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. The economic expansion that reigned from 2009 through 2019 brought historically low unemployment and inflation but failed to reduce income inequality or arrest the decline in the number of high-quality, well-paying jobs. Wages for all but the highest earners stagnated, volatility in household incomes increased, and the racial wealth gap and urban-rural economic divide widened, all fueled by the declining quality and security of jobs. By the close of the decade, four in ten Americans said they would struggle to cover an unanticipated expense of just $400.

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.

We, the undersigned 11 organizations and 35 policy experts, researchers, and practitioners of the BETS Taskforce, offer the administration our full support in efforts to improve the quantity and quality of jobs. Below, we provide 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.

Read the full article about jobs strategy by Mary Alice McCarthy, Carl Van Horn, and Michael Prebil at the Aspen Institute.