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2023-02-27
All Due Respect;
This toolkit provides how-to resources for turning organizing jobs into good jobs, sustainable for the long haul.Â
2023-02-21
Paraprofessional Healthcare Institute, Inc.;
PHI's state advocacy toolkit, reframed as a "practical resource guide," was drafted and designed in fall 2022 and released for national dissemination in February 2023. The guide includes 20 concrete strategies, based on lessons learned from the "Essential Jobs, Essential Care" initiative and organized across five dimensions of advocacy: strategizing, designing, persuading, advocating, and evaluating. Each strategy includes specific steps and key resources. Advocates can read the guide a whole, or sample individual strategies based on their needs and interests.
2023-03-21
American Enterprise Institute;
At the roughly 1,000 public community colleges in the US, millions of students enroll in courses and programs that prepare them for either academic pursuits (such as transferring to a four-year college or university to pursue a bachelor's degree) or direct entry into the workforce. Those in the latter category gain occupational skills and credentials that include associate degrees and certificates; cer-tificates can be for academic credit or not and for varying lengths of time, and certificates and associate degrees can be for fields with diverging skill needs and varying amounts of regional demand for labor at any time. Employers in key regional industries generate this labor demand, and meeting their skill needs is an important workforce development role for community colleges.While community colleges meet a wide range of student and industry needs, are they meeting their potential—in terms of serving as an accessible point of entry to good jobs in the labor market and generating opportunities for high-quality skill development and workforce preparation at scale? For whom do they work more or less effectively? And what might be done to improve opportunities and outcomes there? What is the role of short-term versus long-term and for-credit versus noncredit programs? And how can we make sure that they adapt when labor markets evolve and are shaped by technological and global factors?In this report, we argue that community colleges provide millions of students, including people of color and those from low-income backgrounds, with the skills to prosper in the US labor market. At the same time, improvements are clearly needed on several dimensions. Community colleges are experimenting with a range of innovations to improve student performance and their programs' labor market value, and many such efforts are being rigorously evaluated. College administrators should implement the most promising practices broadly, while policymakers at the local, state, and federal levels should support their implementation.
2023-03-09
American Enterprise Institute;
Key PointsThe economy is changing rapidly, constantly, and differently across the country. Workers, employers, and government agencies need to be prepared to respond.The US needs a new workforce information structure that provides timely, local, and actionable data and evidence.This report proposes the creation of a National Collaborative for Local Workforce Information that would be federally funded but state-managed, with states initiating projects designed to become products and ultimately put into practice.
2023-04-13
Pew Research Center;
Pew Research Center conducted this study to better understand the role women and men play as economic providers in opposite-sex marriages and how this relates to the way spouses divide their time between paid work, leisure, caregiving and housework. We also looked at public attitudes about gender roles in marriages today to put the findings in a broader context.The analysis in this report is based on three separate data sources. The earnings data comes from the Annual Social and Economic Supplement of the U.S. Census Bureau's Current Population Survey. The findings on hours devoted to paid work, household responsibilities and leisure are based on data from the American Time Use Survey. The data on public attitudes was collected as part of a larger Center survey of 5,152 U.S. adults conducted Jan. 18-24, 2023. Everyone who took part in the latter is a member of Pew Research Center's American Trends Panel (ATP), an online survey panel that is recruited through national, random sampling of residential addresses. This way nearly all U.S. adults have a chance of selection. The survey is weighted to be representative of the U.S. adult population by gender, race, ethnicity, partisan affiliation, education and other categories.
2023-01-10
Immigration Research Initiative;
Response to the COVID-19 pandemic and recession spurred a wave of policy innovation around the country. Although federal efforts typically carved out undocumented immigrants, many states and localities around the country tried to bring immigrants and others who were excluded back in. New York's Excluded Worker Fund (EWF) was the largest of these efforts. The $2.1 billion program allowed 130,000 immigrants without work authorization, and some others who fell between the gaps of federal aid, to get unemployment compensation if they lost work during the pandemic recession.To better understand the successes and shortcomings of the program, the Urban Institute and Immigration Research Initiative surveyed individuals in the population targeted for aid by this fund.Findings from this survey are intended to help inform advocacy efforts and future legislation, as New York advocates urge inclusion in the 2023 budget and states and localities across the nation consider the implementation of permanent unemployment benefit programs for excluded workers.
2023-01-31
Urban Institute;
Increasing Black women's earnings is not enough to amend their economic vulnerabilities. The difficulty of balancing one's work life and personal or family life complicates the challenge of wealth disparities facing Black women. Using the mixed-methods approach of an online questionnaire, individual interviews, and data analysis, Taylor and colleagues find that Black women stand to benefit when they, their partners/spouses, and their extended family members all have access to three core areas of fringe benefits and policies: (1) universal work-life balance supports, such as flexible work schedules, remote work options, paid time off, mental health days, and family medical leave; (2) holistic dependent care resources and family discounts; and (3) legacy benefits such as employee-share ownership, tuition reimbursement, pension, credit union access, financial/retirement counseling, and legal counseling. They conclude employers could play a progressive role in supporting Black women's efforts to strike a balance between work and home life and close the racial wealth gap.
2023-01-20
Rockefeller Archive Center;
John D. Rockefeller, Jr.'s understanding of labor issues prior to 1914 was shaped largely through his philanthropic and civic activities, including contributions to five liberal, Progressive-era organizations concerned with improving industrial conditions. Simply put, philanthropy provided his education.Following the tragic events in Colorado, especially the so-called Ludlow Massacre, JDR Jr. employed philanthropic giving, in combination with a variety of other strategies, to address the problems at the Colorado Fuel & Iron Company (CF&I), while also restoring the Rockefeller family's good name:Â He used philanthropy to:Improve social and economic conditions in Colorado immediately following the strike;Involve the YMCA's industrial department as part of the company's expanded employee welfare programs;Express gratitude and demonstrate camaraderie with CF&I employees following his historic 1915 visit to Colorado;Promote the ideas of employee representation and personal relations in business; andEncourage research in the emerging fields of industrial relations and organizational behavior. Â Â Â This research report highlights philanthropic aspects of JDR Jr.'s response to the strike and are based on a larger investigation that examined JDR Jr.'s efforts as milestone events in modern public relations and industrial relations as well as JDR Jr.'s emergence as a 20th century icon. Observations about his philanthropic strategy are discussed.
2023-01-18
Economic Policy Institute;
Abortion has long been framed as a cultural, religious, or personal issue rather than a material "bread and butter" economic concern. Since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, more economic policymakers have been emphasizing the issue as a pressing economic concern. In perhaps the first public comment on the issue by a major political figure, Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen noted: "eliminating the right of women to make decisions about when and whether to have children would have very damaging effects on the economy and would set women back decades" (Guida 2022). This direct connection between abortion and reproductive access and economic rights is critical (Banerjee 2022). This report argues that abortion access is fundamentally intertwined with economic progress and mobility. Specifically, in states where abortion has been banned or restricted, abortion restrictions constitute an additional piece in a sustained project of economic subjugation and disempowerment.The states banning abortion rights have, over decades, intentionally constructed an economic policy architecture defined by weak labor standards, underfunded and purposefully dysfunctional public services, and high levels of incarceration. Through a cross-sectional quantitative analysis of state level abortion access status and five indicators of economic security—the minimum wage, unionization, unemployment insurance, Medicaid expansion, and incarceration—we find that, generally, the states enacting abortion bans are the same ones that are economically disempowering workers through other channels.The results of the analysis underscore that abortion restrictions and bans do have economic effects, given the strong correlation between abortion status and various economic wellbeing metrics. Further, the consistent pattern of state abortion bans and negative economic outcomes shows how abortion fits into an economics and politics of control. Abortion restrictions are planks in a policy regime of disempowerment and control over workers' autonomy and livelihoods, just like deliberately low wage standards, underfunded social services, or restricted collective bargaining power. Economic policymakers must prioritize this issue as widespread abortion bans will contribute to a loss in economic security and independence for millions in the current and future generations.
2023-01-11
Mississippi First;
In March 2022, the Mississippi State Legislature passed the largest single-year pay raise for public school teachers in our state's history, raising teacher pay by an average of $5,151. Just months later, districts reported the highest levels of teacher attrition in years: one in five Mississippi teachers opted to not return to their classroom for the 2022-2023 school year, including one-third of all teachers in districts with an "F" accountability rating. These levels of attrition constitute a sharp uptick from previous years and beg the question: why are Mississippi teachers continuing to leave the classroom in droves?Mississippi First has been studying this question for the last few years. In the months leading up to the historic 2022 teacher pay raise, we surveyed 6,496 teachers—one in five teachers statewide—about their pathway into the profession, financial well-being, career plans, and policy preferences. In this report, we present the results from the survey to provide a nuanced answer about which teachers are leaving the classroom and why. We also examine the connection between attrition risk and standard of living to make the case that financial insecurity is rampant among educators and a major driver of early exits from the classroom. Finally, we offer a series of recommendations for policymakers to address teacher turnover and strengthen every facet of Mississippi's educator pipeline
2023-06-08
Urban Institute;
This short report presents findings from interviews—with key informants, including DC early childhood education leaders, advocates, and implementation partners; parents and legal guardians of young children enrolled in licensed DC child care facilities; and child care center directors and home and expanded home providers—on the nation's first early childhood educator wage supplement with dedicated public funding.
2023-05-17
Pew Research Center;
Pew Research Center conducted this study to better understand how adults in the United States think about diversity, equity and inclusion efforts in the workplace. This analysis is based on survey responses from 4,744 U.S. adults who are working part time or full time, are not selfemployed, have only one job or have multiple jobs but consider one their primary job, and whose company or organization has 10 or more people. The data was collected as part of a larger survey of workers conducted Feb. 6-12, 2023. Everyone who took part is a member of Pew Research Center's American Trends Panel (ATP), an online survey panel that is recruited through national, random sampling of residential addresses. This way nearly all U.S. adults have a chance of selection. The survey is weighted to be representative of the U.S. adult population by gender, race, ethnicity, partisan affiliation, education and other categories. Read more about the ATP's methodology.