Reframing Active Labor Market Policy: A Field Experiment on Barriers to Program Participation

Governments struggle to attract unemployed workers to their widely offered job training programs. In a randomized field experiment with 11,000 job seekers, we investigate the barriers to participation in job training programs using information interventions designed to encourage participation. Raising awareness about the availability of job training increased program enrollment and completion by around 20%. Signaling program cost with an additional voucher to reduce psychological frictions increased enrollment equally while raising completion by 27%. Effects were sizeable and concentrated among women and low-income job seekers. Notably, increased job training did not result in higher employment or wages. These findings indicate that while low-cost information interventions effectively boost participation, the overall success of job training programs in enhancing employment prospects hinges on their fundamental design.