New ways of developing skills, expanding access to jobs, and encouraging the creation of quality jobs are critical for building an economy that works for everyone, including businesses, workers, and communities. To accelerate such strategies, we are pleased to announce the release of the Communities that Work Partnership Playbook. The Playbook emerges from the Communities that Work Partnership, jointly launched by AspenWSI, FutureWorks, and the US Economic Development Administration in April 2015. Since then, the initiative has documented and accelerated the development of employer-led regional workforce partnerships across the country. Seven regional teams — composed of leaders from diverse sectors in Buffalo, New York; Phoenix, Arizona; Houston, Texas; the San Francisco Bay area in California; northwest Georgia; New York City; and Washington, DC — engaged in a learning exchange focused on strengthening local talent pipelines and improving access to quality employment. The Communities that Work Partnership Playbook, published by AspenWSI and FutureWorks, highlights key takeaways from the seven regional teams’ work. The “plays” describe strategies that will be useful for those creating talent development approaches that leverage knowledge, capacity, and resources of not only education, workforce, and economic development partners, but also business partners.

In April 2015, the Aspen Institute Workforce Strategies Initiative jointly launched the Communities that Work Partnership with the US Economic Development Administration. The purpose of this initiative was to document and accelerate the development of employer-led regional workforce initiatives across the country. Seven competitively-selected sites — in Arizona, California, the District of Columbia, Georgia, New York (upstate and NYC), and Texas — participated in a learning exchange focused on bridging economic and workforce development to strengthen local talent pipelines and improve access to quality employment.

The “on-demand” or “1099” economy is reengineering how millions of Americans work, and California’s San Francisco Bay Area is at the forefront of these changes. Four members of the Bay Area team participating in the Communities that Work Partnership (CTWP) set out to understand this challenge and explore how the public workforce development system—the one-stop job centers, community colleges, and publicly funded community-based training programs—could meet the skills/needs of freelancers, and the businesses that hire them, in the region’s 1099 economy.

Restore the Promise of Work: Reducing Inequality by Raising the Floor and Building Ladders, published by the Aspen Institute Economic Opportunities Program and PHI in February 2016, encourages a broader community beyond workforce development to engage in initiatives that redesign work to expand economic opportunity and address growing social, political, and economic inequality. Restore the Promise of Work underscores that both public and private changes, in both policies and practices, are essential. This new brief calls for leaders from workforce development, education, business, philanthropy, labor, government, and more to forge a powerful, coordinated agenda to promote better quality jobs. A coordinated effort will be critical to sustaining and expanding the successes that members of this community have already attained.RR

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.