The Promises of Summer Youth Employment Programs: Lessons from Randomized Evaluations

Early employment experiences can offer young adults vital opportunities for personal growth and a chance to establish foundational skills for the working world. Unfortunately, youth from low-income households are more likely to face challenges entering the labor market and to be unemployed than peers from higher-income households. Policymakers can use summer youth employment programs (SYEPs) to help youth to access positive early employment experiences. SYEPs are municipal programs that provide qualifying youth and young adults ages 14 to 24, often from households with low incomes, with a paid, part-time job and related supplemental services during the summer months. Rigorous research discussed throughout this evidence review shows that participating in an SYEP can benefit youth during and beyond the summer.

As policymakers strive to find ways to support youth in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, summer youth employment programs are an evidence-based option with the potential to improve the lives of young people in outcome areas as diverse as employment and earnings, criminal justice involvement (rates of arrest, arraignments, and probability of conviction and incarceration), education, and youth development.

Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) North America’s SYEP evidence review presents findings from thirteen randomized evaluations of programs across four major US cities and highlights key takeaways for policymakers.

(This report is 21 pages in length.)

The report offered the following findings:

• SYEPs have consistently been shown to provide employment and additional income to youth who would otherwise have difficulty finding a job during the program summer.
• There is little evidence to suggest that SYEPs improve formal sector employment outcomes beyond the summer for the average participant, but they may have positive impacts on subsets of participants.
• Adding new components to SYEP may lead to improvements in labor outcomes, though more research is needed to maximize the benefits and minimize undesirable effects on education outcomes.
• SYEPs reduced arrest rates during the program summer in all evaluated sites. This reduction also persisted at least one year later in most sites.
• Participation in SYEPs can lower the number of arraignments in the months after program participation and the probability of being convicted of a crime during the program summer.
• Participation in SYEPs can reduce youth's likelihood of incarceration during and following the program summer.
• SYEPs save lives by reducing deaths from external causes.
• There is mixed evidence on the potential of SYEPs to improve educational outcomes. On average, those who benefited academically from SYEPs were youth of legal dropout age and those with a higher rate of school absences prior to program participation.

The report did not offer any recommendations.

• Last Updated:
• Created:
• Resource Publication Date: 2022
• Author(s): Li, Y., Jackson-Spieker, K.
• Resource Availability: Publicly available
• Posted by: Wesley Peterson
• Posted in: Workforce System Strategies