Low Incomes

People who run programs for job seekers with low incomes need evidence of the interventions and strategies that can help their clients succeed in the labor market. Others need this evidence, too – including those making decisions on how to best allocate public resources and those seeking to expand the existing knowledge base.

The Pathways Clearinghouse identifies interventions that aim to improve employment outcomes, reduce employment challenges, and support self-sufficiency for people with low incomes. The Pathways Clearinghouse systematically evaluates and summarizes the evidence of its effectiveness through a research synthesis that uses rigorous quantitative techniques known as meta-analysis and meta-regression.

The meta-analysis allowed the researchers to investigate:
(1) What works? What interventions improve the employment and earnings of people with low incomes?
(2) For whom? Do the interventions work best for particular groups of people with low incomes? If so, which groups?
(3) Under what circumstances? In what contexts do interventions appear to be most successful?

Policymakers, practitioners, and researchers can use this report to understand the overall evidence on interventions' effectiveness, for whom interventions work best, and which intervention and context features are related to intervention success.

(The report is 18 pages long.)

The researchers identified the following findings:

• On average, the interventions assessed by the Pathways Clearinghouse improved outcomes.
• Interventions had the most significant effects on short-term employment and education or training attainment.
• The improvement in outcomes was, on average, equivalent to an increase in earnings of about $1,000 per year.
• Twenty-nine of 144 individual interventions show evidence of improving participants' average outcomes.
• Most other interventions resulted in a positive direction, but these results were not statistically significant.
• The Pathways Clearinghouse classified interventions according to the primary service they offered. Interventions in four service categories improved outcomes: education and training, work and work-based learning, employment services, and incentives and sanctions.
• The largest effects were found among interventions focused on education and training, work or work-based learning, and employment services. On average, these interventions improved earnings by about $1,400, $1,300, and $1,200 per year, respectively.
• Interventions that focused on case management or other supports or helping workers maintain employment did not improve outcomes, on average.
• The Pathways Clearinghouse also classified interventions based on all services offered using 26 common employment and training services. Several specific services were associated with larger intervention effects, especially transitional jobs, occupational or sectoral training, subsidized employment, education opportunities, soft-skills training, and work experience.
• Interventions had larger effects when participation in services was voluntary and when an intervention was implemented by a private provider (such as a nonprofit).
• Interventions tested in samples in which a greater share of participants identified as Black or Hispanic had smaller effects on employment.
• Other characteristics of study participants, including gender, educational attainment, and eligibility for cash assistance, were not associated with intervention success.

• Last Updated:
• Created:
• Resource Publication Date: 2022
• Author(s): Streke, A; Rotz, D.
• Funding Source: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families (ACF)
• Resource Availability: Publicly available
• Posted by: Wesley Peterson
• Posted in: Workforce System Strategies