You can finish watching this program if you had to cspan. Org. Federal and local officials take part in a discussion. The event is being hosted by Americas Center on education and labor. Hello, everyone. Hello and welcome to the new america. We are happy to have you here. This is our first in person public event since march 2020, and yet grateful to be able to share this space with you. Thank you for coming and welcome to all of our guests online. We are looking forward to engaging with you in our question and answer. We are here to talk about jobs and how cities can leverage investments in infrastructure to create more good jobs and to make sure that people from all backgrounds can get into good jobs. My name is mary alice. I will be your conductor today. At the center, we we focused our research on the intersection of education and Workforce Development policies that prepare people and help them access those jobs and the labor and employment policies to make sure they are good jobs. We believe that all americans should be in jobs that are good, family sustaining jobs, regardless of their educational level. It is a great time to be thinking about these issues. Get the federal government has made historic investments in the infrastructure, manufacturing, Broadband Access and more. All of us committed in building a more just economy, we have an opportunity and even an obligation to make the most of these investments. We have a fantastic lineup of speakers. We want to make sure that a lot of people have access to them. The department of labor, transportation and commerce, the mayor of rochester, minnesota has been doing a lot of work and we have a fantastic lineup of worker advocates and practitioners working with their local electives to make sure that investments, state, federal and local codes and making Jobs Available to all people. Im going to do a little bit around this problem and challenge of good jobs. I do not want still here. This has been an incredible to to be a years of investment. Almost unprecedented. Quickly in march 2021, right after, we got the American Rescue plan. It was an investment for Emergency Response to pandemic to help their residents through this very difficult time when businesses were closing and schools were closing. A 350 billion we are seeing some of it happening. The American Rescue plan also set aside 500 million for something called the good jobs challenge, a Grant Program run by the department of congress and we will hear more about that and how they are working on that. They will be rolling out for the next five to eight years and there is a long tail on them. It has already been credited for creating jobs. After that, Congress Passed infrastructure and investment in jobs act. Four point trillion dollars around 4 trillion dollars. Fixing roads, bridges, water ports, clean energy, broadband and more. It estimates that for each year for the next five years, bipartisan infrastructure act will generate new jobs. The majority of those jobs will be subject to federal rules mandating high wages and supporting local unions. We will talk more on that, later. It is going to help build the semiconductor industry. They expect this to create 180 thousand construction jobs each year for the next five years and 280,000 permanent jobs in the semiconductor industry. Last but not least, we have this act. It is historic generation defining investment in clean energy and strategies. It is expected to generate millions of jobs. It could create up to 9 million jobs over the next few years. That is a lot of jobs and an incredible opportunity. Monthly job growth in 2020 has average 420,000 jobs a month. That is a tremendous pace of development, of growth. These investments are just Getting Started. This is a huge opportunity. Good jobs are at the center of the administrations agenda. When they talk about this, they talk about good jobs. It seems like everyone is talking about good jobs these days. You cannot go anywhere without hearing about good jobs. Jobs initiative, good jobs challenge. Why is everybody talking about good jobs . At some level, it is a lack of originality and we are all tired. The bigger reason is this is the culmination of a decades worth of research. It has been documented painstakingly, the declining quality of jobs in the u. S. The reality is that a job is no guarantee at avoiding poverty, avoiding bankruptcy or landing in a study by martha ross and her colleagues at the Brookings Institute in 2019 found that 53 Million People in the u. S. , 3 to 4 of all workers are those age workers. They make 10 or less in our labor market. That is inching up on half of all workers. More than half of those workers are between the age of 25 and 50. They are making around 10 an hour. Black workers are overrepresented among lowwage workers. Those lowwage workers are also a large portion of our care workforce. An economist has documented the declining quality of jobs in the u. S. It has been particularly hard on young people, Young Workers and Young Workers without a college degree. Almost half of all nonclass should be workers in 1979 to just 22 . He finds that half of noncollege educated men are employed in what he defines he defines it primarily by wages. He also finds that since the 1980s, there has been a large decoupling of the number of good jobs from gdp growth. That is why we have experienced tremendous growth and not experienced good new jobs. Daniel albert this date back to it comes had to go to the 2022, it is going back up again. I took this snapshot because it ends and in february 2020. This is before everything went crazy, before the pandemic took hold of our economy. We were at historically low unemployment. The stock market was breaking record after record. The 128th month of continuous economic growth, a record for the country of 10. 5 years of uninterrupted economic growth. At the same time, this is what is happening to our labor market. Simultaneously growing millions and millions of lowwage workers. You can put that other growth trend there. How did how did we enter a period of Sustainable Growth . That is a big story and i will not get into that. But i do think there are a few things worth mentioning. The loss of millions of pain, union jobs. People are still talking about what has happened to manufacturing jobs and what we are going to do about it. This is the result of decades of relentless focus on maximizing value. It is a dogma that has taken hold, that has led to constant costcutting on labor. That was a lack of strong Public Policies to support workers, the failure to raise the minimum wage, which stands at seven dollars 35 cents an hour. So, this has to change. How do we reverse course . The first thing that we can do is come to an agreement. Everybody is working on these good jobs groups. What is really exciting right now is that there is a growing consensus around what a good job is. Convergence is around the idea that it is not just about a wage. A good job is something that we need to figure out more comprehensively and something that workers, employers and governments will be necessary to create. There are a few definitions. I think it is a very good definition by hundreds of labor Business Research and stakeholders, including ourselves at new america. What it does is round out everything about a good job. They are jobs that provide stability, mobility and voice to workers. They include critical benefits and paid leave. They are accepting of all. They create opportunities for advancement. Workers with good jobs have a voice in their workplace and are free to organize and advocate. That does not describe the majority of jobs in the u. S. Today. It describes a very small share of them. The groups outside of the government, now the government has gotten into this as well and they are being very vocal about what they think a good job is and being very vocal, making sure that they have a definition of what a good job is. I encourage you to check it out. There is so much overlap between these. Also a shared emphasis on mark rutte voice and agency. A definition is a great thing. It certainly gives us a northstar. It is a good thing to have, but what is next . We are going to talk some more about the ways to use government funding and purchasing power to build a good job strategy. We are already seeing that in legislation and we will be seeing it in what state and local leaders are doing. This is a practice that goes back many decades, that requires that workers on a construction project all make the same wage on that project. If you negotiated wage lift up the wages for all workers. The administration has extended into their Clean Energy Investments and manufacturing sector. That is a Big Development. There are other ones about making sure that increasing tax credit, if they also agree to train their workers. If you take this money, you have to be willing to hire from this community, from people who live here and from people who have faced discrimination in getting jobs. New innovations around Infrastructure Investments. Also Innovative Strategies that allow people who might otherwise struggle in the labor market. These are all really important. This was not part of the conversation five years ago. There is a big change in infrastructure knowledge. Talking about what were doing here at new america, we are focused on the policies of Workforce Development. Part of what has been happening is a reckoning with the fact that a lot of what we thought about the economy is not true. It does not automatically translate. It does not automatically translate into prosperity. Our system supports laws built on a similar set of assumptions. One of the best ways to help job seekers tend to be getting them into a job as quickly as possible, maybe with some training. The focus is getting people into jobs. It puts them in the position of reinforcing pathologies in the market. This seems like a really good time to revisit the assumption and ask ourselves, what would it mean to have a system grounded in principles of Economic Justice that intentionally advances and builds power . You can see them here on the slide. We are calling ourselves the good jobs collaborative. It is not original, but it seems to be working for everyone else. If you would like to learn more, just stick your email in the chat. We are happy to chat with you about it. Lets start hearing from people doing this work out in the field and can share with us how they do this in your community. My wonderful colleague will testify. Good afternoon, everyone. I am a senior policy advisor here at new america and i am thrilled to be joined by mayor ken norton. She is the mayor of rochester, minnesota and has held this position since january 2019. Before becoming the citys first female mayor, she had a long history of Public Service and leadership including 10 years in the legislature and 10 years on the school board. We will be excited to be in conversation with you today. You like 70 city leaders have been focused on how to advance policy and create better jobs for Community Residents who have really struggled during the pandemic, but even before. That is for good reason, and we know that economic mobility in this country has been declining. To stagnant wages and inflation have made it harder for a lot of residents to make ends meet, particularly lowincome individuals and communities of color. I want to hear a little bit from you about what you are doing to make sure that people have access to good jobs and are able to advance economically, but first, can you tell us about your city and your residence . Sure. I am the mayor of rochester, minnesota. We had about 124,000 people in our community and we host the largest employer, mayo clinic. We are primarily focused on the world of health care. We are about 73 white. We have an average median health, income that is relatively high because of the health department. We have a 6 poverty rate. The highest has been 9 . It affects our black population in particular. Many of our population lives in poverty. We have great disparities in our community. Those disparities were exacerbated by the pandemic. There are still many athome that are not back in the workforce. I would say one other thing that you might want to know is we have a Destination Medical Center initiative that was a 6 billion initiative. It was their idea, i guess. They got support for infrastructure, in order to accommodate Economic Development and growth in the community. Studying this infrastructure replacement in our city center and a little beyond that. So, we are poised for growth and development. About 2700 year. It is a growing community. Thank you for sharing that background. We talked about some of the federal investments that have been made. So, i know it will be an even bigger priority. But keep talk about infrastructure jobs and what they look like . We have a great need for those jobs but what we are finding is that we have 60,000 on that list and less than 1 are working in this area. We determined that the philanthropy has put out there for candidates to apply. We will focus on the people who needed mobility and provide them opportunity that we needed that we have a need for. It is not a job. It is a career. It is a 20 year plan. We had an opportunity for people. What we did is spend a year researching and looking at data in the community, trying to determine how are we going to get into that line of work . There are a lot of health care jobs, so we are already working on that. We looked at that program and are replicating it to an extent. Why werent women going into construction . I think that is really the story that is worth telling about the work that we are doing. It wasnt someone in the construction and in construction with an idea. It was bringing women in the community to the table to say, what do you need . We learned a lot in that investigation. We learned a lot. They got to be part of the team. They got to be part of the plan moving forward. It was something that you had previously used. Can you tell us more about how you saw it fitting to apply it . We are committed to the democratic process. We want to get all members of the community to reach us. We decided as a community, the work on the roads, we found various communities, including disability and others, brought them to the table and did some training. They had a series of questions and information gathering. It is an exchange, back and forth that when they did their work, it impacted many individuals. We had been doing that for our roadwork and plaza design and we decided to bring it back to the community in a different way. We brought them to the table on this project. I did provide you can look at it after we have done this work. We also have a online, see you can get an electronic copy. It talks about it and it was absolutely fabulous. When we started it, we brought the women into talk with construction workers and an architect who brought them in. It was like silence. It was quiet. It was very uncomfortable. Eight months or so of working together, it was dynamic. I should mention that we paid these women to come to the table. They are working and employed, but they are experts of their own experience. They deserve to be paid as well. We have and continue to pay these cosigners, kind of ironically, but also wonderfully. Someone they were codesigners that got hired. You could see the confidence. They had the opportunity to wors she just put a down payment on a house so that was really exciting. Even before we rolled out the whole plan, to see our code of viners benefiting esco designers benefiting. It speaks to the importance of partnership, which are going to be critical to make sure these investments in infrastructure benefiting the people who need it. We typically will we talk about infrastructure, we are referring to roads and bridges. There is an extensive list of other forms of infrastructure that are necessary in communities. I was hoping you could talk about some of the other elements of infrastructure that have been really important to your city and your residence. I would say drop the process of having our women come our code designers at the table and their needs that maybe there are needs and barriers, which we can talk about, some of the culture clashes. We have a pretty robust immigrant population in town that have special needs that are not being addressed by our community, let alone workforce issues. But the infrastructure for childcare is absolutely huge for these families. We talked back in the green room that we really do need to look at culturally competent and culturally specific childcare for these women who what to get into the workforce but really want to make sure their children are cared for in a manner and a method that is comfortable and familiar to them and their children. So that is one example of an infrastructure that has to be in place in order for women to get to work and be able to be successful in their jobs, flexibility in careers is another we heard a lot about. Sometimes our structures are historic and we continue to do them that way because we have always done them that way. We hear from the industries, we need employees and yet theyre not looking at themselves and saying, what might we change, hours or some sort of flexibility we can put in our role as employer that would then be more welcoming and convenient to people in order to get new workers on the job . We are having to work with those kinds of issues as well. Others that youre interested in . That is something we have heard in conversations with other city leaders and Community Leaders and workers themselves, the imports of addressing some of the overall support and need for childcare, to really be present and participate in the workforce. What do you see as the role of the cities in supporting those needs that are pretty much universal . It has been interesting because what i often hear from people who push back is it is all marketdriven, city should not be involved in the market. And yet we know the market has not been successful for everyone and something has to intervene to change that pathway, that historic pat