Student employment subsidies are one of the largest types of employment subsidies and one of the oldest forms of student aid. The Federal Work-Study program (FWS) is the largest student employment subsidy program; since 1964, it has provided about $1 billion per year to cover 75 percent of wages for student employees, who typically work on campus 10-15 hours per week. FWS subsidizes 700,000 students per year. One out of 10 first-year undergraduates (and three out of 10 undergraduates at private, nonprofit four-year institutions) receive FWS subsidies. Policymakers may be interested in the extent to which FWS increases students' access to productive employment, and how it impacts students' academic and career success. This brief summarizes findings from a recent study using national data and a propensity score matching approach to examine the overall effects of FWS participation for students enrolled at four-year institutions, as well as its effects under two conditional counterfactuals: What would have happened if the recipient had worked a non-FWS job? And what would have happened if the recipient had not worked at all?