1. Building Back Better: A National Jobs Strategy
- Author:
- Mary Alive McCarthy, Carl Van Horn, and Michael Prebil
- Publication Date:
- 02-2021
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Aspen Institute
- Abstract:
- The United States has a jobs problem. When the COVID-19 pandemic plunged the economy back into recession in early 2020, it laid bare a fragile and profoundly inequitable labor market. In the absence of a robust and coordinated recovery strategy focused on increasing the supply of good jobs, the same labor market pathologies that plagued the last recovery will re-emerge: the long-term unemployed will struggle to land jobs and many will give up; private sector job growth will be slow and uneven; many new jobs will be worse than those they replace; unemployment among Black and Latinx workers will remain elevated; and income and wealth gaps will widen. This recovery must be different. The Biden-Harris administration has an historic opportunity to lay the foundation for an economy built on good jobs, one that ensures the benefits of economic growth are broadly and fairly shared This publication provides a set of concrete recommendations to help guide an all-of-government jobs strategy, including three goals to guide a national jobs agenda, a suite of distinct but reinforcing strategies to achieve them, and a framework for coordinating activities across government.
- Topic:
- Security, National Security, Infrastructure, Governance, Job Creation, and Labor Market
- Political Geography:
- North America and United States of America