In summary
As we emerge from the pandemic, California needs job training that focuses on results for people and businesses.
By Patrick Johnston, Special to CalMatters
Patrick Johnston served in the Assembly from 1981 to 1991 and in the state Senate from 1991-2000, pj@patrick-johnston.com. He taught public policy at UC Berkeley and served as CEO of the California Association of Health Plans.
Forty years ago California was in a recession with 10% unemployment, yet employers said that good jobs were going begging for lack of skilled workers. The state spent hundreds of millions of dollars on training, but both business and labor were dissatisfied with the results: lots of certificates, but not many jobs.
The Future of Worker Financial Security: The Nexus of Work and Benefits
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In the United States, a dominant narrative that having a job equals financial security persists, yet the majority of workers in America have jobs that do not allow them to achieve financial security. In fact, many workers lack benefits, have low earnings, and live in poverty. The type of job matters: workers with full-time, permanent positions and more robust packages of benefits do better than those without access to those options.
In a new report developed together with its
, the
Aspen Institute Financial Security Program explains how work arrangements relate to worker benefit provisions, and how both work and benefits together determine if workers will have a reasonable shot at financial security. The research explores why there are persistent disparities in financial security outcomes for low- and moderate-income (LMI) workers, especially Black and
Raising Standards for Fast-Food Workers in California
The Powerful Role of a Sectoral Council
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Fast-food workers across the United States, often adults living in or close to poverty, typically earn very low wages with few benefits and experience poor working conditions. Setting and enforcing high standards in the industry is particularly challenging: It is heavily franchised, many small employers in the industry have little ability to profitably raise standards, and most workers are not unionized, making the fast-food sector in urgent need of improvement.
California can take action at the state level to address these problems and improve the lives of the state’s more than half a million fast-food workers by creating a sectoral council, as called for in the proposed FAST Recovery Act.
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According to the latest official figures, overall US employment is still down by about 9.5 million jobs from when the recession hit, and by nearly 12 million from its pre-pandemic trend. Unemployment, adjusted for the sharp drop in labor-force participation, is around 10%, and the rate is even higher for African-Americans, Hispanics, women, and the less educated, reflecting both the dual nature of the pandemic and longer-running labor-market disparities.
Another trend that predates COVID-19 is the transformation of work through automation and digitalization – processes accelerated by how businesses and consumers have responded to the pandemic. This trend, too, threatens to deepen pre-existing inequalities, because black and Hispanic workers are overrepresented in the jobs that are at the greatest risk from automation.
The rapid deployment of COVID-19 vaccines has reduced coronavirus infections, hospitalizations and deaths in the United States, and restrictions on economic activity are being eased. But even with labor markets gradually improving, the economic recovery has been slow and uneven.
According to the latest official figures, overall U.S. employment is still down by about 10 million jobs from when the recession hit, and by nearly 12 million from the pre-pandemic period. The unemployment rate, adjusted for the sharp drop in labor-force participation, is around 10%, and the rate is even higher for African Americans, Latinos, women and the less educated, reflecting both the dual nature of the pandemic and longer-running labor-market disparities.