Equitable Growth scholars highlight the need for broad investment in U.S. social infrastructure

Posted on by Emilie Openchowski
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Our nation’s social infrastructure is composed of the economic and social investments that are necessary for U.S. workers and families to be able to take care of their loved ones and remain productive members of the U.S. workforce. Social infrastructure is an essential support system for workers in the United States that enables the rest of the economy to function. Yet the nation has long underinvested in it. This policy choice leaves workers to fend for themselves in times of health or economic crises. They face impossible choices between their loved ones and their livelihoods, which ripple out to affect the broader economy.

As the debate continues on the size and scope of social infrastructure investments to include in the Build Back Better Act now under negotiation in Congress, Equitable Growth today released a new essay on the need for policymakers on Capitol Hill to boost investments in social infrastructure. The essays, penned by two of the nation’s leading experts on social and economic policy—Liz Ananat of Barnard College and Anna Gassman-Pines of Duke University—is the latest in a series of pieces by Equitable Growth scholars making the case for robust social infrastructure in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic.

Highlighting an extensive body of research on the benefits of social infrastructure programs for workers and the overall economy, these scholars make a compelling case: For the United States to emerge from the pandemic in a stronger economic position than it entered it, policymakers must make substantial investments in the nation’s social infrastructure. This includes income support for families, U.S. child care and early education systems, home- and community-based services and supports for older adults and people with disabilities, and a comprehensive paid leave  program.

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Evidence shows that now is the time to invest in U.S. workers and their families

By Elizabeth Oltmans Ananat, Anna Gassman-Pines,

October 20, 2021

In May 2020, Ananat and Gassman-Pines authored a New York Times op-ed that shared results from their Work-Family Text Study, launched in February 2020. The study collected daily surveys administered by text messages to 1,000 service-sector workers in Pennsylvania who have young children to look at the effects of a stable scheduling ordinance on their well-being. Their results paint a picture of severe employment disruption in March, and “by the end of April,” they wrote, “only 20 percent were working as usual.” (See Figure 1.)

Figure 1

Percentage of low-wage service-sector workers with young children in a typical large U.S. city experiencing layoffs, hours reductions or work as usual

In their new Equitable Growth essay, they pick up where they left off, describing the struggles many of these workers reported facing between their work responsibilities and caring for their families. These challenges were especially pervasive amid care disruptions and school and care center closures resulting from the pandemic. Indeed, they write, “1 in 7 of our respondents are responsible for an elderly or disabled loved one, and nearly a quarter of those lost the help they had to care for them,” while 77 percent of respondents had to reshuffle work schedules to care for their children.

Ananat and Gassman-Pines’ work highlights the twin roles of people as workers and as caregivers for family members both old and young. They note that “our economy will be stronger and our families will be more secure tomorrow if we invest in care today,” and also point to an existing policy success to build on: After Congress enhanced the Child Tax Credit earlier this year, food security was cut in half among receiving families.

Our economy will be stronger and our families will be more secure tomorrow if we invest in care today.

Liz Ananat and Anna Gassman-Pines

Investment in child care and early education is a crucial piece of investment in care as well. In an op-ed piece in New Hampshire’s Union Leader, Dartmouth College’s Kristin Smith notes that“child care providers are among the lowest-paid workers in the United States. Individuals in paid care jobs earn less than other workers with similar credentials, characteristics, and demographics.” Yet this work makes so much other work possible. Smith writes that “when 860,000 women left the labor force in September 2020, the essential role that teachers and child care providers play in supporting women’s labor force participation became indisputable.”

It’s not just U.S. child care infrastructure that needs investment. As economist Yulya Truskinovsky at Wayne State University notes in her June 2021 Detroit News op-ed, caregiving arrangements for older adults and people with disabilities “were precarious even before the pandemic. Turnover among direct care professionals was high due to low wages and poor job conditions, including high rates of workplace injury.”

In a related Equitable Growth column summarizing her working paper with Jessica Finlay and Lindsay Koyabashi of the University of Michigan, Truskinovsky notes that disruptions to fragile caregiving arrangements were prevalent during the pandemic and that “those caregivers who provided more care because of the pandemic—disproportionately women and people of color—were almost 19 percentage points more likely than noncaregivers to report an impact on their employment.” (See Figure 2.)

Figure 2

Demographics of family caregivers, Ages 55 and older, during the pandemic, by disruption experience, April 17-May15 2020

Truskinovsky calls for a federal paid leave program, which would provide up to 12 weeks of paid leave for workers who need time off to care for a loved one with a serious medical condition. She also proposes improvements in improving pay and working conditions for professional caregivers, who provide community-based services and supports to people with serious medical needs year round. Both are essential to ensure that older adults and people with disabilities get the support they need and that their loved ones can fully participate in the paid labor force.

Three other Equitable Growth scholars have also weighed in on the importance of paid leave in the pages of U.S. newspapers. In her op-ed in the Union Leader, Dartmouth College’s Smith writes, “My research shows that nearly 80 percent of New Hampshire residents support a paid family and medical leave insurance program, though such a program does not exist—yet.”  

In the pages of the Portland News, Julia Goodman of Portland State University and Danny Schneider of Harvard University describe their fall 2020 survey of 8,500 workers at 125 of the largest service-sector firms in the nation, writing that “Thirteen percent of workers reported they had needed to care for someone else with a serious medical condition. And 4 percent of workers told us they welcomed a new child in the past year. Yet two-thirds of these workers, and nearly 1 in 5 front-line service-sector workers, told us they couldn’t take the leave they needed.” They quote one worker, who explains simply that “We don’t make money if we don’t work. To survive we must work sick!”

Over the past 18 months, it has become ever more clear that U.S. social infrastructure policies form an economic backbone that is just as powerful as the one provided by roads and bridges. But just as there are many components necessary to make physical infrastructure function, social infrastructure cannot work in isolation.

A new parent needs paid leave and child care to stay in the labor force and a monthly payment from the fully refundable Child Tax Credit to keep their children in diapers. A worker whose sibling experiences a traumatic brain injury needs paid leave to make arrangements after the injury occurs and community-based services and supports for their sibling when they return to work. To become a productive participant in the economy, a child needs care in the first years of life, preschool to prepare them for Kindergarten, and funds from the monthly fully refundable Child Tax Credit to ensure that they have the school supplies they need through their teenage years.

Since the early days of the pandemic—and indeed long before the pandemic occurred—these leading scholars have been conducting rigorous research that uncovers the need for a serious investment in the many crucial facets of the nation’s social infrastructure. They provide the evidence that makes the urgency of this moment impossible to ignore.

Though the research they do and the policies they discuss differ, one theme shines through them all: To emerge from this pandemic stronger, the United States needs substantial and bold investment in the people—the workers, families, and caregivers—that drive the U.S. economy.

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Evidence shows that now is the time to invest in U.S. workers and their families

Posted on by Maria Monroe
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In February 2020, we set out to examine the effects of a new predictable scheduling ordinance in eastern Pennsylvania on low-wage service-sector workers. We had no idea that the workers we were studying would end up on the front lines of a global pandemic, that we would get a window into their work keeping Pennsylvanians’ refrigerators stocked and basic needs met, or that the national conversation would shift to seriously consider how current U.S. social infrastructure is woefully inadequate for many of these workers and their families.

As we began texting daily surveys to 1,000 service workers with young children to learn about their experiences, we heard over and over again about the near-impossibility of fulfilling caregiving responsibilities at home while upholding job responsibilities at work.

Our research points to one clear way to support the essential workers who kept the U.S. economy running through the darkest days of the coronavirus pandemic that would also serve to strengthen the economy so that the United States emerges from the COVID crisis stronger than it entered it: Invest in the nation’s social infrastructure.

While essential workers continued to show up for work and helped everyone else take care of their families, these workers struggled to manage their own care responsibilities. Last fall, 77 percent of our survey participants reported dealing with sudden school or child care closures that forced them to reshuffle work, while 12 percent reported having to leave the labor force to care for their children. Likewise, 1 in 7 of our respondents are responsible for an elderly or disabled loved one, and nearly a quarter of those said they have lost the help they had to care for them.

“Since the pandemic, things have been really tough,” said one participant. “[We’ve been] making hard decisions whether to stay home or work to care for family.” Another study participant remarked, “We fell short on money and became completely depressed … [M]y mother who lives in the home with me was put on hospice due to brain cancer, so it’s one crisis after another.”

The truth is, families across the country were already being forced to make impossible decisions to navigate work and family conflicts before the pandemic began. To manage the nighttime and weekend hours that many jobs demand, for instance, workers need access to affordable, dependable child care, and they need to be able to count on professional, home-based care providers that support family members with disabilities and chronic health conditions.

Yet these services alone cannot address the range of unexpected emergencies that can worsen work-life conflicts. Workers in our study often reported being forced to choose between addressing a health need and paying rent. They are not alone. All over the country, families are struggling to manage their caregiving responsibilities, with the burden primarily falling on women workers, who continue to see declines in employment even as men return to work.

Equitable Recovery

Factsheet: What does the research say about the economics of paid leave?

By Equitable Growth,

April 22, 2021

Expert Focus

Expert Focus: Equity and Well-Being During the Coronavirus Recession

By Christian Edlagan, Maria Monroe,

April 30, 2020

Equitable Recovery

Coronavirus disruptions in family caregiving highlight the importance of investments in U.S. care infrastructure and paid leave

By Yulya Truskinovsky,

August 24, 2021

To ensure that U.S. families have the support they need, and that employers can hire the workers they need, Congress must invest in our nation’s social infrastructure. This means investing in child care and community-based services and supports for older adults and people with disabilities. It means ensuring that families with children can continue to access income support through the monthly fully refundable Child Tax Credit. And it means enacting a permanent paid family and medical leave program, so that all working people have access to at least 12 weeks of paid leave.

These are smart, safe investments. Research shows that in places where paid leave has been implemented, businesses benefit along with their workers. Employers in states with paid leave are largely supportive of these programs, saying such laws make it easier to handle employee absences when the need for leave occurs. And according to other research, paid leave helps families support their elders in staying in their homes and out of care facilities—a win-win for families and for taxpayers.

Federal policies helped stabilize the U.S. economy and ameliorate families’ struggles during this pandemic. Indeed, temporary reforms to the Child Tax Credit enacted in January have alone already halved food insecurity among families who received it. But for the United States to emerge stronger from this crisis, we need permanent reforms to ensure our nation’s workers can care for their families. As one parent in our study noted, “We are okay, but the whole situation has left us uncertain of the future; financially, emotionally, and health-wise. I still hold out hope that our future is bright.”

A brighter future is possible. But Congress must first invest in our nation’s social infrastructure. It has the chance now, as Congress discusses the social infrastructure programs that are core components of the Build Back Better Act. Our economy will be stronger and our families will be more secure tomorrow if we invest in care today.

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Brad DeLong: Worthy reads on equitable growth, October 13-18, 2021

Posted on by Maria Monroe

Worthy reads from Equitable Growth:

1. Our Expert Focus series this month tells you why you should be paying attention to the extremely sharp Francisca Antman, Mónica García-Pérez, Mark Hugo López, G. Cristina Mora, and Eileen V. Segarra Alméstica. Read Aixa Alemán-Díaz, Christian Edlagan, and Maria Monroe, “Expert Focus: Latino leaders in economics and a call for more data & research about Latinos and Hispanics,” in which they right: “Equitable Growth is committed to building a community of scholars working to understand how inequality affects broadly shared growth and stability. To that end, we have created the monthly series, ‘Expert Focus.’ This series highlights scholars in the Equitable Growth network and beyond who are at the frontier of social science research. … In honor of Hispanic Heritage Month, this installment of Expert Focus highlights Latino leaders in economics, the need for more, and more accurate, data about Hispanics and Latinos, and research that applies the intersectionality of race, ethnicity, and gender from among Equitable Growth’s academic community and beyond.. … Francisca Antman… Mónica García-Pérez … Mark Hugo López … G. Cristina Mora … [and] Eileen V. Segarra Alméstica.”

2. I remember, long ago, the wise Federal Reserve staffer David Wilcox telling me that he had realized that nowcasting was both the most difficult and most important part of his job. This looks to be an excellent forthcoming event on the current state-of-the-art here. Read about the forthcoming event, “Equitable Growth Presents: Opportunities and challenges of real-time economic measurement,” in which the participants will discuss: “The coronavirus recession led to a crop of economics working papers trying to understand the effects of the pandemic in real time. This research responded to a pressing policy need: Policymakers were prepared to spend hundreds of billions of dollars to staunch the losses of the pandemic, with relatively little knowledge of how to effectively target the money. Work by economists looked at poverty during the pandemic, how people were using stimulus checks, the impacts of enhanced Unemployment Insurance, and much more. The incredibly short turnaround time of much of this research was unprecedented for the profession. The severity of the COVID-19 crisis, the availability of administrative data sources, and new statistical tools combined to produce an enormous amount of nearly real-time data on the economic health of U.S. families. This event convenes experts on the analysis and application of real-time data to discuss what we learned over the past 18 months. Though future crises may not cause the precipitous economic gyrations that the coronavirus did, the lessons economists are learning now may help us respond more effectively to future recessions, guiding policymakers’ response to the next recession by using empirical results from the current one. Speakers [include] Austin Clemens, Director of Economic Measurement Policy, Washington Center for Equitable Growth. Erica Groshen, Senior Economics Advisor, Cornell University. Jeehoon Han, Assistant Professor, Zhejiang University. Dana Peterson, Chief Economist, The Conference Board.”

Worthy reads not from Equitable Growth:

1. The Economist has an excellent interview with two of our three Nobel Prize winners this year—David Card and Josh Angrist. If you want to know why we economists respect them so much and are cheering their Nobel Prizes so loudly, read, “A real-world Revolution in Economics,” in which the magazine says: “THIS YEAR’s Nobel prize celebrates the ‘credibility revolution’ that has transformed economics since the 1990s. Today most notable new work is not theoretical but based on analysis of real-world data [and] … How their work has brought economics closer to real life.”

2. This is better than 99 percent of the things that crossed my screen on inflation these days. Remember: you cannot rejoin the highway at speed without leaving rubber on the road, and so you should not be alarmed when you do so—unless, of course, you really do not want to rejoin the highway at speed at all. Read Claudia Sahm, “Inflation is not the emergency,” in which she writes: “Fast forward to today, and surging prices are behind us. That’s a step back to normal. Monthly inflation—a better indicator of current conditions than year of year—peaked in June 2021. In September, inflation excluding food and energy, was back near its pre-Covid average. Total inflation is higher, but food and energy prices tend to be more volatile and, as result, often tell us less about where inflation is headed. Supply chains and commodity prices remain a thorn in the side of consumers and businesses. As with jobs, progress is progress, even when it’s slower than we want. Demand matters for inflation too. This year spring demand surged. In fact, in April and May of 2021, the highest percent of consumers, on net, said it as a good time to buy big-ticket durables since the crisis began. That coincided with the surge in inflation. Now that measure of demand is lower than the depths of the recession. Again, it’s hard to see a spiral inflation taking hold when consumers are willing to wait it out until inflation settles down, as they expect it will. … Inflation is not an emergency, but getting the pandemic under control is.”

3. This is, I think, the best single thing to read about the Economics Nobel Prize for Card, Angrist, and Imbens. Read Noah Smith, “The Econ Nobel we were all waiting for,” in which he writes: “To predict who will win the Econ Nobel … list the most influential people in the field who haven’t won it yet [and] … Assume … micro theorists won’t win … two years in a row. … The ones whose influence is the oldest are the most likely to win. … For years, this method led lots of people—including me—to predict a Nobel for David Card. His 1994 paper with Alan Krueger on the minimum wage was a thunderbolt. … Since then, Card has been at the forefront of empirical labor. … Angrist and Imbens’ impact … though also huge … came later. … I wouldn’t have been surprised had they won the prize in later years. But Card was clearly overdue. Perhaps the reason it took this long was that Card’s conclusions in his famous minimum wage paper were so hard for many in the field to swallow. … At the time, Card and Krueger’s finding seemed revolutionary and heretical. In fact, other researchers had probably been finding the same thing, but were afraid to publish their results, simply because of their terror of offending the orthodoxy.”

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Weekend reading: Why stable schedules matter edition

Posted on by Maria Monroe

This is a post we publish each Friday with links to articles that touch on economic inequality and growth. The first section is a round-up of what Equitable Growth published this week and the second is relevant and interesting articles we’re highlighting from elsewhere. We won’t be the first to share these articles, but we hope by taking a look back at the whole week, we can put them in context.

Equitable Growth round-up

Long before the coronavirus pandemic reached the United States, policymakers were discussing schedule quality and stability for service-sector workers. In fact, nine cities and states have passed fair workweek laws to improve schedule predictability in the service sector, inspired by a large body of work showing positive outcomes for both individual workers, company bottom-lines, and the broader economy. A new study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, dives into this topic, looking at the effects of a stable scheduling law passed in Seattle in 2017. Alix Gould-Werth, Raksha Kopparam, and I detail the research findings and contextualize them in the existing literature on schedule quality. The new study, we write, finds that the Seattle Secure Scheduling Ordinance reduced the prevalence among service-sector workers of schedule instability or unpredictability—defined as having less than 2 weeks’ notice of an upcoming work schedule, not being compensated for last-minute schedule changes, and working on-call or clopening shifts. It also finds notable improvements in worker well-being outside of work, including material hardship, stress levels, and sleep quality. The study is a fascinating addition to the existing research and suggests that policymakers should heed the evidence on the myriad benefits of ensuring workers have access to predictable, stable, and good-quality schedules.

This week, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics released August 2021 data on hiring, firing, and other labor market flows from the Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey, better known as JOLTS. This report doesn’t get as much attention as the monthly Employment Situation Report, but it contains useful information about the state of the U.S. labor market. Kathryn Zickuhr and Carmen Sanchez Cumming put together five graphics highlighting key findings in the data, including that the quits rate rose to almost 3 percent as nearly 4.3 million workers left their jobs. This signals higher worker confidence about the state of the U.S. labor market.

Every month, Equitable Growth staff highlights the work of scholars on the forefront of social science research in a series called “Expert Focus.”This month, Aixa Alemán-Díaz, Christian Edlagan, and Maria Monroe feature the work of Latino leaders in economics and the social sciences. They touch upon the need for more, and more accurate, data about the Hispanic and Latino populations in the United States, as well as research at the intersection of race, ethnicity, and gender. They also discuss the important mentorship and training programs—such as the American Economic Association and the American Society for Hispanic Economists—that are working to attract and retain individuals from underrepresented backgrounds to the field of economics.

ICYMI: Equitable Growth has officially ratified a collective bargaining agreement with the Nonprofit Professional Employees Union, IFPTE Local 70. It was ratified on August 14 and includes improvements in pay equity, paid time off, and retirement contributions, among other things.

Brad DeLong highlights some must-read content from Equitable Growth and around the web in his latest Worthy Reads column.

Links from around the web

Last Friday’s jobs report numbers were much lower than expected—194,000 jobs were added, when many analysts predicted more like 500,000 would be—but The New York Times’ Neil Irwin explains why it may not be as bad as it looks. He dives into the data, writing that the numbers still show a steady expansion that is “more rapid than other recent recoveries” and that things are being held back by supply chain blockages and the delta variant of the coronavirus. This, combined with revisions for July and August numbers, suggest that the economy is entering fall in a stronger place than it seemed. Irwin analyzes various aspects of the employment report to detail why we shouldn’t get overly concerned about the lackluster numbers—yet.

A new poll reveals that almost 20 percent of U.S. households—and almost a third of those making less than $50,000 per year—lost their entire savings during the coronavirus pandemic. Bloomberg’s Simone Silvan shares the survey results, which also show that Black and Latino households were harder hit than other racial groups. Many of the respondents to the poll reported dipping into or using up their savings to cover child care expenses and health care costs. Silvan spoke with activists, who urged Congress to take quick and generous action to ensure this trend doesn’t continue and that U.S. families do not fall into poverty amid the ongoing pandemic and economic recovery.

As policymakers debate President Joe Biden’s Build Back Better agenda, and whether and how to include child care in the package, The 19th’s Chabeli Carrazana examines what child care looks like when it actually works for families. Carrazana looks into the nonprofit Chambliss Center for Children in Chattanooga, Tennessee, which has been incredibly successful, even in the face of the coronavirus pandemic, in continuing to provide day care to a growing number of children. The centers have also expanded to provide 24-hour care to help low-income parents with nontraditional schedules and have a sliding-scale cost system in which parents pay varying care fees depending on their incomes. Carrazana suggests that Chambliss could be a model for how to implement local child care programs across the United States, with its unique system of contracting out the financial and business side of each center and subsidizing costs, so caregivers are free to focus entirely on providing the best care for children. But, she cautions, without additional aid from Congress, even these highly successful child care centers face years of financial hardship and staffing challenges as a result of the pandemic.

Friday figure

Proportion of service-sector workers at large employers indicating well-being before and after passage of SSO, 2017-2019

Figure is from “New study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences shows schedule stability supports U.S. workers and the broader economy,” by Alix Gould-Werth, Emilie Openchowski, and Raksha Kopparam.

Expert Focus: Latino leaders in economics and a call for more data and research about Latinos and Hispanics

Posted on by Emilie Openchowski
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Equitable Growth is committed to building a community of scholars working to understand how inequality affects broadly shared growth and stability. To that end, we have created the monthly series, “Expert Focus.” This series highlights scholars in the Equitable Growth network and beyond who are at the frontier of social science research. We encourage you to learn more about both the researchers featured below and our broader network of experts.

In honor of Hispanic Heritage Month, this installment of Expert Focus highlights Latino leaders in economics, the need for more, and more accurate, data about Hispanics and Latinos, and research that applies the intersectionality of race, ethnicity, and gender from among Equitable Growth’s academic community and beyond.

Many Latino leaders call for more accurate and representative research about Latinos. More and better data will enhance researchers’ ability to compare and/or distinguish Latinos from other groups of diverse backgrounds in the United States, as well as understand differences within the Latino community. Similarly, scholars insist on adding more context to the use of different terms, such as Hispanic or Latino. Some note the invention of Latino and Hispanic terms, as well as the ethnoracial politics and the generational differences within the group in terms of how to self-identify. Other terms used by those in this group are Latinxs and Afro-Latinos.

In economics, one way Latino leaders have drawn Latinos and individuals from underrepresented backgrounds to the profession is through their participation in mentorship programs. Below, we highlight Latino leaders working at the American Economic Association and the American Society for Hispanic Economists, which originated alongside—and often collaborates with—the National Economic Association focused on Black economists. This year, Equitable Growth participated as a first-time host organization for the AEA Summer Training Program for experiential learning participants and the AEA Summer Economics Fellows Program to support efforts to diversify the profession.

Francisca Antman

The University of Colorado Boulder 

Francisca Antman is an associate professor of economics at the University of Colorado Boulder. Her research focuses on Latinos, international migration, human capital investments, and the allocation of resources within households and families. Building from development and labor economics, her recent projects examine the impact of school desegregation on the educational progress of Hispanic Americans, the construction of racial and ethnic identity and related patterns of assimilation, the effects of immigration policies on undocumented immigrants, and the effects of migration on the elderly generation left behind in Mexico. For 6 years, Antman served on the American Economic Association Committee on the Status of Minority Groups in the Economics Profession. Currently, she is serving as the co-director of the committee’s mentoring program, a flagship AEA program to attract and retain underrepresented groups in the field of economics. The program focuses on providing mentorship to early career economists and facilitating networks between scholars at all stages as a tool to advance diversity, equity, and inclusion in the economics profession.

Mónica García-Pérez

St. Cloud University

Mónica García-Pérez is a professor of economics at St. Cloud University. Her research concentrates on immigration, health economics, and labor economics. García-Pérez also is a co-author of an Equitable Growth working paper looking at credit scores and incarceration. A speaker at Equitable Growth’s Vision 2020 event, García-Pérez is also an active leader in various professional societies in economics. As past president of the American Society of Hispanic Economists, she wrote a solidarity statement in response to 2020’s historic events of discrimination, violence, and murder impacting underrepresented groups and individuals in the United States. In 2021, she served as faculty to support students interested in economics as a member of the AEA Summer Program and a fellow of the 2021 Reinventing Our Communities Cohort Program organized by the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia.

Quote from Monica Garcia-Perez on the intergenerational effect of immigration

Mark Hugo López

Pew Research Center

Mark Hugo López is an economist and the director of race and ethnicity research at Pew Research Center. He is a major voice in Hispanic/Latino data research, having led the center’s Hispanic and Global Migration and Demography research agendas for more than a decade. Drawing from his expertise on global migration and demography, Hispanic trends, and race and ethnicity, López has authored reports and short pieces on the changing demographics of Latinos and Hispanics in the United States, including how this group is impacted by the coronavirus pandemic. At Pew Research Center, three focal areas of his work involve the Hispanic electorate, Hispanic identity, and immigration. López understands the importance of having more data on Latinos to understand the nuances and trends among them through the disaggregation of data and oversampling of Latinos in federal surveys, public opinion polls, and academic research. Similar to other scholars in this installment of Expert Focus, López’s research analyzes public opinion data around the nuanced intra-Hispanic or intra-Latino perspective of the varied uses of terms, such as Latinx. Prior to joining Pew Research, López was a research assistant professor at the University of Maryland’s School of Public Policy and research director of the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement. López was a seminar speaker for the AEA Summer Program this year and serves as a mentor to the next generation of students in economics.

Quote from Mark Hugo Lopez on Hispanic identity

G. Cristina Mora

University of California, Berkeley

G. Cristina Mora is an associate professor of sociology and Chicano/Latino studies (by courtesy) and the co-director of the Institute of Governmental Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. Mora’s work highlights the need for and the important value of qualitative research for understanding the context of a specific race and ethnic group, as well as the need for the integration of this type of research into a larger debate about the disaggregation of data and oversampling, given the current racial makeup of the United States. In 2020, Mora oversaw the largest survey on the economic and health impacts of the coronavirus and COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus, in California. The results shed light on the ethnoracial politics that exist within the Latino and Hispanic community and across generations. Along with Equitable Growth staff and others in academia and nonprofit sectors, Mora was part of the UNIDOSUS advisory board that published a 2021 report on closing the Latina wealth gap. The report documents the factors leading to persistent income and wealth gaps for Latinas.

Quote from G. Cristina Mora on Latino sense of self

Eileen V. Segarra Alméstica

The University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras campus

Eileen V. Segarra Alméstica is a professor of economics at the University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras campus and faculty at the Center for New Economy, an economic policy think tank. Her work is centered on gender, race, and employment from a labor economics perspective. After Hurricane Maria in 2017, Segarra Alméstica published research about the vulnerabilities in Puerto Rico given different sociodemographic contexts among residents—low-income, those with disabilities, children and adolescents, elderly groups, those facing inadequate housing or transportation, the unemployed, and residents of different immigrant status. In 2021, she was part of a Women’s History Month panel organized by Puerto Rico’s Economists Association on the state of affairs for Puerto Rican women’s workers. Currently, Segarra Alméstica is part of the “Observatorio de la Educación Pública en Puerto Rico” (English presentation), an affiliate of the “Centro de Estudios Multidisciplinarios de Gobierno y Asuntos Públicos,” or CEMGAP, at the University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras campus.

Quote from Eileen V. Segarra Almestica

Equitable Growth is building a network of experts across disciplines and at various stages in their career who can exchange ideas and ensure that research on inequality and broadly shared growth is relevant, accessible, and informative to both the policymaking process and future research agendas. Explore the ways you can connect with our network or take advantage of the support we offer here. 

JOLTS Day Graphs: August 2021 Edition

Posted on by Carmen Sanchezcumming

Every month the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics releases data on hiring, firing, and other labor market flows from the Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey, better known as JOLTS. Today, the BLS released the latest data for August 2021. This report doesn’t get as much attention as the monthly Employment Situation Report, but it contains useful information about the state of the U.S. labor market. Below are a few key graphs using data from the report.

The quits rate rose to 2.9 percent as nearly 4.3 million workers quit their jobs in August, while the job openings rate decreased to 6.6 percent.

Quits as a percent of total U.S. employment, 2001-2021. Recessions are shaded.

The vacancy yield declined slightly in August, remaining very low with job openings at 10.4 million—down 659,000 after a series high in July.

U.S. total nonfarm hires per total nonfarm job openings, 2001-2021. Recessions are shaded.

Job openings declined in August, including in sectors that had seen strong recent gains such as the education and health services, manufacturing, and leisure and hospitality.

Job openings by selected major U.S. industry, indexed to job openings in February 2020

The ratio of unemployed-workers-per-job-opening increased from 0.78 in July to 0.80 in August, still similar to the low levels last seen immediately before the coronavirus recession.

U.S. unemployed workers per total nonfarm job opening, 2001-2020. Recessions are shaded.

The Beveridge Curve remained in an atypical, elevated range in August, with declines in both the unemployment rate and the job openings rate.

The relationship between the U.S. unemployment rate and the job openings rate, 2001-2021.

Brad DeLong: Worthy reads on equitable growth, October 5-12, 2021

Posted on by Maria Monroe

Worthy reads from Equitable Growth:

1. If the distribution of U.S. income and wealth is not moving much, and if one is (for reasons that are largely tactical-political) willing to submerge questions about the current state of the distribution of income and wealth, then there is some sense in taking measures of national income as a summary statistic of the state of the U.S. economy. If not, not. For a generation and a half it has been clear that neither of those conditions holds anymore, if they ever really held at all. And yet we are still using national income as our summary statistic—when we are not using the stock market, that is. Read Austin Clemens, “Measuring economic outcomes for all U.S. workers and their families will hold policymakers accountable for creating broad-based growth,” in which he writes: “U.S. GDP is completely inadequate for understanding our modern economy or the well-being of U.S. workers and their families. It cannot tell economists or policymakers anything about the informal work sector, inequality in the economy, sustainability, and myriad other issues that are essential for policymaking in the 21st century. The problems with the GDP measure are emblematic of the work by the Washington Center for Equitable Growth to improve economic measurements. We know from research that changes in GDP have a huge impact on the tenor of economic narratives in the United States. But we also know that GDP is increasingly disconnected from the experience of most U.S. workers and their families, most of whom generally see increases in their own incomes that are well below headline GDP figures.”

2. I find myself returning to this often: U.S. society and its family organization setups did make some (although not a great deal of) sense with respect to economic efficiency and the societal work of child care back in the large-family era before the demographic transition, but that is now a century ago. And today there remain mammoth failures of readjustment, many of them linked to the survival of the expectation that the past denial of female opportunity creates a large captive care-work labor force that can be paid low salaries. Read Sam Abbott,” The child care economy,” in which he writes: “Investments in early care and education can fuel U.S. economic growth immediately and over the long term. Fast facts: Insufficient child care options can prevent parents who wish to work from doing so, with mothers often bearing the brunt of this challenge. Among parents who wish to work, child-rearing tends to interfere more with women’s labor supply and employment outcomes than with men’s. This leaves potential economic growth unrealized, as women’s labor force participation is significantly associated with Gross Domestic Product growth. High-quality early care and education provides critical socialization and learning opportunities when the brain is developing rapidly and is particularly responsive to the outside environment. Young children in pre-Kindergarten programs experience positive developmental outcomes and are better prepared for school, scoring higher than their peers on standardized measures of reading, spelling, math, and problem-solving skills. Adequate funding is necessary for human capital development. Fully funding the subsidy programs and devoting resources for state-level agencies to assist providers in qualifying for subsidies are two ways in which greater public investment could increase child care availability and quality. Supporting child care workers is crucial for promoting quality care and human capital development. Using public funds to support higher compensation would help stabilize the child care workforce, ensuring that these workers can afford to stay in their jobs. Investing in the nation’s children is one of the safest bets policymakers can make. Research on early care and education programs finds that $1 in spending generates $8.60 in economic activity.”

3. Another one of my favorite moments from the Equitable Growth 2021 conference. Watch Michelle Holder and Lisa Cook, “Michele Holder on child care and the economy.”

Worthy reads not from Equitable Growth:

1. Dan Alpert is right. The cutting-off of income support to the unemployed in the United States after the coronavirus recession is a huge, huge shock. Yet this past Friday’s employment numbers show not a ripple. This powerfully reinforces the view that the end of income support is having no effect on U.S. labor supply whatsoever. Thus everybody who has been talking about the adverse labor-supply effects of income support really needs to take a hard look at their thought processes. Read Dan Alpert’s twitter response to the those numbers, in which he notes: “Second only to the lockdowns in spring of 2020, the biggest pandemic-era shock to the U.S. employment situation was the elimination—by law, not economics—of nearly 10 million workers from the unemployment benefit rolls in September. Will that register yet in payrolls? Stay tuned.”

2. In the world in which there are powerful psychological and institutional reasons why nominal wage and price levels in many, many sectors and for many, many occupations are sticky downward, structural adjustment via the market requires some inflation. And the more structural adjustment there is to be done in a shorter time, the more inflation is a desirable addition to rather than a subtraction from the supply-side potential of the economy. And yet there are a remarkably large number of people who do not factor this into their thinking. They continue to hold, no matter what the underlying realities of the fundamental economic situation, the inflation target that Alan Greenspan kicked out of the air in the 1990s as if it were a sacred totem. Read Andrew Elrod, “The Specter of Inflation,” in which he writes: “What are we to make of the jump? Thirteen years ago the bulge in prices was concentrated in petroleum products and food; today the spike is driven by used cars, airfare, and restaurants—sectors acutely impacted by the pandemic. But unlike 2008, there is little reason to suspect today’s rising prices are evidence of an overactive economy. The U-6 rate of total unemployment, which includes those working part-time involuntarily and those who have quit looking for work, remains 9.2 percent. Total capacity utilization, meanwhile, remains sharply depressed at 76 percent. … The history of inflation politics has a very different lesson. … Inflation is not always a problem of excess demand; it can also be caused by mismatch between existing demand and existing supply—a problem of shifting supply to changing demands. (Arguably this is what we are seeing now.) Moreover, reducing the level of spending in the economy can prevent us from achieving other, higher goals. … Both Harry Truman and Franklin Roosevelt confronted inflation without hiking rates and tightening budgets, and there is no reason governments can’t manage their economies similarly today. Inflation, in short, does not have to be a totalizing problem, and we certainly have better prescriptions for dealing with it than those on offer today. The far greater threat, history shows, is inflation fearmongering.”

3. Yes, it would be nice to have cheap reliable zero-carbon fission power. Yes, France got there. Yes, it would be even nicer to have even cheaper and more reliable fission power. Yes, it would be nicer still to have cheap reliable fusion power. But it really looks like, for the next generation at least, the low-hanging economic fruit is all in solar power. It would be silly to make a difficult-to-attain second-best the enemy of a first best that is already at hand. Read Noah Smith, “Nuclear vs. Solar,” in which he writes: “One has promise for the future. The other is changing our world right now. … I would love to see technological breakthroughs that solve fission power’s basic problems, and fusion, if it works would be even more exciting. … France’s experience powering itself largely with nuclear reactors (thanks to massive government financing and coordination) shows that we could have done so safely and efficiently—and reduced our carbon emissions enormously in the process—had we chosen to do so. Furthermore, scrapping existing nuclear power plants, like the one at Diablo Canyon, is crazy, and will increase carbon emissions for no good reason. … ‘Clean firm’ power is key to rapidly decarbonizing the grid, and nuclear power is one of the ways we get that. In sum, I am pro-nuclear. But I also feel that many of my techno-optimist friends, in their focus on the promise of nuclear, are giving short shrift to the even greater technological revolution happening right under their noses—the unbelievable progress in both solar power and battery storage. If you are a true techno-optimist, you should definitely be excited by this! It’s not the kind of thing that happens once in a generation—it’s the kind of thing that has never happened before.” 

Posted in Uncategorized

New study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences shows schedule stability supports U.S. workers and the broader economy

Posted on by Maria Monroe
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As COVID-19 vaccination rates rise in the United States many businesses, especially in hard-hit industries such as retail and food service, are seeking to fill positions to keep pace with public demand. Securing or returning to a job is a huge relief to workers who faced or narrowly avoided unemployment over the past 18 months, but it also is important to ask what kinds of jobs these service-sector workers are returning to.

Long before the coronavirus pandemic hit, U.S. policymakers were discussing the quality of work schedules for service-sector workers. As discussions about reemployment heat up, many advocates and policymakers are revisiting conversations about job quality. That’s why the time is right to reexamine policy interventions that are designed to ensure scheduling practices in the service sector work well for employers, employees, and the broader U.S. economy alike.

Evidence published last week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on the effects of a stable scheduling law enacted in Seattle provides a useful jumping-off point. Using an innovative approach to data collection, rigorous statistical methods, and building upon previous research conducted in Seattle, the article provides important insights into the effects of stable schedules on workers. Prior to implementation of the ordinance in 2017, the majority of hourly workers in Seattle experienced instability or unpredictability—defined by the researchers as receiving less than 2 weeks’ notice of upcoming work schedules, not receiving compensation for last-minute changes to their schedules, and working an on-call shift or a so-called clopening shift, in which workers have less than 10 hours to rest between shifts or back-to-back closing and opening shifts.

The study’s co-authors—Kristen Harknett of the University of California, San Francisco, Daniel Schneider of Harvard University, and Véronique Irwin of UC Berkeley—collected 1,942 surveys from hourly workers at large retail businesses in Seattle, along with 15,747 surveys from workers in similar cities without scheduling laws as a comparison group. They find that the ordinance decreased the prevalence of workers reporting on-call shifts and clopening shifts by 7 percentage points and 6 percentage points, respectively, increased the share of workers who know their schedule at least 2 weeks in advance by 11 percentage points, and decreased the share of workers experiencing last-minute shift changes without pay by 13 percentage points. (See Figure 1.)

Figure 1

Proportion of service-sector workers at large employers reporting negative scheduling practices before and after passage of SSO, 2017-2019

But that’s not all. The ordinance also had an impact on these employees outside of the workplace. Workers reported an improvement in their material well-being: The ordinance was associated with a 10 percentage point fall in rates of material hardship. It also was associated with an 11 percentage point increase in reports of good sleep quality and a 7 percentage point increase in levels of overall happiness. (See Figure 2.)

Figure 2

Proportion of service-sector workers at large employers indicating well-being before and after passage of SSO, 2017-2019

In sum, the ordinance not only improved working conditions in terms of schedule stability but also enhanced Seattle workers’ lives and well-being outside of work and bettered their financial stability.

The study’s co-authors make a point of noting that their findings do not indicate that hourly workers in Seattle no longer have unstable schedules. In fact, they note that many workers still report a fair amount of unpredictability and instability. For instance, 40 percent of workers covered by the ordinance reported less than 2 weeks’ notice of their schedules 2 years after the law took effect. This suggests that the ordinance’s accompanying training and awareness campaign may have fallen short of its goal to educate the city’s workforce about these changes. The continued high rates of unpredictable schedules also serve as an important reminder that labor standards enforcement is a key—and perhaps missing or flawed—piece of carrying out these schedule stability ordinances.

The study is a fascinating addition to the literature on work schedules, which has generally been focused on two main areas. One strand of the existing research examines the associations between scheduling practices and outcomes such as happiness, levels of distress, sleep quality, and financial security. (See Figure 3.)  

Figure 3

Probability of experiencing hunger hardship by type of schedule among U.S. food and retail workers.

This area of research also looks into the effects of schedule stability on child care arrangements, finding that better schedules are associated with better outcomes in these domains. (See Figure 4.)

Figure 4

Number of days per year in which young children of U.S. food and retail workers receive child care from a sibling younger than 10 years of age or lack child care

This body of research also finds that unpredictable and unstable schedules are not distributed equally across the population. Food, retail, and other low-wage service-sector employees—who are disproportionately likely to be workers of color and women workers—frequently face precarious scheduling practices because they are widespread in these industries. These low-wage workers also have been hit the hardest by the coronavirus recession and the continuing COVID-19 pandemic.

Another strand of schedule stability research evaluates interventions at the company level, finding that when companies, such as Gap Inc., implement changes designed to improve schedule quality, workers report improvements such as higher productivity and better sleep quality, and firms report improvements such as decreased turnover, longer job tenure, and increased profits. Reductions in turnover save companies money—replacing an employee can cost an employer an average of 40 percent of that employee’s salary. These outcomes are good for the broader U.S. economy.

Inspired in part by these twin strands of research, nine cities and states have passed “fair workweek laws” that attempt to improve the quality of work schedules in the service sector. Yet, to date, little research has drawn causal conclusions about the impact of these laws. That’s what makes the newly published study so exciting.

working paper

Uncertain Time: Precarious Schedules and Job Turnover in the U.S. Service Sector

By Joshua Choper, Daniel Schneider, Kristen Harknett,

October 16, 2019

working paper

Hard Times: Routine Schedule Unpredictability and Material Hardship among Service Sector Workers

By Daniel Schneider, Kristen Harknett,

October 16, 2019

working paper

Consequences of Routine Work Schedule Instability for Worker Health and Wellbeing

By Daniel Schneider, Kristen Harknett,

September 26, 2018

It’s important to bear in mind that the three researchers’ surveys with workers took place prior to the onset of the coronavirus pandemic in the United States. This is especially important considering the outsize impact of this public health crisis and the ensuing recession on low-wage and service-sector employees. A separate research team led by Susan Lambert at the University of Chicago’s School of Social Service Administration and Anna Haley at Rutgers University’s School of Social Work plan to release a study later this year that focuses on employer implementation of the Seattle law. The forthcoming study will incorporate the coronavirus pandemic’s impact on staffing and scheduling choices during these times of unprecedented stress and business uncertainty.

Even as the availability of COVID-19 vaccines allows many service-sector workers to feel safer going to work, it’s clear that the precarious working conditions that so many of them face are not conducive to quality living standards and, indeed, exacerbate inequality in the United States. Many service-sector workers are, in fact, not returning to their jobs even as the economy and society reopen, with some preferring to look for jobs with better working conditions and benefits or higher pay.

This body of research suggests that policymakers should heed the evidence on the myriad benefits of predictable schedules and enact scheduling stability laws. This new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences adds to the existing research that shows how improvements to workers’ schedules reduce turnover, boost worker productivity, and grow company profits, and demonstrates the clear personal and professional benefits for individual workers. Together, this body of work implies that benefits of stable schedules for workers and their families ripple out to the broader U.S. economy, facilitating the current economic recovery and improving life for all U.S. workers and their families.

Posted in Uncategorized

Weekend reading: Another disappointing Jobs Day edition

Posted on by Maria Monroe

This is a post we publish each Friday with links to articles that touch on economic inequality and growth. The first section is a round-up of what Equitable Growth published this week and the second is relevant and interesting articles we’re highlighting from elsewhere. We won’t be the first to share these articles, but we hope by taking a look back at the whole week, we can put them in context.

Equitable Growth round-up

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics released data on employment and the U.S. labor force in September today, revealing only 194,000 jobs were added to the struggling job market recovery. Carmen Sanchez Cumming and Kathryn Zickuhr detail the implications of the still uneven employment recovery for women of color, focusing in particular on U.S. care workers. This sector provides health, education, and social services to workers, families, and communities—services that took it on the chin anew with the surge the delta variant of the coronavirus. Then there are the longstanding challenges for workers in the care sector of the U.S. economy, including low pay and lack of paid leave, that pre-date the pandemic. The co-authors explain that because women in general and women of color in particular are overrepresented in care occupations, care work is undervalued and thus is both a driver and a reflection of racial and gender economic inequality and now a drag on a broadly shared economic recovery.

Ahead of this week’s EconCon 2021 session on redefining economic measurement, Austin Clemens put together a list of resources for those interested in advancing new methods of tracking how the economy is working for all Americans. The list covers Equitable Growth’s work on GDP 2.0—our project on the value of disaggregating Gross Domestic Product data by income—as well as why policymakers should work to disaggregate data along race and ethnicity lines to better understand the role and impact of systemic racism in the United States.

Check out Brad DeLong’s latest Worthy Reads column for his takes on must-read content from Equitable Growth and around the web.

Links from around the web

As eviction moratoriums lapse in states across the United States, millions of families face losing their homes. This crisis is worse for Black families, writes USA Today’s Jessica Guynn in a feature appearing on yahoo!finance, thanks in part to historical systemic racism that has prevented many of these families from becoming homeowners and building wealth. As rents rise and available housing options become scarce, fears of eviction are rising, with Black households more likely to be behind on rent payments and facing higher unemployment rates, and thus more likely to be displaced. Guynn details the implications for exacerbating existing inequality and racial disparities in the United States as well as the difficulties many families have had in accessing federal rental assistance programs during the pandemic.

The U.S. employment situation and economic recovery is also disproportionately more difficult for Black workers, with rates of joblessness still much higher for Black workers than their peers. This is not a new phenomenon and hardly surprising to many economists, reports NBC News’ Bracey Harris, but it has gotten worse amid the pandemic. The persistence of these disparities has led to questions about whether racial bias and discrimination as well as occupational segregation are playing a role. Many Black workers are in occupations and industries in which working from home is not an option and in which minimum wages and unpredictability are common. Harris tells the story of two Black women in Mississippi who lost their jobs during the pandemic and how they have experienced the labor market recovery.

Friday figure

Percent change in employment by selected education and health services industries, February 2020-September 2021

Figure is from “Problems in the U.S. care sectors risk holding back the economic recovery amid another month of disappointing job gains,” by Carmen Sanchez Cumming and Kathryn Zickuhr.

Problems in the U.S. care sectors risk holding back the economic recovery amid another month of disappointing job gains

Posted on by Maria Monroe
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According to the latest Employment Situation Summary by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the economy added 194,000 jobs in September—well below expectations and substantially less than the average 806,000 job gained over the previous three months. As the delta variant of the coronavirus sent ripples through the labor market, the prime-age employment-to-population ratio, or the share of 25- to 54-year-olds who have a job, remained flat at 78 percent between mid-August and mid-September. While the overall unemployment rate fell from 5.2 percent to 4.8 percent, some of the reduction in joblessness was the consequence of workers leaving the labor force.

Today’s Jobs report continues to show that the recovery in employment remains uneven. Across the lines of race, ethnicity, and gender, employment is most depressed for women of color. In September 524,000 fewer Black women were employed than in February 2020, a decline of 5.2 percent. Latina women—who did not see any net increases in employment last month and face the second-deepest job losses—are experiencing a drop of 4.7  percent. (See Figure 1).

Figure 1

Percent change in U.S. employment for workers 20-years-old and over relative to February 2020, by race, gender, and ethnicity

The still chilling effect of the delta variant was evident in overall job growth. The education and health care industry, for example, shed 7,000 jobs and the “other services” industry that includes sectors such as personal care services shed 16,000 jobs. Even though in September the leisure and hospitality sector added 74,000 jobs—more than any other industry—these gains still fell short of the massive number of jobs added during the summer.

Another factor holding back stronger employment gains is the slow recovery in some parts of the paid care economy. This sector provides health, education, and social services to workers, families, and communities.

Indeed, last month nursing care facilities, residential mental health facilities, and community care centers for the elderly all saw their workforce shrink. These data reflect reports that care providers such as child care centers and nursing homes are struggling to hire and retain workers after millions of workers in the health care and social assistance industry were laid off between March and April of last year during the depths of the coronavirus recession. While some care sectors such as home health services have recovered at roughly the same pace as the overall U.S. labor market, others are lagging behind. As of September employment at nursing care facilities and community care centers for the elderly remained 15 percent and 11 percent below February 2020 levels. (See Figure 2).

Figure 2

Percent change in employment by selected education and health services industries, February 2020-September 2021

One likely reason for the slow recovery in these care sectors is that the coronavirus pandemic made already challenging and often bad-quality jobs even more difficult. Compensated caregivers in general—among them home health aides, child care workers, and nursing home staff—tend to be poorly paid and are likely to experience precarious working conditions. In 2020, for example, the median wage for childcare workers was just $12.24 per hour and for home health and personal care aides just $13.02 per hour.

In addition, these workers often do not have access to employer-provided benefits and are often subject to particularly invasive forms of worker surveillance. And as the pandemic hit early last year, many of the workers who were not laid off were highly exposed to the coronavirus at work and often received little support from their employers in terms of provision of basic protective equipment such as masks. According to one analysis, nursing home workers held one of the deadliest jobs last year as they provided care in understaffed and underfunded facilities while also lacking access to paid sick leave and earning insufficient wages.

Because women in general and women of color in particular are overrepresented in care occupations, that care work is undervalued and thus is both a driver and a reflection of racial and gender economic inequality.

Bad-quality jobs in the care economy hurt workers, those who are in need of care, and the entire economy

There are broad implications of so many bad-quality care positions. Poor working conditions and low pay translate into high turnover rates among care workers—turnover that is expensive for employers and bad for clients and patients. Nursing home staff turnover was already extremely high before the pandemic, with an average annual turnover rate of 128 percent, and high turnover has been found to be associated with citations for poor infection controls.

This incomplete recovery in care-providing sectors also is a drag on employment growth and long-term economic growth. According to the U.S. Census’ Household Pulse Survey, more than 11 million adults are not working because they are caring for someone sick with coronavirus symptoms, caring for an elderly person, or caring for children who are not in school or daycare.

Then there’s the recent survey by the Urban Institute. It finds that in late 2020, about 20 percent of adults living with children under the age of 6 had to work fewer hours because of greater care responsibilities. More broadly, research finds that when parents in general and mothers in particular do not have access to affordable and high-quality child care, they are also less likely to be in the workforce.

Partly because of the country’s aging population and the labor-intensive nature of most of this kind of work, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics projects that between 2020 and 2030, demand for home health and personal care workers will grow 33 percent—27 percentage points more than the average growth rate for all occupations. Also due to greater demand, five of the 10 fastest growing jobs are in care occupations. This means that the quality of jobs in the paid care economy will affect a growing number of U.S. workers in the years to come, making it increasingly important to act now to ensure that these are well-paying, good-quality jobs.

post

Equitable Growth’s Jobs Day Graphs: September 2021 Report Edition

By Kathryn Zickuhr, Carmen Sanchez Cumming,

October 8, 2021

Equitable Recovery

Factsheet: What does the research say about care infrastructure?

By Equitable Growth,

April 15, 2021

post

Factsheet: U.S. occupational segregation by race, ethnicity, and gender

By Kate Bahn, Carmen Sanchez Cumming,

July 1, 2020

Investments in the U.S. care infrastructure are essential for a complete recovery and broadly-shared growth

The most direct route to start to counter the undervaluing of paid care workers is to raise pay through policies such as raising the federal minimum wage. Research by Krista Ruffini at the University of California, Berkeley, finds that because direct-care staff at nursing homes are some of the worst-paid workers in the United States, higher minimum wage floors lead to better labor market outcomes for those who do the job, reduce employee turnover, and improve patient care. Other measures that promote job quality, such as access to predictable schedules and safe working conditions, also are essential.

Because the U.S. labor market continues to be short 5 million jobs compared to the abrupt end of the previous economic expansion in February 2020, investments in U.S. care infrastructure will be essential for reaching a complete and resilient recovery.

Insufficient investment in accessible and high-quality child care and home- and community-based services have long held back progress toward a more dynamic and equitable economy—one in which paid caregivers are fairly compensated and those who currently cannot do paid work because they have caregiving responsibilities are able to enter the workforce if they choose to.