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Quality Jobs

We took a list of Quality Jobs Participants through the end of March 2012. Although the program is under the Oklahoma Department of Commerce, the Oklahoma Tax Commission maintains payment information and the public list of participants. We calculated job predictions, job creation and other measurements using these data. To determine whether companies laid off employees while accepting Quality Jobs payments, we used WARN notices, and Trade Adjustment Assistance and NAFTA assistance data. Because there is no publicly available, comprehensive way to track layoffs, approximations are necessary. WARN notices are legally required notifications that large employers must provide to employees before a large-scale layoff. Not all layoffs require WARN notices, and not all employers must provide them. The notices are an estimate of possible layoffs and do not necessarily represent the actual number of layoffs. We obtained our list of WARN notices from 1999 to 2012 from the Oklahoma Employment Security Commission. We used WARN notices to determine layoff estimates and dates. Trade Adjustment Assistance and NAFTA assistance programs are administered by the U.S. Department of Labor and provide education and retraining to workers who have lost their jobs because of outsourcing or an increase in imports or decrease in exports. Workers, management, owners and unions all may apply. Not all applications, however, are approved. We used NAFTA and TAA applications to estimate outsourcing and layoffs that weren't subject to WARN notices. Trade Adjustment Assistance and NAFTA applications, when combined with WARN notices and media coverage, provide a way to estimate large-scale layoffs and outsourcing. However, layoff estimates — including companies that experienced layoffs -- shouldn't be considered comprehensive.

* Estimated layoffs while in the Quality Jobs Program