Pursuing Equity and Opportunity, While Defending Democracy

This newsletter focuses a great deal on broken systems, and on movements and initiatives to fix those systems. We focus here on labor markets, not politics. That said, 2020’s toxic spillover into our new year 2021 reminds us that we can’t take for granted the right to point out where people are overlooked, where systems are broken. Democracy, Representative Government, and Rule of Law are guarantors of our ability to say what’s true and to fix what’s broken. They also allow us to learn from others who may not share our perspective, then to decide on collective action. 

Democracy is the foundation on which we can pursue Opportunity and Equity. In the shadow of last week’s violent attacks (and ongoing planned attacks) on our institutions - incited by powerful enemies of our multi-racial society and representative democracy - we must work together more than ever to defend, protect, nurture, and nourish the basis of U.S. opportunity and progress. 

With this mission of seeking to create opportunity for all, I’m sharing the latest “Opportunity Wrap” by Opportunity@Work’s Martin Evelyn, which shares insights on how to reimagine our approach to our workforce to achieve an equitable recovery; ways businesses can hire “hidden workers” in the labor market; a new report that proposes policies to help workers build digital skills; and new evidence that the economy will rebound in the spring.

• Joseph Fuller, Manjari Raman, Eva Sage-Gavin and Ladan Davarzani find that there are 28 million “hidden workers” in the United States who could do higher-wage work, but struggle to access economic mobility because of barriers such as caregiving responsibilities and a lack of credentials. To help these workers, businesses should restructure their hiring practices to remove these barriers. buff.ly/3nATYox
• While most economists expect that the recession will persist in the winter, they’re optimistic that there will be a rebound in the spring. They point to stimulus funding and vaccine availability as the primary drivers of economic growth. buff.ly/35mm9kL
• A new report from the National Skills Coalition and Cognizant U.S. Foundation finds that one-third of all workers suffer from underinvestment in critical digital skills. To address this challenge, policymakers should encourage industry partnerships focused on building digital skills, offer financial aid for digital training, invest in professional development, and increase access to broadband internet. buff.ly/38pRlkL

The COVID-19 crisis lays bare the deficiencies in our labor market. STARs*, talented workers who are “Skilled Through Alternative Routes,” not through four-year college degrees, comprise two-thirds of our essential workforce yet they continue to experience the decades-long trends in wage decline and limited upward mobility. If many feel “the system is rigged”, our answer is to “unrig the system”. There’s a lot to fix, including our broken labor market. Together. On purpose.

All the best,

Byron