Subsidized and Transitional Employment Demonstration (STED), San Francisco, California, 2012-2018

The STEP Forward program offered job seekers opportunities to interview for jobs with private sector employers at weekly job fairs, and offered employers temporary wage subsidies to encourage them to try out job seekers whom they might not otherwise hire, with the goal of ultimately hiring these workers into permanent unsubsidized employment. A diverse group of low-income job seekers enrolled in the program, the vast majority of whom were either CalWORKs (California's Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program) clients, individuals who had exhausted their unemployment insurance benefits, or CalFresh (California's Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) recipients. MDRC's evaluation, conducted as a randomized controlled trial, included an implementation study, an impact study, and a cost analysis. This program was one of several evaluated as part of the Subsidized and Transitional Employment Demonstration (STED) project. These data are a Fast Track Release and are distributed as they were received from the data depositor. The files have been zipped for release, but not checked or processed.