Our economy needs to work for more Americans. Current and future workers need realistic pathways to living-wage jobs. They also need access to the essential training and education necessary to qualify for better jobs.
These statements encapsulate the general idea of a book titled “Growing Fairly: How to Build Opportunity and Equity in Workforce Development,” authored by Stephen Goldsmith and Kate Markin Coleman, who seek to highlight initiatives that have succeeded in reducing barriers to the aspirations of urban workers and emphasize the importance of community-driven collective efforts in workforce development.
Unequal Opportunities:
The authors argue that the past few decades have witnessed tremendous economic growth in the United States, but the benefits of this growth have not been shared equitably. Fair growth for local work requires rethinking how to support the skills of working-age individuals; where economic opportunity remains out of reach for many due to factors related to where they live, their race, or their education.
Unequal growth results in more unequal job opportunities, and cities vary significantly in their growth distributions. The authors illustrate that this can be interpreted based on past indicators. The early years of the 21st century saw large numbers of professionals and others with college degrees moving from the suburbs back to downtown areas in the U.S., where they found more amenities and improved income. With the recovery from the 2008 recession, populations dispersed again towards the suburbs and smaller areas, reflecting unequal distributions between low and high-income earners.
On the other hand, the segregation of cities by race and class also reflects differences in opportunities. In 1970, 65% of residents in major urban areas in the U.S. lived in middle-income neighborhoods; this percentage dropped to 40% by 2012, with stark disparities between affluent neighborhoods with thriving shopping areas and those facing economic challenges with vacant homes, closed businesses, very few jobs, and environmental pollution.
An Effective Labor Market:
The book adopts a broad definition of the workforce that includes a larger array of activities designed to improve workers’ skills and opportunities, not just those associated with federally funded workforce investment boards. The authors outline ten principles across three levels: individual, training, and the work system, creating a framework for local collaboration across sectors, which serves as a foundation for building a more equitable workforce system that employs more people and transitions others into better jobs.
At the individual development level, the authors focus on the first two principles: understanding the scope of needs and responses. This includes workforce development systems: government, educators, employers, and nonprofit intermediaries. However, these systems do not adequately meet 21st-century needs, as they focus on employment, with less emphasis on job transitions. They tend to address current workers while overlooking those categorized by the authors as “the hardest to serve,” such as the homeless, disabled individuals, formerly incarcerated persons, the elderly, non-English speakers, low-income residents, school dropouts, and those mid-career facing the impacts of automation and globalization, with limited pathways for mobility.
Consequently, local leaders must craft more equitable systems that meet the diverse career needs of their residents, starting with the hardest to serve and extending to the current workforce. Among the models presented by the authors in this regard are executive skills training programs, such as the “My Goals” initiative, launched in 2017, which relies on insights from neuroscience and cognitive behavioral psychology, advocating for the removal of stress and chaos stemming from poverty that weakens individuals’ executive skills, hindering their success in navigating the labor market and acquiring professional qualifications. The initiative combines structured training with a range of financial incentives to support participants over three years, focusing on developing their skills.
Training Development:
In another level, the authors discuss the role of organizations in providing training for the labor market, incorporating principles three to six. The third principle encourages education. They noted a segment of the workforce referred to as “aspiring learners,” which includes “individuals aged 25 to 44 who have not attained a college education but are considering or planning to enroll in further education or training programs.” This is where service organizations and regional collaborations play a critical role in addressing their individual circumstances that have delayed further education; they often don’t know where to start or cannot afford the costs. Hence, trainers provide solutions to meet their needs, including covering tuition and other logistical services for them.
The fourth principle is about removing barriers to learning, as the authors explore various ways organizations work with individuals to overcome challenges hindering their participation and achievement by providing direct support and training. Training also fosters what is termed a “connected community,” allowing individuals to meet with peers and share experiences, observing how others with similar backgrounds handle daily tasks and obstacles, with interactions occurring in various forms from formal sessions to informal exchanges.
The Accelerated Study in Associate Programs (ASAP) is an example of this type, designed to help enrolled students seeking degrees to obtain their credentials as quickly as possible in the United States. It aims to eliminate systemic barriers and personal responsibilities that prevent numerous students from completing degrees by providing them with academic, social, and financial support.
The fifth principle focuses on improving the context of the learning process, as current and potential workers need to build foundational and professional skills. The authors cite that many individuals interviewed in the research lacked the literacy and numeracy skills expected with a secondary education, necessitating remedial or developmental education.
Thus, some solutions for developing this type of learning are proposed, such as contextualized teaching and learning (CTL), which includes a variety of educational strategies designed to connect the learning of essential skills with academic and occupational content, emphasizing direct teaching and learning on tangible applications within a specific job context that interests students.
The sixth principle involves creating employment bridges, which can be described as “incorporating best practice programs that pave the way for workers lacking experience to access jobs.” The significance of the bridge concept becomes evident when considering low-wage workers seeking to transition to higher-paying positions, yet financial barriers and family commitments often obstruct them. An example of such programs is “apprenticeships,” which come in various forms, offering one of the most common experiential learning bridges, combining school and on-the-job learning.
The U.S. Department of Labor describes these programs as employer-led “earn-and-learn” models that bridge jobs and training. The Advanced Manufacturing Education (AME) consortium, founded in 2010 by Toyota in response to its need for skilled workers for moderate-skill positions, is the first such initiative, currently hosting 400 employers nationwide with trainees of all ages splitting their week between the factory and the classroom.
Improving the Employment System:
At the third level of the ten principles for creating a more equitable labor market, the authors propose enhancing job design at the system level as a whole, covering principles seven to ten. The seventh principle involves using skills as currency, implying that skills are synonymous with currency. Therefore, the focus is on individuals who lack college degrees but can ascend the economic ladder if provided with the right guidance and training. This facilitates aligning learners’ skills more effectively with jobs offering better wages.
There is also an emphasis on strategies that enhance the construction of skills rather than focusing solely on degrees, helping workers rise to better jobs, including those generally referred to as middle-skill jobs and the category of medium-tech jobs.
Among the organizations providing this type of training is the United Negro College Fund (UNCF), a U.S. charitable organization that funds scholarships for students of color and grant funds for 37 historically black colleges and universities. This organization collaborated with the Atlanta Mayor’s Office to launch a pilot project that provides a framework for better preparing workers and employers for skill-based employment.
The authors argue that focusing on skills enhances capabilities and partially offsets a system that makes it difficult for workers of color to access four-year colleges, given the lack of traditional educational qualifications necessary for high-quality jobs. For instance, 35% of white adults have a bachelor’s degree or higher, compared to 21% of people of color and 15% of those of Hispanic/Latin origin. According to the book, utilizing alternative skill-based pathways helps mitigate the adverse effects of such inequalities.
The eighth principle is about the commitment to transparency, emphasizing “maximizing individuals’ capacities to make informed career choices based on access to clear and understandable information from which they can calculate the return on investment in training, skills, and degrees.” Examples include the benchmarking that necessitates an agreed-upon classification of skills and a method for measuring the value of courses or steps towards better jobs. An important initiative in this arena is called Ascend, targeting students of color in high school and college, as well as individuals from low-income backgrounds, supporting their transition from education to the workforce by aggregating essential regional data they utilize.
The ninth principle centers on physical environment barriers, as many workers face daily challenges that hinder their ability to secure or retain a living-wage job, such as transportation obstacles, childcare options, licensing issues, and taxation. Furthermore, the authors clarify that any discussion about these barriers must reference racial biases, contending that government-sanctioned biases produce current distributions of economically disadvantaged workers of color through zoning restrictions, redlining, and the siting of public housing in cities, forcing “families of color” to cluster in undesirable areas with limited amenities and often decrepit housing.
In this context, training programs play a critical role in assisting individuals in accessing those services and overcoming environmental barriers. Solutions include increasing the required percentage of affordable housing and revising housing laws.
Finally, in the tenth principle, the authors call for organizing for collaboration, emphasizing the necessity of cooperation and the need for a broker acting as a network manager that connects stakeholders across various sectors, as local institutions often lack perspective on regional needs and frequently possess insufficient information regarding skills related to available jobs. An example of entities playing a coordinating role includes Workforce Investment Boards (WIB), which are regional entities established to implement the Workforce Investment Act of 1998 in the U.S., existing at the federal and regional levels and engaging in collaborative processes designed to address skill gaps.
Source:
Stephen Goldsmith and Kate Markin Coleman, Growing Fairly: How to Build Opportunity and Equity in Workforce Development, Brookings Institution Press, Washington, D.C., 2022.
