Job Corps is the largest and most comprehensive education and job training program in the United States for young people ages 16 to 24 who are not in school and are not working. To deepen the Job Corps program’s ability to generate and use evidence to improve the labor market trajectories of eligible young people, this report discusses ways Job Corps can meet its statutory requirement to evaluate the program, as it is operating, every five years, as well as discussing types of research and evaluation activities it can use to build evidence over time to improve outcomes for young people.

This report suggests several studies Job Corps could consider that are aligned with its current areas of interest.

1. A nonexperimental impact and implementation study of the program could serve as a foundational study that could guide Job Corps’ program improvement activity over the next five years. It would examine how the Job Corps program operates now under the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act and what impact it has on earnings. Equally important, the study could examine whether disparities in impacts by age and ethnicity, identified in a prior study, have been reduced, and if they have not, why they persist.
2. A study to improve the equity of access to services. Given the low completion rates and differential lengths of stays of Job Corps students by race and ethnicity, it would be useful to analyze Job Corps’ administrative data and gather insights from students and staff members to learn what could be done to improve completion/persistence across all students.
3. Studies of college-partnership Job Corps models. Job Corps has conducted several studies in this area that could be built upon. The Cascades College and Career Academy evaluation suggested that a version of Job Corps focused on community college has the potential to substantially improve outcomes for some young people who would be eligible for Job Corps. That evaluation also suggested that such a residential college–focused program model could attract students who would not otherwise be interested in Job Corps, filling more slots. To build on this promising finding, the College and Career Academy model could be refined by being replicated to test its impact in more centers and lengthening the follow-up data collection make it possible to estimate the program’s impact on earnings after college. Additionally, an implementation study of strong partnership practices with colleges across the Job Corps network could strengthen the network’s understanding of how to partner with colleges. Finally, the U.S. Department of Labor (which funds Job Corps) might want to conduct an impact and cost study of the nonresidential college–focused Job Corps Scholars model.