Short-Term Indicators of Employment Program Performance: Evidence from the Supported Work Program

The objective of this paper is to assess the usefulness of short-term program performance data in judging the relative effectiveness of Supported Work and in targeting program resources to those most likely to benefit from them. The results reveal evidence of significant negative impacts for youth who left the program for negative reasons; the magnitude of the adverse impacts associated with negative terminations is related to length of program participation. These results indicate that performance of individual programs could be improved if short-run performance standards could effectively identify youth likely to leave for negative reasons.