Giving Compass' Take:
- Elizabeth Cheung and Jennifer Epps discuss improving the public sector workforce system to secure a just and equitable future for workers.
- What can you do as donor to support an equitable future for workers across sectors and across the world?
- Learn more about best practices in philanthropy.
- Search our Guide to Good for nonprofits in your area.
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Recent worker polling confirms that even in a low-unemployment economy, workers feel vulnerable—and they feel that public policy does not serve them, including the nation’s system of workforce development. For example, a 2024 report indicates that “unemployed workers found it more difficult than those employed to access job training and job search workforce development services.”
The need to restructure the US national public workforce system is clear. Securing prosperous, fair, and equitable futures for workers requires a new paradigm to transform the country’s public workforce development system.
At the foundations where we work—the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation and the LIFT Fund—we recognize that an inclusive economy requires supporting worker voice and power, while ensuring overall alignment with employer needs and interests. Drawing from field examples, worker perspectives, and public workforce system data, we believe the US workforce system is ripe for transformation. Listening to workers and ensuring that their voices shape the future state of programs and policies is paramount.
There is some good news. The last few years have ushered in a wave of reform. Across philanthropy and among the public and private sectors, we’ve seen investments that better meet the needs of workers and improve job quality across sectors. Employer-led workplace innovations are being grounded and realized through leveraging worker perspectives. Examples across the country of innovative worker-owned and -led businesses are changing how employees and employers build and operate mutually beneficial organizations.
This progress is real and inspiring but also fragile and incomplete.
People Left Behind Without Efforts to Improve the Public Sector Workforce
Many people who wish to work are still unable to find employment, especially young adults seeking to enter the workforce who face challenges breaking into careers that foster economic mobility. In fact, recent research from Measure of America shows that almost 4.7 million young people in America (ages 16 to 24) are “disconnected”—neither in school nor employed.
Read the full article about the public sector workforce system by Elizabeth Cheung and Jennifer Epps at Nonprofit Quarterly.