Travis County Commissioners Court
Tuesday, July 26, 2011 (Agenda)
Item 27
27.
receive update and take appropriate action on Travis County investments in workforce development.
good timing, ms. Flemming.
>> good afternoon, judge, Commissioners.
this item is before you today to give you an update on the ongoing evaluation that we have had underway on our workforce development investments.
approximately five to six years ago, the court infused additional resources into our workforce development program and along with that infusion of additional funds, we developed some new programming as well as entering into a relationship with the ray marshal center at the university of Texas to look at the impact of the investments that you make and if there is in fact a value-added to your investments in the area of workforce development.
so here with us today is of course dr. Chris king from the ray marshal center, and atkinson from workforce solutions, so I would -- I would yield to doctor king to present their report.
>> it's great to be back.
we'll keep this real short.
I think most of the messages are positive, keeping with the judge's request we'll give you positive news for the most part.
>> good.
>> so we did start in about 2006-2007, what we are doing looking primarily at labor market outcomes from the local investments.
there's about seven programs that get city and county money, the rapid employment model that's run by tamara and their staff at the local workforce board, so we are actually tracking the results from both of those.
so we're reporting back to you in reports and I'll -- I'll do a little show and tell here.
we have a couple of recent reports that we just released in April.
another one kind of in the can about to be released.
we reported back outcomes, we also do our best to gauge the value added, the net impact on those participating in the services.
so -- so we are also doing one more thing which will be out very soon and I'll mention that at the end of the presentation and that's we're actually going to the point of computing the return on investment from some of those services to try to give you a sense of are the return his from those impacts given the cost good.
so latest findings, for the early participants 2003 to 2006, in the local investments, we've seen gains in employment, earnings and also eligibility for unemployment insurance when we look before the program and after the program.
over time the share who are actually employed declines and that's normal in the labor market.
but those who retain their jobs actually have seen their earnings increase over time.
I think that's the kind of thing that we would like to see.
for the 2007-2008 participants, the more recent cohort, the strongest in the second quarter after they leave getting services.
one of the things that I would note, not all good news, the recession and kind of the sluggish recovery, we are seeing a dampening of the employment effects later on, so -- so it's a tough labor market out there.
and a lot of the folks that we're seeing being served by these programs are more disadvantaged than the typical participant in the labor market.
they are having to compete with a lot of people that probably weren't out there looking for jobs before.
for the rapid employment model participants from 2006 to 2008.
their employment also peaked in the second quarter after getting services.
fewer than half of them were employed six quarters out.
I should say these programs target a lot of truck driving and construction, one of the things that we know about those is when we go to try to measure their employment, using employment earnings data from the unemployment insurance system, there's lower coverage for those industry sectors than there is, say, in the labor market in general.
so some of that may just be the measurement that we've got.
so the rapid employment model participants basically show strong pre to post gains in earnings and ul eligibility.
that's go to the latest impacts.
for several of the cohorts we basically could not draw valid comparison groups, so we're not reporting impacts across the board and I won't go into all of the wherefores about that, but it's sometimes a difficult thing to pull a valid comparison group.
looking at the early cohort findings for six programs, we find that none had a significantly
>> [indiscernible] impact on earnings, goodwill's participants did have a strong impact on employment and they are dealing as you all know with a very tough population in general.
we've also done some independent work with them looking at their participation services and outcome.
if you look at Austin academy, goodwill and urban league, there were significant impacts on ui benefits, meaning they became eligible after participating for ui benefits, which is a good thing.
better protection, kind of the first tier safety net and they also were filing fewer claims relative to the comparison group.
that's also a good thing.
let's go to capital idea quickly.
capital idea, one of the only long-term training focused providers that are funded, basically we've been following their cohort since 2003-2008.
when you look three and a half years out for capital idea folks, their employment rate is about 76%, which is quite high, average quarterly earnings at about $7,300, which is admirable.
we also are able to draw a good comparison -- good comparison groups for those folks, and what we find is very large, statistically significant gains in quarterly employment, in ui benefits and average quarterly earnings, seven years after the program -- and this is -- we traditionally do these kind of evaluations, we don't get to measure them that long.
this is really a boon for us working with you all on this.
what we find is the difference, value added across all of their participants, including the completers, non-completers, is about $3,000 in earnings per quarter.
and there's a chart that we'll show you picture is worth a thousand words.
that gives you a sense of what this looks like.
the one thing that I point you to was this gap between the participants and the comparison group is actually widening over time and that last little bit you can see the comparison group that only got kind of minimal services, a little help with job search, their prospects, their earnings have actually dropped a little bit, whereas the ones in capital idea who got the enhanced training are actually showing an increase despite the recession.
so I think that we have a pretty nice model there and I'm sure steve jacobs and others may have some insights to offer that.
let me talk just very briefly.
we have some exploratory return on investment computations that we've been doing, using the earliest cohorts, we are looking at returns to the participants, returns to taxpayers and returns to society, I'm going to focus on the taxpayer returns, this is mainly measured by reduced welfare, increased taxes and so on.
so what we find is that measuring again over a period of quite some time, we see that that return, that the taxpayers return is recouped after a little more than eight years.
over the first 10 years, most of which we're measuring directly, we find that every dollar invest understand capital idea returns about $1.65.
if you do the computations for an annualized rate of return, that's about 9%.
if you look projecting it out over 20 years, which I think is valid given the kind of training that we're talking about, that goes up to about 17% annual return rate per year.
I don't know about you, but I would be happy if I had returns on my ira that looked like that.
next steps, we're going to move forward with the more recent cohorts with the local programs. We'll look at their outcomes, we'll try to measure their impacts.
we will also start following up the -- the gainful employment model participants that are being served by the local workforce board.
the other thing that we're going to try to do, we have another project that's underwriting a bit of this, we think that we have a way to get access to corrections data, so we will do our best to use the corrections data both to do better matches on our comparison groups, also to use that as one of the outcomes that we look at.
I know for the county's budget that would be something that you might be particularly interested in.
so wrapping up, one of the things that we can take away from this one is really focusing on getting people trained and into those middle skill jobs.
say a year of college credits plus some kind of a credential that's got worth in the labor market is a good strategy.
and we see that not just here, we see it around the country in other evaluations that are going on.
capital idea is a good example of this.
in fact offering even longer term training than that.
it's not cheap.
but as you see from the roi computations, it's effective and has good returns.
some of the other providers I think are also doing a very good job, serving a very disadvantaged population, so we shouldn't discount that as we look forward.
I think we need to do more work to kind of enhance those services with the other providers, pay attention to wrap around services, also -- also there's a need to get these people into that training pipeline quicker.
a lot of them have basic skills, deficiencies.
their approaches to doing adult basic ed english language learning that can be done, a.c.c.
I know has tried some of that, we're not funding it very well by and large in this country, much less here, but again to contextualize that learning, speed up the process of getting people where they can actually take advantage the training is a very -- very worthwhile strategy.
one other thing, I will tell you that we're doing some work at the ray marshal center around the country, we're exploring and we've designed a project in tulsa that's called a dual generation strategy.
so we're trying to be smarter about how we do investments.
we're actually serving the parents in a capital idea-like training program of the children who were in head start and early head start.
so we're doing our best to move up two generations at the same time and see if we can't catalyze better impacts, both for the kids and the parents over time.
so I think that I will leave it at that, be happy to answer any questions that you might have.
>> questions?
>> do you have a number of participants that were evaluated in the process in this?
>> ooh, for capital idea we're looking at -- numbers in the hundreds.
7, 800 I think participants over time.
for some of the local programs a wave might be 100 participants in this program.
maybe 50 to 75 in others.
the numbers are big enough that we feel pretty confident that the results that we're reporting at are valid.
>> I can put those numbers together and get those out to you later today.
>> when we do the evaluation, do we collect enough data to determine say for a given program what components are more successful than other parts of it?
>> I wouldn't say we've got enough data to actually do that.
and actually to pull that off, to sort out this component versus that, probably takes bigger samples and a lot more money than we're spending.
so looking at the differences between the programs which do have component differences, I think we get a sense of it, but it probably wouldn't stand up to my evaluation colleagues in terms of an evaluation design.
we've got some other work like that going on in education, actually, but it's pretty pricey.
>> tamara has some information from the rem program that's operated in her shop, can look at some difference between the different training components that we have there where that one is operated in terms of there are multiple different trainings options that are available to participants and can see some difference in terms of the employment
>> [indiscernible] again, not when you start parsing it down, the numbers aren't great, to be statistically significant, but we have some indication of what's worked.
part of how that program that we've helped pilot, helped them pilot over the years has changed over time, as we were looking very carefully at what training options are producing placement rates, prudence the kinds of earnings where he want -- producing the kinds of earnings that we want to see.
>> you know, there -- there's still I guess a great need.
thank for you what you are doing, I think that you're doing an outstanding job, especially when it comes to outreach and getting a lot of folks involved to improve their skills for employment opportunities.
I think that it's very critical all across the board.
of course diversity is something that we are also striving for is to make sure that the skill sets are in a diverse area and an example I think -- I think there are things out now that are saying that there are -- several vacancies that may be available in the diverse economy here now.
of course, trying to match the skill sets with persons out there that can do some of these things such as the condition -- just one dentistry assistant, a whole lot of other things that maybe available -- is really just trying to focus on it to make sure that those skills are acquired making sure that the diverse activity for those person that's are in need of employment opportunities are at hand.
I guess my question is more than I think Commissioner Huber is asking for, is how many -- what are the number of participants that we have in this program, I know capital idea has been around with us for a long, for a while.
but -- but there are other opportunities I think -- that are readily available, as far as letting folks know that there are some skill sets that can be acquired to help you gain -- be gainfully employed and so -- so I guess the question comes to my mind is what overall advertisement situation do you have to -- to allow folks to know about the program and of course as stated there, there's some vacancies all across employment opportunities readily at hand if the proper skill sets are acquired.
so can anyone maybe --
>> well, I think, Commissioner, that's what makes the partnership with workforce solutions such a good one.
>> exactly.
>> because they are well versed in the programs that the county as well as the city invest in.
so as people present in their system, it becomes a part of the menu of opportunities that they can direct our residents to, depending on how what their needs are and where they are in their job search and their skill development, et cetera.
so -- so that's what makes I think workforce solutions a really good partner for our initiative.
>> right.
so -- so just I guess as far as the outreach and stuff I guess that's what I'm really kind of concerned about is the availability folks knowing about the skill sets that can be acquired.
and coming on board to try to overcome their unemployment type situation especially in a diverse type of situation, this he is all not high tech, it's not all software deal.
there are a whole lot of other categories of employment opportunities that are available out there.
of course my question, though, is still the -- the outreach initiative is to make folks be aware of that type of -- of skill set opportunities, training opportunities and employment opportunities maybe readily available.
so I'm just kind of concerned about that a little bit.
>> well, I believe that certainly the agencies that we do business with do their outreach, capital idea, for example, sends out email notices when they are recruiting I guess is the word for their upcoming class and I know that they have come to our emergency assistance centers to talk about their programs. And what we sort of call waiting room sessions that we have with people who are waiting for other appointments.
so I feel confident that our partners, as well as workforce solutions, as a partner, is making sure that folks who need these services have an opportunity to engage with them.
I think workforce solutions is a good place to start because if there are unemployment insurance benefits that they're entitled to, we certainly want folks to have access to that resource while they are figuring out what their next step is.
and maybe let tamara jump in.
>> yeah, thank you.
>> thank you so much.
thank you very much for the opportunity to speak today.
you are absolutely right.
one of the keys is making sure that workforce solutions is not a secret in this community.
we want to make sure that people know about the services.
we, of course, have three career centers in Travis County and we're serving an average of 50,000 visitors a month.
>> could you give me a location of those career centers if you have that information available?
>> yes, sir.
>> the public needs to really know how significant that is, especially when you got -- well, go ahead.
>> absolutely, that's a very good question.
>> three centers, one in south Austin, it is at I 35 and ben white, behind the omni south hotel.
we have a location in south Austin.
we are co-located with Austin community college at their eastview campus, there off of webberville, that's our east location and then our third north location is just north of highland mall, that's our career center there in the old service merchandise building, just north of highland mall, easy access to Austin community college there as well as the east location as well.
so -- so again foot traffic averaging about 50,000 visitors a month, so we know the word is getting out about our services.
but we're not satisfied just with foot traffic coming into our centers.
board staff and contractor staff also representing workforce solutions are out in the community every day, every week, participating in planning meetings, working one on one with clients to -- to meet with clients in parter agencies, organizations, to talk to clients about our services, to ensure that they know about the variety of workforce services and as sherri said, we see ourselves almost as a clearinghouse for funding opportunities.
so when a client comes in, we don't label a client in terms of what program or funding that is -- that they are associated with, for example, we talk to the client about the client's needs for workforce development and if capital idea is a good match for that client, we will readily and happily make that referral to capital idea many times co-case managing the client with capital idea so that it's a -- we work together.
so we're working to find the appropriate service mix and provider mix to help clients be successful in their workforce development and whether that need is for an immediate job, they need a job yesterday or training, investing in training is an option for them and we'll work with them on that.
>> right.
are there any employers that are willing to -- to have -- do -- do they allow for maybe on-the-job training?
is -- is there any relationship with that?
sometimes, you know, the training dollars are -- are good to have.
but, you know, since there is a period -- appear to be a void, of vacancies out there for employment opportunities, are any of those employers also willing to allow on-the-job training.
>> I think that you read my notes here from today.
because I actually I have extensive notes from our executive director, allan miller, specifically about on-the-job training, that is a strategy that we see as being extremely viable and a good option for many of the clients that may have some areas maybe struggling with employment.
but you are exactly right.
there's a job opening and we have a way to incent an employer to provide an individual, a job opportunity, and use some of our training funds to offset wages and our reimbursement format through those employers.
you asked about some of the types of job opportunities from our experience we found that the types of jobs that fit well with on-the-job training would be office clerks, freight, stock, material handlers, shipping and receiving clerks, welders, hvac technicians, auto technicians, stock clerks, power line installers, telecommunication line installers, so we have a list of occupations that we have found historically and our data shows are good matches for the job training, we have additionally targeted specific employers that we've worked with historically, including brake check, quick lube, jiffy lube, auto zone, napa, o riley's, so on that absolutely have been open historically and continue to be open to on-the-job training opportunities.
>> okay.
here's what I wanted to -- listen to this presentation today, but they want to know how to get in touch.
there may be a person right now listening to us, say hey I need a job, I want to make sure that I get on board, get the skill set, on-the-job training, how would you get in touch with your organization?
>> the best way to get in touch with our organization, two ways, they can call us or check us out on the internet.
>> some folks don't have computers.
>> okay.
if they want to call us, they can call 512-597-7100.
597-7100.
and that's the main line and we'll make sure that they get in touch with someone that can talk to them about the options.
>> thank you very much.
>> thank you very much.
>> anything else?
>> I would just say in closing, judge, Commissioners, this has been a tremendous relationship that we've had with the ray marshal center in terms of being able to look at our programs over time, but also have them come with us as we launch the new program, the rapid employment model, and they've been able to give us great feedback along the way so we could make subtle changes in the program to make it more effective for the constituents that you have that need these services.
I thank dr. King and his staff, we really appreciate the information that they have provided us, I think it's valuable in terms of efficacy of the investments that you are making so I thank them and I thank you for your investment in this area.
>> thank you all.
>> thank you very much.
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