This report examines the long-term outcomes of the Jobs Plus demonstration (implemented from 1998-2003). The study’s two main questions are whether the program’s successes that were observed in earlier studies of adult residents’ employment and earnings are sustained 15 years after the program ended, and whether the gains in earnings of residents also translated into improvements in their children’s employment and earnings. A previous evaluation compared cumulative earnings for Jobs Plus and control group residents over the 4 years of program implementation combined with 3 years after the program had ended. Those findings showed that the model was associated with a 16% increase in earned income ($1,300 per year) 7 years after the program launched.

This study looks at outcomes 20 years after the program launched. In this follow-up study, researchers track long-term outcomes for the original residents using data from the National Directory of New Hires (NDNH), which includes wage and employment information. The analysis uses two main samples: (1) adults at the time of the demonstration who are still working age; and (2) children at the time of the demonstration who are now working age. There are control groups for both samples (adults and children) from the developments which were randomly assigned to the control groups for the demonstration. The key findings from this report are that the sites that fully implemented all three components of the model (employment services, financial incentives, and community supports for work) had positive impacts on the long-term earnings and employment for adult residents at the time of the demonstration. In addition, exploratory analysis found positive effects for residents who were children at the time of the demonstration and are now working age.

This report is one in a series of reports on Jobs Plus:

• Promoting Work in Public Housing: The Effectiveness of Jobs-Plus (2005)
• Sustained Earnings Gains for Residents in a Public Housing Jobs Program: Seven-Year Findings from the Jobs-Plus Demonstration (2010)
• Scaling Up a Place-Based Employment Program: Highlights From the Jobs Plus Pilot Program Evaluation (2017)
• HUD's Jobs Plus Pilot Program for Public Housing Residents: Ongoing Implementation Experiences (2019)
• Participation and Labor Market Impacts for the First 24 Sites to Replicate HUD's Jobs Plus Program: Final Report (2023)

More information about HUD’s Jobs Plus program can be found here.