Outcomes

This figure illustrates the percent of families with cases to have exited in a quarter, who had earnings upon exit. An exit is defined as all individuals in the family not receiving assistance for 90 days after their case has been closed. This item is in development with eventual reporting of trends on reasons for program exits – including, but not limited to, exits due to income. At this point, CDSS is only able to provide data on CalWORKs exits with earnings, which is a correlative of “exits due to income.” However, there are instances in this data where a participant may exit with earnings but not exit because of earnings. In the future, CDSS plans to expand on this data set to include all exits, broken out by reasons for exits.

Earnings data for this figure is sourced from the Employment Development Department (EDD). Several employment sectors are not included in EDD: self-employed persons not electing disability insurance, federal employees, casual labor paid less than $50, working less than 24 days per quarter, employees of some non-profit organizations, students working for a school, college, or university, railroad employees, workers on small farms, etc. Additionally, wages earned in states outside of California are not reflected in EDD data.

Exits with earnings is a correlative predictor of the success of CalWORKs as a poverty interrupter and therefore is an important outcome metric of the program overall. Exits with earnings was strongest prior to the COVID-19 Public Health Emergency (PHE), with a notable drop during the PHE. Rebounds of CalWORKs families exiting with earnings is steadily increasing, though not quite to the same level as before the PHE.