This report details findings from a landscape scan that identified emerging trends and field-building opportunities for sector partnerships that are working to embed equity and reduce disparities. This can be a useful resource for workforce practitioners seeking to frame their work around equitable outcomes.

This publication details seven key components of a modernized tuition assistance program, including flexibility, inclusiveness, affordability, and support. This information can be useful to employers seeking to develop or enhance a tuition assistance program and to practitioners who work with businesses to improve worker mobility.

This step-by-step guide by Upskill America, an initiative of the Economic Opportunities Program, and the Institute for Corporate Productivity details the steps to change an organization’s tuition assistance program to a tuition disbursement program, providing financial support for education up-front rather than offering reimbursement after a worker has completed a program. This simple change to the structure of a tuition assistance program has important job quality and equity implications; it can make education and upskilling accessible to workers who are eager to learn but lack access to resources to pay for school. This tool is useful for employers and all practitioners who work with them to strengthen job quality.

In the coming decades, the success of the US economy will become increasingly tied to the success of Latino Americans. With 58 million Latinos in the US today and projections of population growth in the years to come, Latino workers, consumers, and business owners will shape the present and future of the US economy. How can we secure economic stability and mobility for Latino workers, families, and communities? What policies, practices, or strategies could help to improve job quality, increase skills and access to high-quality jobs, and expand business ownership opportunities?

The Aspen Institute Economic Opportunities Program (EOP) and the Latinos and Society Program (AILAS) invite you to watch “Drivers of Opportunity: How Will Latinos Shape the Future of the American Dream?”

Headlines warn that changes in retail will lead to disruptive job loss for frontline workers such as cashiers, salespersons, stock clerks, and order fillers. But there may be more to the story. New technologies, the rise of ecommerce, and shifting business strategies, marketing approaches, and customer expectations are altering the way businesses sell, customers shop, and employees work. How will these changes influence retail businesses’ employment practices and the shape of retail jobs? Will the response to these changes vary across segments of the retail industry, whether companies are publicly traded or privately held, small or large, brick-and-mortar or online, or local or multinational? What are the opportunities to create new jobs with potentially more productive, meaningful, and rewarding work?

We invite you to watch What’s in Store: The Future of Work in Retail, a panel discussion on these questions as part of the Economic Opportunities Program‘s Working in America event series.

The American population is getting older. The US Census estimates that, in 2050, the population aged 65 and over will be 83.7 million, almost double its estimated population in 2012, and the surviving baby boomers will be over the age of 85. As the United States ages, direct care workers, such as home care aides and certified nursing assistants, will become essential to many more families. Yet these workers tend to be low-paid and poorly trained and receive little respect for the critical work that they do.

During this event, the panel discusses if such a workforce is capable of addressing the needs of our aging population, and how can we improve the quality of work and healthcare services in an industry of growing national importance.

This is a profile of Charm City Run, a Baltimore-area running and walking specialty store, as part of the Good Companies/Good Jobs initaitive research.

In this report, Investing in Workforce Program Innovation: A Formative Evaluation of Five Workforce Organizations’ Experiences during the Human Capital Innovation Fund Initiative, we describe the five organizations’ experiences planning, implementing, and adapting new strategies. Investing in Workforce Program Innovation offers insights into the complex work of developing and maintaining relationships that cross institutions. We discuss factors grantees considered when identifying partner organizations, the approaches they used to find common ground and work effectively together, and the ways in which partnerships evolved and deepened over time. We describe how organizations cultivated long-term relationships with employers to not only inform workforce program design and promote job placement, but also to engage employers to reflect upon their hiring and employment practices. Finally, we discuss the ways in which HCIF-supported organizations tailored comprehensive and ongoing supports to the unique needs of their participants to help them succeed in and beyond training programs.

This playbook from UpSkill America, an initiative of the Economic Opportunities Program, is designed to highlight examples of employers investing in upskilling strategies to support worker advancement and business competitiveness. This playbook has relevance for employers interested in adopting training and education strategies or for practitioners advising businesses to invest in their workers.

This Harvard Business Review article, written by a professor of operations at MIT Sloan School of Management, explains research findings about why good jobs—those with livable wages, predictable hours, training, and opportunities for promotion and growth—can also make retail businesses more stable and competitive. This article can be used to understand the business case for the “Good Jobs Strategy,” which involves investing in labor while strengthening operational effectiveness.