"Caseworkers and Unemployed Youths"

Abstract : This study examines the impact of caseworkers on the employment and training outcomes of young people facing challenging transitions from school to work in France. By utilizing a unique administrative database and exploiting a quasi-random assignment mechanism, we are able to assess the value-added of each caseworker. Our findings reveal that caseworkers who perform above average significantly increase the number of employment days by 6% and training enrollment by 7.5% within two years. We further explore the reasons why caseworkers perform differently. We find that they tend to specialize in employment or training placement. Higher value-added caseworkers secure either temporary contracts or non-certified training. Lastly, we use machine learning algorithms to measure conditional treatment effects and find that reallocating caseworkers to youths could yield more employment days.