Addressing a Few Common Arguments for the Work Opportunity Tax Credit

At the end of last year, the Work Opportunity Tax Credit (WOTC) finally expired, having been renewed 13 times since 1996. Even so, business groups and policymakers have continued to press for its reauthorization, both before and after its expiration.

The WOTC was originally justified as a way to help disadvantaged workers gain a foothold in the labor market, but in practice, it costs taxpayers billions of dollars and doesn’t deliver the results it promises.

The groups of disadvantaged workers that the credit targets typically include recipients of state assistance, veterans, SNAP recipients, formerly incarcerated individuals and those experiencing long-term unemployment.

The program allows employers to claim a credit of up to $2,400 per worker for most targeted groups if the employee works at least 400 hours in the first year. For some groups, such as disabled veterans or the long-term unemployed, the credit can reach as high as $9,600 per hire.

It’s easy to see why, from a high level, some believe the WOTC has an important role to play in helping disadvantaged workers. In practice, it has become yet another narrow corporate tax break that costs taxpayers billions while delivering negligible results. Below I will respond to some of the most common claims about this credit, offering empirically grounded reasons why the credit has repeatedly failed and should not be revived a fourteenth time.

Claim 1: Before WOTC, disadvantaged workers struggled to find stable jobs, and the credit was created to fix that failure.

Even before the creation of the WOTC in 1996, there was a predecessor program with many of the same goals, the Targeted Jobs Tax Credit (TJTC).

Evaluations of TJTC consistently found that it failed for the same reason WOTC fails today. General Accounting Office (GAO) reports from the early 1990s found that the majority of employers using the credit “made no special effort to identify, hire, or retain TJTC-eligible workers. … If employers’ normal employment practices happen to result in the hiring of an eligible worker, they may claim the tax credit even though they have made no specific effort to recruit, hire, or retain workers targeted by the program.”

An audit report published by the Department of Labor in 1994 similarly found that “92 percent of those individuals for whom employers could have claimed a credit would have been hired regardless of the tax subsidy.” The audit report concluded that “the program largely subsidizes the wages of those who are hired irrespective of their eligibility and the availability of a tax credit.”

For these reasons, TJTC was allowed to expire in 1994, but in 1996 it was revived and rebranded as the WOTC. A new name didn’t get rid of the same problems that the TJTC had previously faced, however.

Claim 2: Without the WOTC, businesses won’t hire disadvantaged workers.

The Department of Labor undertook a case study in 1999 that included interviews with 16 firms that used WOTC across five states. The results included the finding that “the tax credits play little or no role in [the 16 employers’] recruitment policies,” suggesting that employers would have hired members of the target groups even if the programs were not available. The report’s authors concluded: “These observations do raise a question about the extent to which the tax credit is serving the purpose for which it is intended — to serve as an economic incentive to encourage employers to hire individuals from specified target groups whom they would not have hired in the absence of the credit.”

Economist Sarah Hamersma used a combination of Wisconsin administrative data and survey data in a 2008 paper that uses panel estimates to determine if WOTC creates incentives that improve employment outcomes for targeted workers. According to her analysis:

Firms do not appear to be using the opportunity to claim tax credits for disadvantaged workers to deliberately increase the hiring of disadvantaged workers. In general, they do not have information about individuals’ status as qualifying (or not) for the tax credits at the time of hire, and even after hiring decisions are made, information about employees who are claimed is kept confidential. As one firm related in the telephone survey: “The information is sent to our corporate office, a third party processes the forms, and the tax credits come back to us like a bonus.” In effect, the firms get “bonuses” for simply putting a form in their hiring packets and sending them off to be processed.

The Inspector General of the Department of Labor has published studies on the effectiveness of WOTC in hiring disadvantaged workers. Focused specifically on veterans with disabilities, a 2012 study implies that only about 13% of WOTC benefits actually lead to new employment, meaning about 87% of benefits accrue to hires that would have occurred in the absence of the credit.

This isn’t a unique finding for WOTC but tends to be a common feature among hiring tax credits broadly speaking. Economist Timothy Bartik reviewed the effect of Michigan’s MEGA tax credit program aimed at hiring or retaining workers, especially in the manufacturing sector. He found the tax credit incentive decisive in only 8% of cases, meaning 92% of credits subsidized jobs that would have existed regardless of whether the credit was offered. Bartik’s earlier work found even larger windfall rates, up to 96%.

The most recent and perhaps most comprehensive analysis of the windfall rate for WOTC comes from a 2025 NBER study. The meticulous analysis of 13 million workers over two decades suggests that the windfall rate is around 97.1%, and the authors could not rule out the statistical possibility that 100% of the hires would have occurred in the absence of the credit.

In sum, the claim that businesses won’t hire disadvantaged workers without the WOTC doesn’t hold up to the empirical evidence. Between 90% and 100% of WOTC claims are for job hires that would have occurred whether or not the credit existed.

Claim 3: The WOTC provides workers with stable jobs and good pay. Without the credit, workers would instead be more likely to rely on public assistance or turn to crime.

For at least two decades, economists have been exploring whether the WOTC improves long-term labor market outcomes for targeted workers. Using propensity score matching estimations, economist Sarah Hamersma of Syracuse University found that WOTC led to no measurable effect over the long term.

While Hamersma found small improvements in employment after two quarters, when she extended the analysis to four and six quarters, WOTC had no impact. She also found that less than 10% of eligible workers get certified for WOTC. When estimating the effect of WOTC on workers’ tenure in a given position, Hamersma found it to be near zero and statistically insignificant.

Using a similar approach, Hamersma and economist Carolyn Heinrich examined how temporary help agencies use WOTC. The authors do not find evidence that WOTC certification brings about improvements in worker job outcomes, earnings, or labor market attachment.

For worker tenure specifically, they find that workers are employed for just 26 weeks on average if hired by temporary help service firms and 40 weeks if hired by end-user firms. This finding is hardly a strong signal of a job subsidy that provides stable jobs and long-term labor market attachment.

Similarly, the 2025 NBER research paper compiled summary statistics from more than 426,000 WOTC certifications and found an average job tenure of about 10 months. Using administrative micro-data on all WOTC applications in Wisconsin between 2005 and 2020, the study found that certified WOTC hires had jobs lasting longer than 9 months only 23% of the time.

The average starting wage of WOTC-certified workers was just $9 an hour. Among successful certifications who were SNAP beneficiaries, the median quarterly earnings were about $1,800, or less than $140 a week.

The authors of this 2025 study also construct measures of social assistance and indicators of criminal activity to determine whether WOTC reduces welfare dependence or criminal conviction. WOTC is found to have null effects on both outcomes, suggesting that these wage subsidies are unlikely to generate any savings for the government.

Claim 4: Small businesses depend on WOTC and will struggle to hire workers without it.

Despite WOTC’s populist branding, the vast majority of benefits accrue to large corporations, not small businesses or mom-and-pop employers.

A report by the U.S. General Accounting Office analyzed data from agencies in California and Texas on the number of WOTC-certified employees hired by each employer. The report found that just 3% of participating firms accounted for 83% of all WOTC certifications, and that the top 5% of firms (measured by gross receipts) claimed two-thirds of all WOTC dollars.

Hiring credits like the WOTC are less about encouraging new employment and more about subsidizing companies that have the administrative savvy to claim the credits.

That pattern persists today: NBER research found that among WOTC certifications in Wisconsin, 52% were hired by temporary hiring staff agencies, 24% were hired by publicly traded firms with a median market cap of over $30 billion, and 16% were large fast-food franchises.

The same research found that half of all WOTC subsidies in Wisconsin went to just 48 firms, even though they only accounted for 9% of hires. The authors note: “Our results imply that hiring subsidies through WOTC operate as a pure transfer to firms” and “that these transfers are heavily concentrated.” What’s more, even when the program made it easier and more salient to claim the credit, there was no increase in hiring, employment or earnings.

The claim that small businesses will struggle to hire without the WOTC is inconsistent with the empirical findings that hiring does not respond to WOTC eligibility, expansions, or reductions in application costs. Firms hire the same workers regardless of the subsidy, and more than 90% of subsidized hires would have occurred anyway. The program functions as a transfer to a small set of large firms, not as hiring support for marginal employers.

Claim 5: WOTC is an important subsidy for hiring veterans.

Supporters often defend the Work Opportunity Tax Credit by invoking veterans. Senator Cassidy (R-La.), for example, argues that WOTC must be extended because “veterans and military spouses deserve every opportunity to build stable, rewarding careers.” That sentiment is laudable, but it does not describe what WOTC does.

First, veterans are a small share of certified WOTC workers. Even in recent years, veterans account for only 6-7% of WOTC certifications, compared with roughly 70% for SNAP recipients. In earlier years, the veteran share was closer to 1–2%. Whatever WOTC is, empirically, it is not primarily a veterans’ policy.

Second, and more importantly, the best evidence shows that WOTC does not meaningfully affect hiring outcomes at all, regardless of targeted group type. Employers hire the same workers with or without the credit, and most of the certified hires are for low-paid jobs with short tenures.

Even studies focused specifically on veterans find similar windfall rates: A 2012 Department of Labor Inspector General report concluded that roughly 87% of WOTC benefits subsidized veteran hires that would have occurred anyway.

The institutional reasons WOTC fails—lack of screening, legal risk concerns and siloed HR processes—apply equally to veterans.

Conclusion

Across every claim used to justify its renewal—hiring, job quality, small business support and veteran employment—the Work Opportunity Tax Credit consistently fails empirical scrutiny. Decades of evidence show that it does not change hiring behavior, does not improve worker outcomes and overwhelmingly subsidizes jobs that would have existed anyway. Reauthorizing WOTC yet again would not be a bold commitment to disadvantaged workers or veterans. It would be an admission that policymakers prefer symbolic tax credits to policies that actually work.