- From Accenture: Out of global crisis comes a new world of opportunities. This past year, business models have been reinvented. Supply chains have been restructured. Promises of new scientific breakthroughs have been suddenly realized. Productivity, we now know, can thrive virtually. In the process of tackling global challenges that even the most forward-thinking leaders never fathomed, organizations have transformed. How do we capitalize on this new momentum? How do we accelerate the innovation we have tapped? How do we optimize for the new global reality? Click here to read more.
- From The Annie E. Casey Foundation: Racial inequity is widespread and stubbornly persistent in America today. Systems and institutions across the country are failing — still — to provide the opportunities and support necessary for children of color to thrive. Against this backdrop, the Annie E. Casey Foundation and the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation are supporting a series of research projects, called Elevating Equity, that aims to advance racial equity for American families of color. Click here to read more.
- From The Aspen Institute: Ask a group of corporate leaders about the challenges facing their businesses, and you’re likely to get a list including workforce recruitment and retention, employee communication, workplace safety, risk management, and issues surrounding diversity, equity, and inclusion. One essential source of innovation and experience that can help solve these challenges is being underutilized by most American corporations—and it’s sitting right under their noses. That source is a company’s own workers. Click here to read more.
- From Brookings: Federal, state, and local policies profoundly affect nearly every aspect of American neighborhoods, including their economic vitality, their shape and form, their social fabric, and their forms of self-governance. These policies do not affect neighborhoods equally—they convey benefits on some and burdens on others. A clear result is the growing divergence between prosperous neighborhoods and those that struggle against social and economic barriers. The crises of 2020 accelerated this divergence and offered a glimpse of what the future holds for the nation if policymakers fail to reconsider some of the long-standing policies that have created and reinforce these conditions. Fortunately, the crises also provided a moment of clarity for the many leaders who saw the costs and risks of remaining on the same path. Click here to read more.
- From Center for American Progress: In October 2021, millions of people who use the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) will see an increase to the benefits that help them feed themselves and their families. This change was made possible by a seemingly obscure process: the reevaluation of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Thrifty Food Plan. The Thrifty Food Plan (TFP) is the most frugal of the four plans that the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) develops to estimate the costs and contents of a healthy diet, and it has special policy importance as the basis for determining the maximum amount of SNAP benefits available to families. Click here to read more.
- From Center on Budget and Policy Priorities: Congress is crafting recovery legislation that has the potential to significantly reduce poverty, broaden opportunity, and increase racial equity in the United States. Based in large part on President Biden’s American Families Plan unveiled earlier this year, the investments under consideration would make a substantial difference in the lives of children and youth, a large body of research shows. Click here to read more.
- From Checkr: The COVID-19 pandemic has created a massive labor shortage, but finding top talent is something HR teams have been struggling with long before the global emergency. According to the Allegis Group’s Global Workforce Trends Survey, 79 percent of respondents in North America and 80 percent of the global subset experience challenges acquiring critical talent. Click here to read more.
- From Chmura: Some occupations are more likely to encounter vaccination requirements while others are less likely. In job ads from July, for example, COVID vaccine requirements were most prevalent among personal care and service occupations, especially among nannies, childcare workers, and recreation workers. The vaccine requirement was also more common among healthcare support workers, a group that includes nursing assistants and personal care aides. Vaccine requirements were less likely to be found among the four occupation groups of computer and mathematical; sales and related; construction and exaction; and transportation and material moving occupations. Click here to read more.
- From Corporation for a Skilled Workforce: Getting good results despite minimal investment is nevertheless a fantasy most politicians seem to cling to when it comes to our workforce. Search for the phrase “We have the best workforce in the world,” and you’ll find that it’s on the lips of leaders on both sides of the aisle. And yet, over the past two decades, these same leaders have overseen stunning disinvestments in the training and development programs that are critical for sustaining a prepared workforce. According to the National Skills Coalition, U.S. Department of Labor workforce programs have been slashed 40 percent since 2001. In the same period, the funds for career and technical education have been cut by 28 percent and those for adult education by 18 percent. The OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) reports that U.S. public spending on workforce training in 2018 ranked 28th among 33 OECD countries. How big is the gap to the top-investing country? That year, the U.S. spent .03% of GDP on training, while the leading country, Austria, spent fourteen times that much. Click here to read more.
- From Credential Engine: There are nearly one million credentials offered in the United States and approximately $1.9 trillion per year spent on education and training. Credential transparency enables stakeholders in learning and job ecosystems to explore and compare credentials in order to make better decisions about the best options for learning, advancement, and meaningful careers. Click here to read more.
- From Emsi: Whether due to the desire for higher pay, more stability, professional growth, or simply a more congenial type of work, transitions from one job to another are an important part of the working life cycle. How can workforce institutions put job seekers on paths that will lead to fulfilling work and prosperous communities? Click here to read more.
- From the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta: The pandemic has forced everyone to rethink many things: how we work, how we conduct business, how we communicate with others, and how we use technology, among other things. But could it have helped push millennials and Gen Z-ers to think more positively about taking financial risks? Click here to read more.
- From Gallup: The latest update to Gallup’s COVID-19 Panel survey, conducted Aug. 16-22, found Americans’ outlook on the coronavirus pandemic in the U.S. is worsening as the delta variant continues to cause a surge in cases, hospitalizations and deaths. The rising number of cases, particularly in Southern states, has resulted in hospitals being overrun. As such, in just one month’s time, U.S. adults’ worry about hospital capacity and supplies has grown from 16% to 39%. Click here to read more.
- From Gallup Workplace Insights: Amid alarming levels of employee stress and burnout, some organizations are considering what might have been unthinkable to many a few years ago: reducing the work week to four days. Some studies support reducing the number of hours worked each week. An experiment conducted in Iceland between 2015 and 2019 found that doing so while keeping pay the same increased productivity. Click here to read more.
- From Jobs for the Future: As the country takes early steps toward a post-pandemic recovery, significant disruption and uncertainty in the labor market and in schools remain. But one thing is clear: we need to provide more opportunities for learners and workers to quickly acquire skills that are in-demand in today’s economy. Despite the nascent recovery, millions of people are still out of work or unable to find jobs that pay family-sustaining wages and offer benefits and advancement opportunities. Meanwhile, millions of students are questioning the relevance, time commitment, and costs of traditional courses of study. Click here to read more.
- From JPMorgan Chase Institute: The financial consequences of a family experiencing job loss for can vary widely. This report examines factors that drive the spending response during unemployment across households of different characteristics and over time. We leverage an expanded dataset that dates back to 2007, covering over 2 million job loss events and allowing a perspective that spans the Great Recession, the expansion period, and the COVID-19 recession. Our data show that household characteristics, such as liquidity and race, play a much larger role in explaining the consumption response to job loss than business cycle or local labor market conditions. Low-liquidity households are most prone to sharp spending declines after income drops, suggesting that targeting can be a useful way to support current consumption levels for financially vulnerable households. Click here to read more.
- From Manpower: In the biggest workforce shift and reallocation of skills since World War II began, those skills most in demand during the early phase of the crisis are different than the most in-demand roles we are seeing today and in the future. While a third of U.S. companies are reporting difficulty finding the talent they need, employer hiring expectations are on the rise, fueling the strongest hiring pace in 21 years. Click here to read more.
- From McKinsey & Company: More than 15 million US workers—and counting—have quit their jobs since April 2021, a record pace disrupting businesses everywhere. Companies are struggling to address the problem, and many will continue to struggle for one simple reason: they don’t really understand why their employees are leaving in the first place. Rather than take the time to investigate the true causes of attrition, many companies are jumping to well-intentioned quick fixes that fall flat: for example, they’re bumping up pay or financial perks, like offering “thank you” bonuses without making any effort to strengthen the relational ties people have with their colleagues and their employers. The result? Rather than sensing appreciation, employees sense a transaction. This transactional relationship reminds them that their real needs aren’t being met. Click here to read more.
- From Migration Policy Institute: More than a year since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, and six months into U.S. vaccination efforts, the economy is starting to rebound from the worst of the economic recession induced by stay-at-home mandates, social-distancing measures, supply chain disruptions, and other pandemic impacts. Employment levels are also recovering, though the picture is different across states and industries. Click here to read more.
- From the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE): Service learning and volunteer work allow students to develop meaningful and tangible work-related skills and explore a variety of work environments. As career practitioners, we should encourage all students (not only those interested in helping/social services professions) to add volunteer experiences on their resumes, and to discuss the skills they are learning from these activities in interviews and networking events. In recent years, authenticity has become more important in workplace situations. Helping students feel comfortable discussing activities that they naturally gravitate towards and are excited about, will allow those students to come off as more authentic to employers, and could ultimately refine their ability to tell their own stories. Most importantly, we should also strive to help students become the best version of themselves and to contribute to society through their chosen careers. Highlighting volunteer experiences is a way to do this. Click here to read more.
- From the National Association of Counties (NACO): On September 8, 2021, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Economic Research Service released its annual report on the state of food insecurity in the nation. The data suggests that despite the challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic, the share of households experiencing uncertain access to food due to resource limitations remained relatively unchanged from 2019. While the report does not explore causal connections, the large uptick in emergency federal food aid (along with other income supports) throughout the course of the public health emergency is almost certainly responsible for keeping increased hunger at bay. As the front line of the social safety net and a key partner fighting food insecurity at the local level, counties welcome continued federal resources for nutrition programs that support the health and wellbeing of our vulnerable residents. Click here to read more.
- From the National Association of Workforce Boards (NAWB): The breadth of the distress that COVID-19 has inflicted on labor markets across the United States, and especially in historically oppressed communities, leads to three key takeaways: The nature of work was already changing, leaving many un- or under-employed. In the context of COVID-19, those changes are now rapidly accelerating. Workforce development programs are facing the need to change both what jobs they train for and how they train as employer demand shifts and social distancing and remote work continue to gain traction. The federal government has passed an unprecedented amount of stimulus funding to state and local governments. Click here to read more.
- From the National Conference of State Legislatures: College and university campuses are at higher risk for outbreaks of communicable diseases due to students attending classes or living in close quarters, increasingly geographically diverse student populations and a higher prevalence of certain diseases among younger populations. State governments and public health officials in 34 states and the District of Columbia have required the hepatitis B or meningococcal vaccines for college attendance. Click here to read more.
- From the National League of Cities (NLC): The American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) is a $1.9 trillion economic stimulus bill that was signed into law by President Biden on March 11th of this year. This coronavirus rescue package includes $65.1 billion of direct and flexible aid to America’s cities, towns and villages which is designed to facilitate the United States’ recovery from the devastating economic and health effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. For city leaders to address the challenges that their communities are facing, they must understand the variety of available resources and develop a strategy to interweave the recovery fund from the U.S. Department of the Treasury, and the other financial resources that are flowing from the Commerce and Agriculture Departments, from Health and Human Services, and from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). Click here to read more.
- From the National Fund for Workforce Solutions: As the country continues to navigate the pandemic and its impact on the labor market, we are seeing an entrenched dynamic starting to shift. Workers and job seekers feel empowered to demand more from a job and from their employers, and business leaders are making renewed commitments their employees. We’re also looking at an enormous infusion of federal resources to engage employers and ensure workers have skills and good pathways to quality jobs. Click here to read more.
- From the National Skills Coalition: Investments in skills training and supportive services are critical to an inclusive economic recovery. The businesses and workers most impacted by the pandemic – women, people of color, immigrants, and their families – need Congress to invest in training and supports that are essential components of any effort to revitalize the labor market. That’s why NSC is fighting for a generation-defining $100 billion investment in equitable skills policies that contribute to an inclusive economic recovery. That’s the amount we need to respond to the pandemic’s impact on the workforce and the decade worth of digital and technological change that happened in just the last year. Click here to read more.
- From Prosperity Now: Congress, the American public, and even national news outlets continue to uplift the powerful impact that the expanded Child Tax Credit (CTC) is having on the everyday lives of children and families. Indeed, 61 million children received their second CTC monthly payment on August 13th, totaling $15 billion in payments to help families raise their children and keeping three million children out of poverty in its first month alone. Click here to read more.
- From the Rework America Alliance: The Rework America Alliance, a Markle initiative, studied the job histories of 29 million people across more than 800 occupations to look at how to realize the potential of the more than 5.8M workers from low-wage roles currently unemployed and without a college degree. From this, the Alliance has identified actionable steps that can be taken to help these workers to return to work in better roles. Click here to read more.
- From the Roosevelt Institute: For the last half-century, the United States has relied on the private market to provide childcare. Families and providers have struggled in the resulting chronically underfunded system. In particular, low-income Black and brown families have borne the brunt of the decision to treat childcare as a private matter. Click here to read more.
- From the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM): The impact of the pandemic on mental health has been tremendous to include an increase in depression, bipolar disorder episodes, anxiety behaviors and other mental health issues. According to a recent survey from SHRM, “Nearly half (48 percent) of employed Americans report feeling mentally and physically exhausted at the end of the workday.” Work exhaustion coupled with demands at home may also be negatively impacting mental health. Click here to read more.
- From Southern Regional Education Board (SREB): When students don’t have good teachers, it can affect their cognitive growth — and over time can result in measurable economic loss. Teacher shortages, therefore, are the type of crisis that “can put an entire society at risk,” said Nicole Smith, the chief economist and research professor at the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce. Click here to read more.
- From Strada Education Network: Nondegree credentials have been growing rapidly for decades. During the COVID-19 economic crisis, interest in nondegree credentials and skills training options was especially high. Questions about their quality and value, however, remain. Click here to read more.
- From WorkforceGPS: To serve jobseekers effectively, employment and training programs may need to incorporate essential supportive services. These three Workforce System Strategies resources document supportive services such as: childcare, training materials, transportation assistance, rental assistance, and work clothing to increase jobseeker abilities to access, and prepare for and obtain employment. Click here to read more.
- From Workforce Monitor: In Louisiana, the state’s higher education system, workforce commission, and economic development agency (among other agencies), partnered to create credential program standards under a framework developed by the National Skills Coalition. The standards “require a credential to have clear evidence of mastered competencies; align to occupations given ratings of three, four, or five stars, as determined by the state’s workforce commission based on job demand and projected growth; and lead to an occupation with a 20% wage premium above what workers with a high school diploma earn in the state.” Click here to learn more.
- From WorkingNation: A lot has been written about last-mile training programs that provide just-in-time training around the specific skills and business experiences that employers are looking for in their open positions. By starting with employer needs and working backward to education and training, last-mile training programs are highly responsive to shifts in the labor market, create a fast track for talent, and improve employment outcomes—especially in emerging technical fields plagued by skills gaps. Click here to read more.
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