At the time of enrollment, unemployment was high due to the COVID-19 pandemic. 58% of recipients and 59% of control participants were employed. In the final months of the program, employment rates rose to 72% for recipients and 74% for control participants.
Looking at employment status over time, recipients were, on average, about 2 percentage points less likely to be employed during years two and three. The effect on the number of months employed is equivalent to roughly 8 fewer days (0.26 months) of employment during the previous year. Yet there is wide variation in employment across both groups. The visualization below helps illustrate this. The trend lines show quarterly average employment rates for recipients and control participants over time. The colored bands around the lines represent the 90% confidence intervals for the estimates: larger shaded bands indicate more variation and smaller shaded bands indicate more precision.
In addition to whether or not people were employed, we collected data on the number of hours worked. Across the three years, recipients worked an average of 1.3 fewer hours per week compared to control participants. Similar to the effect of the cash on employment rates, there is widespread variation in work hours.
