Key Highlights
Challenges
Public sector programs play a key role in training individuals with employment challenges, such as dislocated workers, people with disabilities, English language learners, recipients of public assistance, justice-involved individuals, people in recovery, or those entering the job market for the first time. It is vital to ensure the effectiveness of these programs; however, completion rates for many workforce programs are low, and even participants who finished the programs could not find and keep jobs. While the federal government provides significant funding for state-run programs, federal restrictions such as narrow eligibility requirements and onerous application procedures impede state innovation.
Opportunities
To overcome problems with the traditional approach to managing public sector workforce programs, Rhode Island created employer-focused partnerships, provided performance-based bonus payments to providers, measured the long-term outcomes of participants, and engaged in active contract management.
The state consulted stakeholders to ensure that it was purchasing the best mix of services and monitored the performance of training contracts in real time to assess whether they were meeting their goals. This created an opportunity to refocus and redesign programs toward better outcomes, which was proven through a number of Rhode Island case studies.
Findings and Next Steps
- Outcomes-based funding helps to build programs that enable workers with employment challenges to obtain, and keep, good jobs with strong career trajectories.
- Federal funding is most helpful if it is flexible in supporting these innovative state programs.
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About the Authors
Jeffrey Liebman
Jeffrey Liebman is the Robert W. Scrivner Professor of Public Policy at Harvard Kennedy School, where he teaches courses in social policy, public sector economics, government innovation, and American economic policy. In his research, he studies tax and budget policy, social insurance, poverty, and income inequality. For the past ten years, his Harvard Kennedy School Government Performance Lab has been providing pro bono technical assistance to state and local governments interested in improving the results they achieve for their citizens. During the first two years of the Obama Administration, Liebman served at OMB, first as Executive Associate Director and Chief Economist and then as Acting Deputy Director. From 1998 to 1999, he served as Special Assistant to the President for economic policy and coordinated the Clinton Administration’s Social Security reform technical working group.
Gina Raimondo
Gina Raimondo served as governor of Rhode Island from 2015-2021, and as U.S. Secretary of Commerce from 2021-2025.