This guide identifies policies employers can enact to support workers during COVID-19, which can be applied in other moments of workplace upheaval. There are sections on providing emergency benefits to workers, ensuring a safe workplace, and how to support workers who are furloughed or laid off. This publication includes tangible solutions that employers can implement, such as exploring a work-sharing agreement or increasing flexibility of scheduling. While designed for employers, this guide may also be useful for worker advocates and workforce professionals who work closely with employers to support workers.

This series, informed by local job quality initiatives, can support workforce development professionals interested in beginning or strengthening engagement with employers to improve job quality. The reports are organized around three areas: 1) Strategies for Resourcing Job Quality Initiatives, with a focus on co-investment strategies with employers; 2) Practitioner competencies that can support staff engaged in job quality efforts with employers; and 3) Employer readiness characteristics to consider when determining employer partners. The last report also includes a link to a resource to help practitioners navigate employer resistance to change efforts. This series may also be useful for others interested in partnering on local job quality efforts, including economic development professionals and employers.

The Employer Engagement Question Bank is designed to help workforce professionals engage in conversations with businesses to support the job seekers they work with. This tool can be used to learn about a business with an eye toward providing workforce services, developing expertise about industry norms and practices, and building relationships that build credibility in discussions about strategies for promoting worker retention and advancement. The tool includes questions to build understanding of the business, its workforce needs, and a range of job quality factors including compensation, opportunities for advancement, and equity and inclusion. Workforce development practioners and other professionals who support workers can adapt the tool to meet their employer engagement goals.

This report examines definitions and research on job quality and provides a job quality framework based on findings. It focuses on job quality elements with the potential to support economic mobility. Designed to provide common ground for discussions around job quality, this report may be useful for practitioners and employers interested in exploring job quality frameworks and the link between job quality elements, worker well-being, and upward mobility.

This report addresses worsening job quality during the COVID-19 pandemic, using data from the 2020 Great Jobs Survey and building on the 2019 Great Jobs report. Among other insights, the report addresses how COVID-19 had a differential impact on high wage versus low wage workers, how job quality before the pandemic predicted job quality changes during the pandemic, and how COVID-19 has created new job quality challenges, such as increased remote work.

This report includes 23 practices to embed racial equity into your organization by developing, recognizing, and promoting frontline employees of color. Employers and practitioners can use this resource to structure and implement equitable policies for advancement to strengthen their business.

Before the pandemic, food and drinking establishments were an important part of the business fabric in communities across the country, and these businesses employed over 12 million people. But as food businesses lost customers during the crisis, millions of restaurant workers lost work. Food and drinking establishments have been an important source of employment for women and people of color, who are over-represented in the industry’s lower paid occupations.

In this conversation we talk about ideas for business practices, public policies, and partnerships, including an innovative public/private effort that’s addressing the interests that workers, small business owners, and communities all share in a thriving restaurant sector.

In this event, Eduardo Porter discusses his book, American Poison: How Racial Hostility Destroyed Our Promise, in which he examines “how racial animus has stunted the development of nearly every institution crucial for a healthy society, including organized labor, public education, and the social safety net.” This book talk with the Eduardo discusses how we arrived here and the lessons history holds for finding a better way forward.

To achieve vibrant communities and expand economic opportunity, capital must play a key aligning role. Business lenders and investors, including those such as CDFIs that seek social impact as well as financial returns, are important contributors to the local economy and job creation. But what kinds of jobs are the businesses they finance creating? What kinds of jobs do we want them to create? Can we influence the quality of these jobs? And what can job quality advocates in workforce development and other fields learn from pioneering investors and lenders about strategies to measure job quality in firms and drive business practice change?

This event features representatives from CDFIs and investors to discuss these questions.

This article discusses the barriers the lack of affordable childcare presents to parents and working people and the benefits the US would receive if this challenge were addressed