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Promoting Income Security and Employment


California is the sixth largest economy in the world, but the state has high wage inequality and high poverty, with significant disparities by geography, education, and ethnicity. Workforce development programs and unemployment insurance benefits are two critically important resources for workers in California. In recent years state policymakers have also enacted increases in minimum wages and a state Earned Income Tax Credit. Some cities have even begun experimenting with universal basic income. Understanding the impacts of such policies is of first-order importance for the state as well as the rest of the nation. 

The California Policy Lab provides expertise in labor economics and technical capacity in rigorous research design and data analysis to help our state, county, and local agency partners understand the far-reaching impacts of such policies and leverage these findings to inform and improve efforts.

Focus Areas

Unemployment Insurance

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Unemployment Insurance Research and Resource page (includes 20+ pandemic-era publications)
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National Academy of Social Insurance Unemployment Insurance Task Force Final Report
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How UI Benefit Generosity Affects Job Quality
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Older Workers and the UI System
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Reemployment Services and Eligibility Assessment (RESEA) Evaluation
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Mortality and UI Benefits During COVID-19 Pandemic
Two men, aged in their 30s and 40s, are kneeling in a factory, speaking with each other, and holding steel cylinders. Another man stands in the distance, checking a list on a clipboard.
Short-Time Compensation in the U.S. and California from 2000 to 2022
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The Impact of Unemployment Insurance on Innovation
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High Utilization of UI Benefits
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The Economic Impact on Women of the COVID-19 Pandemic
Image shows a unemployment benefits application form, glasses, a pen, and cell phone with news article that says "coronavirus economic crisis"
Labor Supply Responses to UI Benefit Generosity
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Increased Take-Up of Unemployment Insurance in California During the Pandemic

Equity and measurement in the Unemployment Insurance system

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10 Key Insights on Increasing Equity from the COVID-19 Pandemic

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Disparities in Access to Unemployment Insurance During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Lessons from U.S. and California Claims Data

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Workers’ Economic Recovery after COVID-19

Unemployment Insurance benefit exhaustions

Image is a paper unemployment benefits application form, with a large red "REJECTED" stamped across it.
Expirations of Pandemic Jobless Programs Caused an Unprecedented Drop in Access to UI
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The Impact of Extending Unemployment Insurance Benefits in California
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Narrow unemployment measure leads to UI benefits being “cut off” early in 33 states

Other pandemic labor market research

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Labor Market Impacts of COVID-19 on Hourly Workers in Small- and Medium-Sized Businesses
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Measuring the Labor Market at the Onset of the COVID-19 Crisis
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Job Postings, Applications, and Wages: Evidence from Homebase

Workforce training and development

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CAAL-Skills Study of Workforce Programs in California
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Welfare-to-Work Study in Los Angeles
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WDACS Pulse Study in Los Angeles

Future of work

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Beyond Gig: Understanding the Role of Independent Contracting in California

Employment and homelessness

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Employment Among the Homeless

Hosted labor projects

Labor-focused projects that CPL has hosted are listed below:

Project NumberProject NameAll Team Members
2022-027 Family Responses to College Financial Aid Incentives Jesse Rothstein, Nick Gebbia
2022-124 Extreme heat and labor impacts Jisung Park

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