آیا برنامه های آموزشی خود اشتغالی موثر می باشد؟ مدارک و شواهد از پروژه در حال رشد امریکا از طریق کارآفرینی

We examine the efficacy of providing self-employment training to unemployed and other individuals interested in self-employment using data from Project GATE. This experimental design program offered self-employment training services to a random sample of individuals who expressed a strong interest in self-employment. We find that Project GATE was effective in helping unemployed participants to start their own business, leading to significant impacts in self-employment and overall employment soon after program entry. The program also helped unemployed participants remain self-employed and avoid unemployment even five years after program entry. However, the program was not effective in improving the labor market outcomes of participants who were not unemployed.

Self-employment has historically played an important role in the U.S. economy. Many workers in the U.S. view self-employment as an attractive alternative to salary employment because it provides an opportunity for self-sufficiency, high earnings, and upward social mobility (Bates, 1997, Fischer and Massey, 2000, Keister, 2000 and Bucks et al., 2006). In fact, for the past few decades, nearly 10% of U.S. workers have been self-employed (Bregger, 1995, Fairlie, 2004 and Blanchflower, 2009). Self-employment is also important from a macroeconomic perspective, since small businesses employ a large share of the workforce and produce important innovations that contribute to the overall growth of the U.S. economy (Acs, 1999, Manser and Picot, 1999, Lerner, 2002, Minniti and Bygrave, 2004 and Davis et al., 2008). To encourage the creation and growth of small businesses, U.S. policymakers have established a variety of programs that provide self-employment training, technical support, and financial assistance to unemployed and other individuals interested in self-employment (Schreiner, 1999, Walker and Blair, 2002 and Wandner, 2008). The objective of these programs is to help aspiring business owners gain a better understanding of all aspects of starting and operating a new business and obtaining access to start-up capital and credit. The expectation is that self-employment programs will assist unemployed and other individuals in overcoming the obstacles they face in pursuing self-employment, leading to the creation of viable small businesses (Benus, 1994, Vroman, 1997 and McKernan and Chen, 2005). Despite the growing interest in self-employment programs, there is limited evidence on whether they are actually effective in promoting self-employment participation and success. This paper provides evidence on the efficacy of providing self-employment training services without any financial support to unemployed and other individuals interested in self-employment. For our analyses, we use data from Project GATE (Growing America Through Entrepreneurship), the most recent experimental design self-employment program implemented in the U.S. Project GATE offered an array of self-employment training services to a random sample of individuals who expressed a strong interest in self-employment. Unlike most programs implemented in the U.S. and elsewhere, Project GATE did not provide participants with any type of financial support, and it accepted applications from all interested individuals — unemployed, employed, self-employed, or not in the labor force. The program's design provides a unique opportunity to examine the efficacy of providing self-employment training without any financial support to unemployed and other individuals interested in self-employment. In the remainder of this paper, we examine the impact of Project GATE on the following participant outcomes: likelihood of starting a new business, likelihood of self-employment in a new business, self-employment, salary employment, overall employment, and earnings. Our results show that Project GATE was effective in assisting unemployed participants start their own business, leading to significant gains in self-employment and overall employment in the first months following program entry. The program was also effective in assisting unemployed participants to remain self-employed even 5 years after program entry. However, we find no evidence that the program was effective in assisting non-unemployed participants improve their labor market outcomes. Based on these results, we conclude that U.S. state workforce agencies should consider adopting self-employment training programs targeting the unemployed as part of their workforce development agenda.

Project GATE was a demonstration program designed to offer an array of self-employment training services through the U.S. workforce development system to individuals interested in self-employment. The program, implemented from 2003 through 2005 in Maine, Minnesota, and Pennsylvania, included an outreach campaign for recruiting applicants, with designated One-Stop Career Centers serving as central points of recruitment. At the end of the recruitment period, 4198 individuals applied for program participation and were randomly assigned to the treatment group or to the control group; only those in the treatment group were offered program services. Depending on their needs, participants were referred to training courses to help them understand the different aspects of starting and operating a business and an individual business counseling session. Aside from these services, Project GATE did not offer any type of financial support to program participants. Using Project GATE data, we examined the impact of self-employment training on the outcomes of unemployed and non-unemployed participants. Our analyses show that Project GATE was effective in assisting unemployed participants start their own business and become self-employed soon after random assignment. As a result, in the early months following program entry, unemployed participants experienced significant gains in self-employment and in total employment. The program also led to a substantial increase in the likelihood that unemployed participants were self-employed in a new business even 5 years after program entry, indicating that many of the businesses started by the unemployed were sustained for long periods of time. Despite the program's effect on the rapid reemployment of the unemployed through self-employment, we found no evidence that the program led to significant impacts on total earnings. Nevertheless, the average total earnings of unemployed applicants at 5 years after program entry were similar to the U.S. average, indicating that they were able to achieve self-sufficiency following program entry. Further, given the strong preference that program participants expressed for self-employment, the higher levels of self-employment may well indicate greater job satisfaction for program participants. Our impact analyses for participants who were employed, self-employed, or not in the labor force at the time of application, yielded substantially different results relative to the results for the unemployed. We find no evidence that the program had significant impacts on new business starts, self-employment, salary employment, or total employment for non-unemployed participants. There is also no evidence the program led to a significant impact on total earnings for these participants. Therefore, our analyses provide no evidence that self-employment training is an effective intervention for employed, self-employed, or not in the labor force individuals interested in self-employment. This is the first paper that examines the efficacy of providing self-employment training services without any financial support to unemployed and other individuals interested in self-employment. Our results provide strong evidence that self-employment training is effective in assisting unemployed individuals obtain a better understanding of the self-employment process and become reemployed earlier than they would in the absence of such training. Perhaps more importantly, self-employment training is effective in assisting unemployed individuals remain self-employed, avoid unemployment, and presumably reduce their dependence on the UI system for an extensive time period following program entry. Based on these results, we conclude that offering self-employment training services through the U.S. public workforce development system may be an effective policy tool for promoting the rapid reemployment of unemployed individuals interested in self-employment. Although state workforce agencies should consider adopting self-employment training programs targeting the unemployed as part of their workforce development agenda, there may be no value in providing self-employment training to individuals who are employed, self-employed, or not in the labor force.