State UI job search rules and reemployment services

Monthly Labor Review

Volumn 129, Issue 6, 2006, Pages 27-37

  O'Leary, Christopher J ^a  

^a WE Upjohn Institute for Employment Research   (United States)

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EID: 33746131570     PISSN: 00981818     EISSN: 00981818     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Article

References (31)

1. NASWA conducted a survey of State unemployment insurance job search policies in 2003. Responses were received from all 50 States and two other jurisdictions: the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico. (The survey did not include the Virgin Islands, which also has a UI program.) All 52 of the responding jurisdictions will be called "States" in this article. The full report on the NASWA survey is presented in Christopher J. O'Leary, ui Work Search Rules and Their Effect on Employment, report prepared for the Center for Employment Security Education and Research (Washington, DC, NASWA, February 2004); on the Internet at www.workforceatm.org/sections/pdf/2004/UI_Work_Search.pdf.
2. An earlier version of the current article appeared as Christopher J. O'Leary and Stephen A. Wandner, "Do Job Search Rules and Reemployment Services Reduce Insured Unemployment?" Upjohn Institute Staff Working Paper No. 05-112 (Kalamazoo, MI, W. E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research, 2005).
3. The period during which participants are entitled to regular benefits can be as long as 30 weeks (in Massachusetts and Washington State), depending on the person's recent employment and earnings.
4. The consensus estimate is that a 10-percent increase in the wage replacement rate provided by ui would increase the insured duration of joblessness by about 1 week. For a summary of research on this issue, see Paul T. Decker, "Work Incentives and Disincentives," in Christopher J. O'Leary and Stephen A. Wandner, eds., Unemployment Insurance in the United States: Analysis of Policy Issues (Kalamazoo, MI, W. E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research, 1997), pp. 285-320.
5. See Wayne Vroman and Stephen Woodbury, Trend and Cycle of Unemployment Insurance and the Employment Service, eta Occasional Paper 2005-04, December 2004, pp. 21-24; on the Internet at wdr.doleta.gov/reports/ searcheta/occ.
6. Colorado was the first State to switch from in-person to telephone taking of claims, beginning in April 1991. The U.S. Department of Labor did not decide to support such automated claims taking until June 1995, when it issued the following policy position: "The Department believes that SESAS [State employment security agencies] should move toward fully implementing telephone claims taking or other electronic methods of filing..." (See Unemployment Insurance Program Letter 35-95.) The Department began awarding grants for converting to telephone claims in 1996 and to Internet claims in 1998.
7. The preceding information is from the U.S. Department of Labor's ui Information Technology Support Center (ITSC) and is on the Internet at www.itsc.org/info_tech/infotech.asp.
8. See Comparison of State Unemployment Insurance Laws 2004 (U.S. Department of Labor, 2004), pp. 5-20, 5-23.
9. Burman Skrable, "Fraud, Abuse, and Errors in the Unemployment Insurance System," in O'Leary and Wandner, Unemployment Insurance in the United States, pp. 423-53.
10. See U.S. Department of Labor, "Selected National Public Labor Exchange Data: National Summary," on the Internet at www.uses.doleta.gov/arp01/appsus.asp.
11. Two early studies that evaluated the effectiveness of counseling provided by the public labor exchange are Jacob Benus, Arden Hall, Patty Gwartney-Gibbs, Marilyn Coon, Caren Cole, Diane Leeds, and Douglas Brent, The Effectiveness of Counseling in the U.S. Employment Service: A Pilot Study (U.S. Department of Labor, 1977);
12. and Terry R. Johnson, C. Eric Muson, Samuel Weiner, Asi Cohen, Marilyn L. Coon, and Susan E. McNicoll, Findings from a Survey of the U.S. Employment Service Counseling Program (U.S. Department of Labor, 1981).
13. Both studies found "no significant impact of counseling on duration of unemployment, earnings or job satisfaction" (David Balducchi, Terry R. Johnson, and R. Mark Gritz, "The Role of the Employment Service," in O'Leary and Wandner, Unemployment Insurance in the United States, pp. 457-503; quote on p. 485).
14. See Terry R. Johnson, Katherine P. Dickinson, Richard W. West, Susan E. McNicoll, Jennifer M. Pfiester, Alex L. Stagner, and Betty J. Harris, A National Evaluation of the Impact of the United States Employment Service, report to the U.S. Department of Labor (Menlo Park, CA, SRI International, 1983);
15. Terry R. Johnson, Katherine P. Dickinson, and Richard W. West, "An Evaluation of the Impact of ES Referrals on Applicant Earnings," Journal of Human Resources, winter 1985, pp. 117-37.
16. Arnold Katz, "The Length of Joblessness and the ES with Special Reference to Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, 1979-1987," in Carol J. Romero, Donald Cox, and Arnold Katz, eds., The Potential Effectiveness of the Employment Service in Serving Dislocated Workers under EDWAA: Evidence from the 1980s (Washington, DC, National Commission for Employment Policy, 1991), pp. 17-61.
17. Louis Jacobson and Ian Petta, Measuring the Effect of Public Labor Exchange (PLX) Referrals and Placements in Washington and Oregon (U.S. Department of Labor, Office of Workforce Security, 2000).
18. Louis Jacobson and Ian Petta, "Evaluation of the Public Labor Exchange (PLX) in a One-Stop Environment: New Evidence from North Carolina," paper prepared for the U.S. Department of Labor (Rockville, MD, Westat, 2003).
19. See Walter Corson, David Long, and Walter Nicholson, Evaluation of the Charleston Claimant Placement and Work Test Demonstration, report to the U.S. Department of Labor (Princeton, NJ, Mathematica Policy Research, Inc., 1985);
20. and Daniel H. Klepinger, Terry R. Johnson, Jutta M. Joesch, and Jacob M. Benus, Evaluation of the Maryland Unemployment Insurance Work Search Demonstration, Unemployment Insurance Occasional Paper 98-2 (U.S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration, 1998).
21. See Terry R. Johnson and Daniel H. Klepinger, Evaluation of the Impacts of the Washington Alternative Work Search Experiment, Unemployment Insurance Occasional Paper 91-4 (U.S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration, 1991);
22. and Terry R. Johnson and Daniel H. Klepinger, "Experimental Evidence on Unemployment Insurance Work-Search Policies," Journal of Human Resources, summer 1994, pp. 695-717.
23. Peter Dolton and Donal O'Neill, "The Long-Run Effects of Unemployment Insurance Monitoring and Work-Search Programs: Experimental Evidence from the United Kingdom," Economic Journal, March 1996, pp. 387-400.
24. Peter Dolton and Donal O'Neill, "The Long-Run Effects of Unemployment Monitoring and Work-Search Programs in the United Kingdom," Journal of Labor Economics, April 2002, pp. 381-403.
25. See Klepinger, Johnson, Joesch, and Benus, Work Search Demonstration; Johnson and Klepinger, Washington Alternative Work Search Experiment, and Paul T. Decker, Robert B. Olson, Lance Freeman, and Daniel H. Klepinger, Assisting Unemployment Insurance Claimants: The Long-Term Impacts of the Job Search Assistance Demonstration (U.S. Department of Iabor, Employment and Training Administration, 2000). An interstate study of UI recipients found that States with established Eligibility Review Programs have shorter periods of compensated unemployment. (See Vroman and Woodbury, Trend and Cycle.) On the technical support Web site linked to the U.S. Department of Labor's Employment and Training Administration Web site (www.doleta.gov), under the heading of "best practices," links are provided to descriptions of Eligibility Review Programs in five States: Florida, Michigan, North Carolina, Tennessee, and West Virginia. Several other States also operate such programs. (See State best practices at the UI Information Technology Support Center Web site, www.itsc.state.md.us.)
26. See Walter Corson, Paul T. Decker, Sherri M. Dunstan, Anne R. Gordon, Patricia Anderson, and John Homrighausen, New Jersey Unemployment Insurance Reemployment Demonstration Project: Final Evaluation Report (U.S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration, Unemployment Insurance Service, 1989).
27. Decker, Olson, Freeman, and Klepinger, Assisting Unemployment Insurance Claimants.
28. Katherine P. Dickinson, Paul T. Decker, Suzanne D. Kreutzer, and Richard W. West, Evaluation of Worker Profiling and Reemployment Services: Final Report, Research and Evaluation Report Series 99-D (U.S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration, Office of Policy and Research, 1999).
29. Dan Black, Jeffrey Smith, Mark Berger, and Brett Noel, "Is the Threat of Reemployment Services More Effective than the Services Themselves? Experimental Evidence from Random Assignment in the UI System," American Economic Review, November 2003, pp. 1313-27.
30. See "Fiscal Year (FY) 2005 Unemployment Insurance (UI) Reemployment and Eligibility Assessment (REA) Grants," Field Memorandum No. 17-04 (U.S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration, Aug. 12, 2004).
31. See, for example, Peter Auer, Umit Efendioglu, and Janine Leschke, Active Labour Market Polices around the World: Coping with the Consequences of Globalization (Geneva, International Labour Office, 2005). The book summarizes nearly 200 studies in industrialized, transitional, and developing countries, concluding, "All in all, as job-search assistance is the most cost-effective measure, it should be intensively used over all phases of unemployment" (pp. 61-62).