May 14, 2021

The where-are-the-good-jobs edition. The economy is growing in fits and starts. More than one million combined jobs were added during the months of March and April — although the April jobs report was nothing to write home about. But evidence is emerging that many of the jobs that are returning are not good jobs; they pay low wages, have few benefits, or fall short in other measures of job quality. That contradicts the narrative of governors in 12 states terminating federal unemployment benefits. These governors claim that the extra unemployment benefits, that may exceed wages in low-paying jobs, are discouraging workers from returning to work. In fact, when there are jobs to return to, even at low wages, workers are taking them. But right now, there are still only 8 million job openings and 16 million jobless workers. And nearly 7 million adults reported they couldn’t get child care; that, not unemployment aid, is keeping many parents from going back to work. . 

“We can create an economy where everyone has a good job,” writes Tracy Williams, a Director at Omidyar Network, where she focuses on reimagining capitalism and creating good jobs with better benefits and protections. “But if we don’t start to pay attention to the quality, and not just the quantity of jobs, we risk creating an economy where major disruptions driven by pandemics or natural disasters, automation, and climate change could lead to continued deterioration in quality of jobs for those who already find themselves in a precarious position. And if we continue to rely on the unemployment rate to tell us what is going on, we risk becoming dangerously out of touch with what is really happening.” 

President Biden’s plan would create and improve jobs on so many levels – raising wages and benefits for essential home care workers; paying prevailing wages in safe and healthy workplaces while ensuring workers have the right to organize and bargain; delivering clean drinking water, a renewed electric grid, and high speed broadband to all Americans; and bringing needed repairs to our highways, bridges, ports, airports, and transit systems. 

That’s only the beginning. Biden also has proposed two years of pre-school for children and two years of community college for adults. He would resuscitate the child care industry, an essential step toward putting millions of women back in the workforce. He would extend the improved Earned Income Tax Credit for workers without dependent children (permanently) and the Child Tax Credit (through 2025), and he would expand access to health care – another step that would create good-paying jobs. 

Another thing we could do is raise the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour. But (spoiler alert!) you’ll be hearing more about that from CHN a little ways down the road.