The Future of Work for Low-Income Workers and Families is a policy brief aimed at state policy advocates and policymakers seeking to help low-income workers and their families secure healthy economic livelihoods as the nature of work evolves in the United States. Published by the Working Poor Families Project in December 2015, the brief was written by Vickie Choitz and Maureen Conway. This brief reviews the major forces shaping the future of work, including changes in labor and employment practices, business models, access to income and benefits, worker rights and voice, education and training, and technology. Across these areas, we are seeing disruptive change in our economy and society resulting in increasing risk and challenges for low-income workers, in particular.

By 2050, the number of Americans needing long-term care services and supports will double. They will have more acute and complex care needs than previous generations, and they will be more likely to receive care at home or in a residential setting than in an institution. These factors are driving the increased demand for workers providing home care services and for better training. One of the biggest workforce challenges we face as a country is how to meet the growing demands for such a critical workforce. One model has emerged in Washington State: The SEIU Healthcare NW Training Partnership. Founded in 2007, this nonprofit school is the nation’s largest training provider for workers in home care. The Training Partnership has created a statewide training system with comprehensive resources and tools to support home care workers, consumers and employers. This case study provides an overview of the Training Partnership and its history, offerings—-including the nation’s first Registered Apprenticeship program for home care workers—-and outcomes. It also summarizes the model’s strengths and challenges. The development of this case study was generously supported by SkillUp Washington and the Ford Foundation.

Also known as the “gig economy,” “consumer-to-consumer sharing,” and “peer-to-peer marketplaces,” the term “sharing economy” is used to describe a wide variety of exchanges between people, including property, skills, labor, or space.

Sharing economy companies include Airbnb (rent a room or your house), Uber (provide rides), TaskRabbit (do chores for others), and Instacart (be a personal grocery shopper), to name a few. There were an estimated 80 million sharers in the United States in 2013 – although that included 33 million “resharers,” those who buy and/or sell pre-owned goods online at sites like Craigslist (Vision Critical and Crowd Companies).

Revenue estimates vary from $3.5 billion in the U.S. in 2013 (Forbes) to $335 billion globally in 2025 (PricewaterhouseCoopers). Many have touted this system’s benefits for consumers, including convenient and affordable services and shared goods. But what are the benefits — and the downsides — of the sharing economy for the workers who provide the services? What is the influence of the sharing economy on the future of work? What are the implications for public policy and business practice?

Panelists explored these issues and more.

In MIT Sloan professor Zeynep Ton’s game-changing book, The Good Jobs Strategy: How the Smartest Companies Invest in Employees to Lower Costs & Boost Profits, she discusses how companies such as Costco offer good jobs to workers, low prices and excellent service to customers, and great returns to shareholders all at the same time. What makes good jobs not only possible but very profitable—even in low-cost service businesses—is a set of counterintuitive choices that transforms the company’s investment in workers into high performance. What are these choices? Offer less, combine standardization with empowerment, cross-train, and operate with slack. It’s a combination that lowers operating costs, increases worker productivity, and, as “The Good Jobs Strategy” shows over and over, puts workers — yes, even cashiers and stockroom workers—at the center of a company’s success. In this strategy, “everyone — employees, customers, and investors — wins.”

In this discussion, Zeynep Ton and Richard Galanti, Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer and Director of Costco Wholesale Corporation, explore how the strategy works in a company like Costco and the implications for creating better jobs in our economy.

This foundational brief encourages the workforce development field to implement a broader range of workforce interventions to improve the lives of workers in low-wage work by focusing on both career mobility and basic economic stability. It provides a useful framework for job quality efforts, identifying approaches that not only build ladders, or help low-wage workers advance into better jobs, but also raise the floor, or help make workers’ current jobs more stable so that they can take advantage of upskilling and mobility opportunities.

The Family and Medical Leave Act, passed in 1993, guarantees up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave to covered workers and has been used over 100 million times since its inception. But since this leave is unpaid, many cannot afford to take it.

In addition, only a little more than half of the U.S. workforce is covered by FMLA since establishments with 50 or fewer employees are not covered by the law, and workers need to meet job tenure and hours worked requirements before becoming eligible. This situation is not only bad news for workers and customers, businesses themselves may experience decreased worker productivity and increased worker turnover when employees must put work ahead of health and family. As this issue gains attention, a number of states and localities are implementing or exploring paid sick or family leave laws.

In this conversation, panelists will discuss challenges faced by workers, parents and employers in managing this issue and explore ideas for practices and policies that can better support the workforce, families, and the economy.

In MIT Sloan professor Zeynep Ton’s game-changing book, The Good Jobs Strategy: How the Smartest Companies Invest in Employees to Lower Costs & Boost Profits, she proves that it is possible to offer good jobs to workers, low prices and excellent service to customers, and great returns to shareholders all at the same time. What makes good jobs not only possible but very profitable—even in low-cost service businesses—is a set of counterintuitive choices that transforms the company’s investment in workers into high performance. What are these choices? Offer less, combine standardization with empowerment, cross-train, and operate with slack. It’s a combination that lowers operating costs, increases worker productivity, and, as The Good Jobs Strategy shows over and over, puts workers—yes, even cashiers and stockroom workers—at the center of a company’s success.

In this book talk, Ton discusses The Good Jobs Strategy and its implications.

In this brief, we provide an overview of work in the direct-care industry and profile PHI (Paraprofessional Healthcare Institute), an organization dedicated to improving job quality in the industry. Our goal is to offer information to those involved in workforce development about the challenges of work in the direct-care industry and the strategies PHI uses to promote job quality improvements.

As one of our nation’s strongest training models, apprenticeship provides individuals the unique opportunity to work and develop their skills at the same time through a mix of paid on-the-job training and classroom instruction. In this report, Aspen WSI examines completion and cancellation rates in construction apprenticeship, the challenges apprentices experience in completing their programs, and strategies that are being used to support the success of these individuals. The report is based on national and state-level analysis of apprenticeship completion rates and dozens of interviews and focus groups with apprentices, journey workers, union representatives, construction contractors, pre-apprenticeship program leaders, and other stakeholders in the industry.

This report details the state of low-wage work in the restaurant industry and provides a profile of Restaurant Opportunities Center-United, an organization striving to empower low-wage restaurant workers, employers, and consumers to collectively improve job quality in the industry.