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Discussion Paper
Who Has COVID-19 Impacted and What’s Been Done to Help?
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reports the unemployment rate monthly. Generally, it gives an idea of the number of Americans who are out of work and looking for new employment. During times of economic stress, however, this metric may not paint a full picture of those who are out of work.Headline unemployment numbers can be misleading, and the COVID-19 pandemic has affected the accuracy of the picture painted by the headline unemployment numbers. For instance, the October jobs report from the BLS identified 11.1 million unemployed workers, or 6.9 percent unemployment. But this ...
Discussion Paper
Financing Workforce Development in a Devolutionary Era
Workforce development financing has changed significantly over the last 25 years. In 2008, federal funding for the traditional workforce development system was 83 percent lower in real terms than it had been in 1980. As the federal system plays a smaller role in workforce development financing, the job training landscape better represents a “marketplace” where students and job seekers use federal training vouchers and grant and student loan money from various sources, primarily the Higher Education Act’s Pell Grant and Federal Student Loan programs. Additionally, increasing volatility ...
Discussion Paper
Rework America Alliance: Helping Workers Move into Good Jobs
We see the current situation as a call to action—and an unparalleled opportunity to advance more effective and equitable systems to connect people to opportunity. Seizing this opportunity will require building new partnerships improving training systems, and prototyping new models of action. As such, we are excited to announce that the Atlanta Fed’s Center for Workforce and Economic Opportunity is partnering with the Markle Foundation and many other organizations to launch the Rework America Alliance, an innovative, nationwide initiative to help workers emerge from this crisis stronger. ...
Discussion Paper
Introducing the Unemployment Claims Monitor
The COVID-19 pandemic has caused an unparalleled economic slowdown and record numbers of layoffs. Even casual economic observers have seen reports of millions of workers filing claims for unemployment insurance—between the weeks of March 21, 2020 and April 25, 2020, 19 percent of workers covered by unemployment insurance filed an initial claim—but what exactly does this mean for unemployment?1 It is important to understand exactly what an unemployment insurance (UI) claim represents and how it provides information on what is happening in the economy.
Discussion Paper
Then and Now: The Changing Landscape of Education Outcomes and Funding in the 21st Century (Part 2 of 3)
This is part two of a three-part series that brings together labor market, workforce, occupational, and educational trends since 2000 to tell a story of American workers through data. This is primarily a decennial retrospective, but some sections include additional years to shape a complete story. Part two looks at policy interventions related to unemployment, health care insurance, and retirement savings. The charts illustrate the mixed experiences of workers over this period.The "Then and Now" series explores data broadly and granularly with a demographic lens, recognizing that general ...
Discussion Paper
The Digital Divide and the Pandemic: Working from Home and Broadband and Internet Access
The industrial makeup of a metropolitan area or state is an important factor in how it experiences economic disruptions, and concentrations of certain industries in a region make it more or less resilient and can affect its ability to rebound from a negative economic shock. Similar to effects felt in the industrial Midwest by other economic shifts and shocks over the last several decades, we know these places with heavily “nontraded” sector economies are likely feeling disproportionately negative economic effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. While industrial composition—meaning the key ...
Discussion Paper
Automation and the Future of Work
There are numerous reports that highlight potential effects that new technology will have on the U.S. labor market, and many of them are not exactly what you would expect. For example, with the advent of the internet and ubiquity of spreadsheets in the 1980s, analyst employment soared. The new technology unlocked latent demand for more analysis that had been simply too expensive before the new communication and productivity technologies became common. The need for more analysis led to more analysts…even though there were new technologies that made the work more efficient or productive.
Discussion Paper
Creating Opportunities for Young Workers
Integrating young workers into the workforce, especially opportunity youth, takes a deliberate approach. Considering the needs and perspectives of young workers is critical to integrating them into the workforce. Involving young adults and opportunity youth in the design and development of programs and curricula that prepare them for work will help ensure that the programs address challenges young workers face in the labor market. Creating opportunities for early work experience also plays an important role.
Discussion Paper
Talent Finance: Exploring the Future of Workforce Partnerships
In 2020, our economy competes on talent. The labor market is dynamic, with in-demand skills constantly changing. A dynamic economy can create opportunities for workers, but it also creates risk. Investing in talent development—or talent finance—is imperative for companies and workers to succeed, but with the evolving nature of our global economy, our old systems of talent finance do not always work. Talent finance refers to the development and use of public and private instruments for investing in talent development and in managing related downside employment and income risks.As early as ...
Discussion Paper
Policies to Close the Southern Skills Gap
Southern states have a number of economic and demographic characteristics that make them unique from the rest of the country—and increase the need to build skills to advance economic development in the region.