This op-ed examines the severing of wealth from work, and what we can do to change course to ensure work leads to economic security.

This series of publications for workforce professionals explains why the time is right to focus on job quality work and offers a series of practical recommendations for job training programs seeking to deepen employer engagement and strengthen support for lower-income workers.

This discussion paper is designed to help Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFIs) define and measure job quality. It defines a quality job as one that contains most (if not all) of five elements: a living wage, basic benefits, career-building opportunities, wealth-building opportunities, and a fair and engaging workplace. The paper offers impact measurement practices to assess and report on job quality to help CDFIs encourage and support their business borrowers to enhance the quality of jobs they offer. While this resource is written for lenders, it has applications for all practitioners seeking to define and measure job quality within a firm.

As work demands more of employees’ time, many are asking: How can I earn a living while making sure my family doesn’t fall behind? Workers across all income brackets struggle with the United States’ outdated work-life policy framework, but the balancing act is particularly challenging and risky for low- and moderate-income workers and their families who have smaller financial margins and a weak safety net.

In her book, Finding Time: The Economics of Work-Life Conflict, Heather Boushey argues that resolving work-life conflicts is as vital for individuals and families as it is essential for realizing the country’s productive potential. Boushey, executive director and chief economist of the Washington Center for Equitable Growth, presents detailed innovations — at municipal, state, and company levels — that illustrate how US policy can ease the burden on American families and ensure our country’s economic stability. Through personal anecdotes, real-life profiles, and extensive statistical research, Boushey demonstrates that economic efficiency and equity can be reconciled if we have the vision to forge a new social contract for business, government, and private citizens.

Headlines about work abound with projections that employment as we know it is quickly fading away. Jobs are sliced-and-diced into “micro-tasks,” and employees are replaced by an army of contractors. Some blue-collar workers do not even know whom they work for, technically, due to the layers of contracting that separate them from the company to which they deliver services. The on-demand or “sharing” economy is exploding. Microenterprises are proliferating. Estimates of the percentage of the workforce that is “contingent” (or freelance, contract or self-employed) range widely from four to 40 percent.

This panel discusses the scope of these phenomena, what is driving this trend, and the implications for workers trying to earn a living in today’s economy. As the social contract between employers and employees deteriorates, how do workers access stable and adequate incomes, protections from abuse, and basic benefits like health care and retirement? As the nature of work evolves, how should labor and social policies evolve to ensure work in America can still lead families to a better future? Panelists explore policy alternatives for today and for the future.

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.