To Build Back Better, Job Quality Is the Key
The United States has a problem too few quality jobs. This problem contributes to a variety of national ills, from low productivity to poor health, to fractured politics and divisions within society. Low job quality has disproportionately negative effects on women workers and workers of color, contributing significantly to earnings and wealth gaps across demographic groups.
In “To Build Back Better, Job Quality is the Key,” Maureen Conway (The Aspen Institute Economic Opportunities Program), Jeannine LaPrad (Corporation for a Skilled Workforce), Amanda Cage (National Fund for Workforce Solutions), and Sarah Miller (Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta) make the case that improving job quality should be a central goal of economic recovery and rebuilding efforts, and they lay out practical policy ideas toward that end. The report includes a framework illustrating the multiple dimensions of job quality and outlines the variety of institution
Race and Gender Wealth Equity and the Role of Employee Share Ownership
Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, in an allegedly strong economy, workers at the bottom of the opportunity scale were struggling to support themselves and their families – let alone build wealth. Divisions in wealth between men and women, and between white households and households of color, are particularly striking consequences of structural discrimination and occupational segregation. The pandemic has exacerbated and heightened awareness of these inequities, and there is a mounting sense of urgency to find practical solutions. Broadening opportunities to participate in business ownership can help address this wealth divide and offer working people the opportunity to meaningfully participate in the success of the economy. In addition, employee share ownership can help strengthen job quality and worker agency while contributing to business performance, so that businesses and workers succeed together.
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Tomás E. Durán
President, Concerned Capital, Los Angeles, CA
Tomás Durán is the President of Concerned Capital, Inc. (CC), a social benefit corporation based in Los Angeles, CA. His team developed the Transfer of Ownership (TOO) Program, which recycles manufacturing companies by transferring ownership from retiring owners to employees.
He is also the Administrator for Special Projects at the USC Center for Economic Development. At USC he works with manufacturers in the defense supply chain as part of the Advanced Manufacturing Partnership for Southern California.
Prior to creating CC, Tomás worked as a Program Manager for the Whittier Redevelopment Agency and Vice President of Real Estate for Genesis LA Economic Growth Corp. Plaza La Alameda, a South LA retail center that created hundreds of jobs, was a project he provided gap financing for.
Within the first days of the new administration, President Biden signed a new “Made in America” executive order, which aims to generate manufacturing jobs through government demand for $400 billion in American products, materials, and services. As a candidate, Biden also committed to infrastructure investments as a keystone to job creation. As the $1.9 trillion stimulus plan was enacted March 11, an infrastructure proposal to spend $1 trillion or more is expected imminently within the next two weeks.
That’s a great step forward. Job creation is essential to our recovery from the entwined pandemic and economic traumas.
But at this crisis point, we must apply all tools to strengthen the anemic recovery, especially for lower-wage, women, and BIPOC workers. The country cannot again accept, as in the aftermath of the Great Recession, that