Summary Article
Higher Wages and More Work: Impact Evaluation of a State-Funded Incumbent Worker Training Program
The Research & Planning (R&P) section of the Wyoming Department of Workforce Services has undertaken an impact evaluation of the Wyoming Workforce Development Training Fund (WDTF) as part of its Workforce Data Quality Initiative grant. For this research, R&P sought to answer these questions:
- Do WDTF participants earn higher wages after training than they would without training?
- Do trained workers remain in the workforce longer?
In the research presented in the full article, WDTF participants refers to the group of individuals who received training or assistance through the Wyoming Workforce Development Training Fund. For example, there were 579 WDTF participants in second quarter 2007 (2007Q2). This group is referred to in this article as the 2007Q2 WDTF training cohort; an analysis of each WDTF training cohort (a group of individuals who received WDTF training in a particular year and quarter) is available in the Appendix.
For this analysis, R&P created a control group of 24,677 individuals who did not receive WDTF training but had similar characteristics as WDTF participants, such as gender, age, quarters worked in the period prior to training, and quarterly mean wages in the period prior to training.
In the example presented in this article, WDTF participants received training in 2007Q2. The base period refers to the quarter of training (2007Q2) and the three previous quarters (2006Q3, 2006Q4, and 2007Q1).
Post-training period refers to the 12 quarters after the WDTF participants received training; in this example, 2007Q3 to 2010Q2.
The mean quarterly wage difference for WDTF participants and the control group was calculated by subtracting the mean quarterly wage of the base period from the mean quarterly wage of the post-training period. For example, the mean quarterly wage difference for 2007Q2 WDTF participants was $9291 (a post-training period mean quarterly wage of $16,471 minus a base period mean quarterly wage of $15,542). By comparison, the mean quarterly wage difference for the control group (non-WDTF participants) was $17 (a post-training period mean quarterly wage of $15,243 minus a base period mean quarterly wage of $15,226).
In summary, the mean quarterly wage difference of WDTF participants from 2007Q2 ($929) was statistically significantly higher than the mean quarterly wage difference of the control group ($17). An analysis of each of the WDTF training cohorts from 2006Q3 to 2011Q4 indicated that WDTF participants from 15 of the 22 cohorts experienced a greater average quarterly wage increase from the base period to the post-training period than each control group from that particular year and quarter (see Table 5 from the full article). A more thorough discussion of the research, methodology, and results is presented later in the full article.
1All wages are discussed in 2014 inflation-adjusted dollars.