A new research paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research examines how New York City’s Summer Youth Employment Program (SYEP) affects participants’ immediate income, longer-term income, and life outcomes, such as college enrollment, incarceration, and mortality. The program matches enrollees between the ages of fourteen and twenty-one with an entry-level seven-week summer job and pays them New York minimum wage for up to twenty-five hours per week. Jobs are mostly in the private and non-profit sectors, many at summer camps and daycare centers, but also in other fields. It also provides seventeen and a half hours of workshops on job readiness and continuing education. It’s the largest of many similar programs in major cities throughout the country, and demand is high, so participants are randomly selected via a lottery. The authors obtained identifying and demographic information on about 295,000 applicants from 2005 through 2008; 165,000 were accepted and 130,000 weren’t. They combined this with wage data from the IRS, mortality information from the New York City Department of Health, and data on incarceration from the state Department of Corrections. Comparing those accepted to those who weren’t led to three key findings. First, participants enjoyed a net benefit of about $876 in the year they partook in the program compared to non-participants. Second, in the three subsequent years, enrollees saw a decrease in yearly earnings of about $100 compared to non-participants, throwing water on the assumption that these programs make people more “employable.” (After three years, there was no yearly impact, positive or negative, which gives the program a total net lifetime benefit of about $536.) The authors posit that SYEP jobs might too often provide experience in lower-paying industries, or they may interrupt the career development of individuals who already had jobs prior to switching to one provided by SYEP. Third and finally, the program didn’t affect college enrollment, but it did decrease the incarceration rate by more than 10 percent and mortality by almost 20 percent. Not surprisingly, the authors call for more research on summer youth employment programs. They certainly deserve more attention.
SOURCE: Alexander Gelber, Adam Isen, Judd B. Kessler, "The Effects of Youth Employment: Evidence from New York City Summer Youth Employment Program Lotteries," National Bureau of Economic Research, Working Paper No. 20810 (December 2014).
