Colin,
Very relevant topic indeed! I don’t know about research but with regard to helping unemployed gained meaningful jobs via DE, three people/groups come to mind:
 

1. Elevator Programme in Aberdeen Scotland: They retrain people to be entrepreneurs and create their own jobs when they were downsized from shrinking oil and gas industry in their region. Contact is Karen Clark, Programme (yes, that is how they spell it in the UK) Manager. If you can’t find her, email me and let me know. 
2. Bilikiss Adebiyi-Abiola: She is a former student who started WeCyclers to help unemployed (in this case it was youth but lessons learned should be helpful) and won many awards for it.She is a force of nature and has great advice. Again, you can find her on LinkedIn but let me know if you need more help. She is based in Lagos, Nigeria.
3. Rusty Justice: He is based in Kentucky (the only US-based of the three) and built a business retraining coal workers who lost their jobs called BitSource. Also a great person and you can find him on LinkedIn. 

I am sure there are more and as I talk to people, I will ask them if they know of others and if they do come here and respond. I would ask others to do the same. There have to be others out there. Great cause.
Keep up the great work.
Best,
Bill

Bill, 
Thanks very much for your response. I have reached out to the 3 indiviudals you identified to establish contact with them and start the conversation. 
I also continue to look for research for global experiences in utilizing entrepreneurship training to assist indiviudals that have lost their current employment and at the same time may be excellent candidates to look at a start-up as a viable way to find a new opportunity. In the case of Windsor, Ontario we have the highest “unemployment rate” in Canada and this is further impacted by the FCA (Chrysler) decision to shut down the 3rd shift resulting in a direct impact of 1500 jobs and a ripple impact in the economy of an additional 1500+ as well as the COVID impact. 
Working with our local business accelerator we are hoping to offer a program (customized) that will hopefully high light entrepreneurship as an additional path to explore in their search for a new role. 
It seems Europe (Austria) had some success in developing a program and our objective is to hopefully identify: 

Best Practices, Lessons Learned and perhaps mistakes to avoid 

Again, I appreciate your efforts in sharing this “question” with others and any further assistance and or contacts would be most appreciated. 
REGARDS 
Colin McKillop 
cmckillop2018@outlook.com 
colin@downtownaccelerator.com