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New National Study Demonstrates the Power of Workforce Registry Data

New National Study Demonstrates the Power of Workforce Registry Data

October 2, 2026 | Kimberlee Belcher-Badal, PhD

New National Study Demonstrates the Power of Workforce Registry Data

Mathematica’s evaluation of DC’s Pay Equity Fund shows what becomes possible when states maintain complete, comparable, longitudinal workforce records.

October 02, 2026

A newly released Mathematica study provides compelling evidence that sustained public investment in early educator compensation can strengthen wages, retention, recruitment, staffing, and workforce qualifications. It also demonstrates something consequential for the future of early childhood workforce policy: state workforce registry records can be combined across jurisdictions to support rigorous evaluation of major public investments.

The Early Childhood Educator Pay Equity Fund Workforce Impact Study examined the first three years of Washington, DC’s Early Childhood Educator Pay Equity Fund. The study linked population-level workforce records from DC with longitudinal records supplied by workforce registries in Illinois, Nevada, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.

The National Workforce Registry Alliance coordinated the six-state registry partnership, supported the development of comparable national workforce datasets, and worked with Mathematica and participating states to prepare and interpret the records used in the analysis.

Read the full Mathematica report

What the study found

After two years, the Pay Equity Fund:

Increased hourly wages by $7.85 for retained center-based educators and $4.88 for retained home-based providers.
Increased center-based educator retention by 4.8 percentage points.
Increased facility recruitment rates by 12.5 percentage points.
Increased average facility staffing by 1.4 educators, approximately 14 percent relative to baseline workforce size.
Supported gains in education and qualifications among educators.
Increased promotion from assistant teacher to lead teacher by 3.4 percentage points.
May have increased participation in public quality systems and the prevalence of higher quality ratings.

These findings provide evidence that substantial and sustained compensation investments can influence not only educators’ wages, but also whether educators remain with their employers, whether programs can recruit staff, and how the workforce develops over time.

The infrastructure behind the findings

The study depended on more than a one-time survey.

In DC, workforce registry administrative records helped establish or verify educator eligibility under the direct-payment model. After the Pay Equity Fund shifted to a facility-payment model, those records also helped determine quarterly facility awards based on the number, roles, and qualifications of eligible staff.

For the evaluation, Mathematica needed to understand what likely would have happened without the Pay Equity Fund. NWRA and the six participating early childhood workforce registries supplied the longitudinal records needed to construct a credible external comparison group of educators, home-based providers, and facilities outside DC.

Because the records included persistent individual and facility identifiers, the study could:

Follow the same educators and facilities over time.
Distinguish retention from recruitment.
Connect individual employment changes with facility staffing and operations.
Examine wages alongside roles, education, credentials, and qualifications.
Compare changes in DC with changes among similar educators and facilities in other states.

Mathematica describes the study as, to its knowledge, the first impact evaluation of an early childhood policy or program to assemble population-level workforce registry records across multiple states and localities to construct an external comparison group.

From one study to lasting national capability

The study illustrates a persistent challenge—and a significant opportunity—for the early childhood field.

Public agencies and philanthropy regularly invest in compensation initiatives, workforce surveys, dashboards, and evaluations. Too often, each project must reconstruct the evidence base needed to understand the workforce and measure results. The project may answer an immediate question without leaving states with stronger, reusable capacity to answer the next one.

NWRA is working to change that pattern.

Through its unfolding Data Quality and Policy Standards, tiered state capability-building work, and emerging Workforce Intelligence System, NWRA is establishing the conditions through which state workforce records can be used responsibly and reliably for policy, research, and public investment.

The goal is not simply to collect more data. It is to ensure that workforce information can answer five essential questions:

What can the registry system do?
What policy causes the data to be present?
Who is included?
Who is excluded?
What claims can the data support?

The Mathematica study shows what becomes possible when jurisdictions maintain sufficiently complete and comparable records. It also demonstrates why strengthening state capability, establishing common standards, and sustaining longitudinal workforce infrastructure matter.

Building toward 2030

NWRA’s 2030 strategy is designed to move states along a clear progression—from foundational reporting and recognized training transcripts to longitudinal employment information, wage and benefit analysis, and verified records suitable for research partnerships.

By 2030, NWRA intends to organize these state-governed capabilities into a national Workforce Intelligence System that can support recurring workforce reporting, policy analysis, research, compensation planning, and evaluation of public investments.

This study is an important proof of concept. The participating registries provided the infrastructure. NWRA created the national pathway through which their records could be assembled and used. Mathematica demonstrated what the resulting evidence can reveal.

“Too often what gets funded is a new survey or dataset as a workaround to answer the next urgent question. This study shows the value of investing in the durable state capabilities that can answer that question—and so many others—repeatedly and over time.”
— Kimberlee Belcher-Badal, Ph.D., Executive Director, National Workforce Registry Alliance

Study partners

The study’s data infrastructure was made possible through partnerships among Mathematica, the DC Office of the State Superintendent of Education, the National Workforce Registry Alliance, and six participating state workforce registries: