Wisconsin Reemployment Services and Eligibility Assessment Program: Second Annual Evaluation Report

This interim evaluation report describes Wisconsin’s Reemployment Services and Eligibility Assessment (RESEA) program and presents implementation findings. RESEA is the largest job search assistance intervention targeting Unemployment Insurance (U.I.) claimants. The program requires services-eligible U.I. claimants to complete an online job readiness assessment and, using the assessment results, identifies claimants who are likely to benefit from job search services.

The evaluation studied RESEA across two studies: a randomized controlled trial study to estimate the impacts of the program on participants’ U.I. receipt and employment outcomes and a process study to assess the program implementation and provide context for interpreting findings.

Between April 2022 and September 2023, the study team measured program impacts on three groups:
• RESEA group: required to schedule and participate in an initial RESEA session; not required to schedule or complete subsequent sessions.
• RESEA+ group: required to participate in the initial RESEA session and a follow-up session.
• Control group: no requirements.

(This report is 48 pages long.)

Major Findings and Recommendations

“Formal analysis of program impacts provides promising preliminary evidence about the effects of the Wisconsin RESEA program” (p.42).
• “Comparisons of service take-up rates across the RESEA, RESEA+, and control groups show that the program was effective in pushing UI claimants to receive services” (p.42).
• “RESEA and RESEA+ claimants had shorter UI durations and collected lower benefit amounts than control claimants” (p.42).
• “The program reduced average UI duration by 0.69 weeks, leading to an average $237 in UI savings per participant” (p.42).
• “The program reduced the likelihood of exhausting benefits by 0.9 percentage points” (p.42).

These report findings are not final; data collection continues through the end of the project in August 2025. The findings will be updated in later iterations of the report.

• Last Updated:
• Created:
• Resource Publication Date: 2023
• Author(s): Michaelides, M.; Mueser, P.; Poe-Yamagta, E.; David, S.
• Resource Availability: Publicly available
• Posted by: Burak Yuksel
• Posted in: Workforce System Strategies