We developed and tested the survey instrument in a pilot with 10 employers who had taken part in the Wisconsin program. During the pilot, respondents were encouraged to elaborate on their program experiences and make suggestions regarding the survey questions. Based on the results of the pilot, some items were added to the survey, some were removed, and questions were refined to improve clar- ity and accuracy. Mobility contracted with Research Support Services (RSS) to administer the survey. RSS hired and trained interviewers to conduct the survey by telephone between July and October 2012. The overall response rate among eligible employers was 79 percent. Figure A1 presents the sample disposition across the four sites.
Figure A1 Final Employer Survey Sample Disposition and Response Rate
MS SF LA WI All
Total employer sample received
from sites 130 164 192 450 936
Ineligible-out of business 1 4 2 20 27
Ineligible-had no subsidized
workers 1 23 22 35 81
Ineligible-is agency that ran the
program 0 0 0 14 14
Ineligible-duplicate contact person 3 3 2 1 9
Total number of eligible employers 125 134 166 380 805
Total number of completed surveys 104 98 131 300 633
Response rate among eligible
employers 83% 73% 79% 79% 79%
Analysis
The employer survey statistics presented in this report for the four study sites combined represent the aver- age of the responses across the four sites so that each site is given equal weight, regardless of its sam- ple size. We cleaned the data to remove data entry errors and outliers. Importantly, we removed entries in which the reported number of subsidized workers was greater than 200. We report two statistics regarding the retention of subsidized workers:
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The first is simply the percentage of employerswho reported that they retained at least one subsi- dized worker after the subsidy period ended.
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The second is the percentage of all subsidizedworkers who were retained when the subsidy period ended. We calculated this based on three questions in which we asked employers how many subsidized workers they had, how many were still in the subsidy period, if any, and how many work- ers they retained after the subsidy period ended. We divided the total number of workers that employers reported retaining after the subsidy period ended by the total number of workers who were no longer in the subsidy period. Workers who were still in the subsidy period were excluded from this calculation.
Weighting. Our analysis gives equal weight to each
employer irrespective of the number of subsidized workers at each business. Another approach is to use weights based on the number of subsidized workers employers had so that those for whom greater pro- gram resources were devoted (in the form of subsidies and staff time) are given greater weight in reporting the results. In order to test the effects of weighting the sample in this way on the results, we divided the businesses into categories based on the number of subsidized workers they had and weighted each cat- egory by the group average. We performed a sensitiv- ity analysis, trying several variations of categorization by size. We then chose the one that was closest to
reflecting the unaveraged weights while still refraining from using very high numbers at the top. The four final categories were:
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1 subsidized worker (163 cases), mean: 1r
2 to 9 subsidized workers (328 cases), mean: 3.8r
10 to 29 subsidized workers (86 cases), mean:15.1
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30 to 200 subsidized workers (31 cases), mean:63.8
As noted, employers who reported having more than the 200 subsidized workers were excluded from the analysis, due to concerns about the accuracy of the data and under the assumption that many random factors may affect the number of subsidized workers at the very high numbers, and the number of workers hired by the same businesses may be considerably lower at another time.
We re-ran our descriptive analyses with the weights in place. The weighting gave more influence to
Mississippi and Los Angeles employers and to for-prof- its and government agencies. It affected the results in the following ways (compared to the results of the unweighted analysis):
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The decision to take part in the program.Employer support increased for every category with the exception of “the opportunity for free or low- cost labor for a few months.” There was a notable increase in support for the category, “a positive experience you’ve had in the past with the agency operating the program.”
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Subsidized workers’ backgrounds. When asked tocompare the subsidized workers to employees they normally hire for similar positions, the percentages who said the subsidized workers were less likely to be from a minority racial or ethnic group and who said the subsidized workers had more education decreased considerably.
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Hiring situation. In regard to their hiring situationwhen they started participating in the program, the percentage choosing one of the three categories indicating that new jobs were created decreased.
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Retention. The percentage of employers retainingany workers increased, while the percentage of all subsidized workers retained decreased.
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Effect on business operations. The percentagereporting that the program had positive effects on business operations increased for each item in this series, and the percentage stating that they would participate in the program in the future, if offered, increased.
101 Stimulating Opportunity: Appendix