Measuring program impacts on earnings and employment: Do unemployment insurance wage reports from employers agree with surveys of individuals?

This article attempts to determine whether wage records reported by employe rs to state unemployment insurance (UI) agencies provide a valid alternativ e to more costly retrospective sample surveys of individuals as the basis f or measuring the impacts of employment and training programs for low-income persons. We analyze UI data and survey data for a sample of low-income adu lts and youths from 12 sites in the National Job Training Partnership Act ( JTPA) study. Our comparison indicates that impact estimates based on UI dat a and survey data were usually comparable. However, average survey-reported earnings were higher than average UI-reported earnings.