Welfare and Work: Job-Retention Outcomes of Federal Welfare-to-Work Employees

On March 8, 1997, President Clinton announced the federal government's Welfare-to-Work Initiative, a major effort to provide job opportunities for welfare recipients in federal agencies. Using data from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management's Central Personnel Data File, the authors compare differences in job-retention outcomes for Welfare-to-Work employees and similar non–Welfare-to-Work employees in federal agencies. This approach provides an innovative way to measure job-retention by comparing job-retention outcomes of Welfare-to-Work employees against non–Welfare-to-Work employees. The findings suggest that Welfare-to-Work employees have greater odds of retaining their jobs than non–Welfare-to-Work employees. The results provide useful insights into the dynamics of job retention among welfare recipients who are hired into federal-sector employment.