In the paper, the authors focus on a large-scale assistance program that has a target population of young, educated job seekers in France. The authors consider that the targeted are not at risk of long-term unemployment. They are young graduates, with at least a two-year college degree, who have been unemployed for six months or more. In the program, a private agency gives them intensive placement services. The agency gets paid in two stages: firstly, they get a part of the agreed-upon payment if the job seeker signs a contract of at least six months, which is considered by the authors as a stable job, and they get the complete pay if the individual actually stays employed for at least six months.
The individuals were selected for the experiment in 14 monthly cohorts, starting in September 2007. However, due to budget constraints, the authors decided to focus on cohorts 3-11. Here, a total number of 29,636 individuals were asked to answer a survey, from these 11,806 declared to be unemployed and were found eight months after being assigned. The problem is that during these eight months the employment status of some of them had changed and at the time of the randomization they were employed.