The United States’ Unemployment Insurance (UI) system is a lifeline for jobless Americans, and provides an income-smoothing effect for workers and their families, as well as sustains and stabilizes consumer spending during economic downturns. However, UI also has the potential to spur entrepreneurship through the Self-Employment Assistance (SEA) program. SEA is a program within our system that offers workers the opportunity to build a new business while accessing income support during times of job-loss.
Report author Taylor Maag, PPI’s Director of Workforce Policy and the New Skills for a New Economy Project, recommends updating SEA to cut some of the “red tape” requirements that make it difficult for individuals to access and states to administer. She also suggests creating a new pilot program that can help policymakers understand the true impact of entrepreneurial opportunities for Americans who may not have as much access to means and capital.
“Our nation’s Unemployment Insurance system offers critical support during times of job loss, however it falls short in fostering opportunities for entrepreneurship, which plays a vital role in our country’s economy,” said Taylor Maag. “By enabling dislocated workers to pursue entrepreneurship, we can provide increased economic opportunity for individuals, communities, and the nation at large. Policymakers should not overlook UI’s untapped potential to create more of these economic opportunities.”
Read and download the report here.
The report makes the following policy recommendations:
Strike down arbitrary eligibility requirements for SEA, which make it harder for individuals to access this program.
Remove requirements that make SEA too costly for states to administer and disincentive states from participating in the program.
Create a pilot program to empower UI to support more entrepreneurship.The pilot would be a competitive grant program incentivizing states without active SEA programs to participate.
The Progressive Policy Institute (PPI) is a catalyst for policy innovation and political reform based in Washington, D.C., with offices in Brussels, Berlin and the United Kingdom. Its mission is to create radically pragmatic ideas for moving America beyond ideological and partisan deadlock. Learn more about PPI by visiting progressivepolicy.org.
At present, the United States is enjoying a stunningly low rate of unemployment. The federal government’s most recent report puts that rate at 3.6% and notes that job openings continue to rise.That’s a dramatic rebound from the dark days of Spring 2020, when unemployment skyrocketed to 13%.
To cope with the flood of laid off workers during the COVID-19 crisis, America relied heavily on our nation’s Unemployment Insurance (UI) system. Its mission is twofold: First, to provide an income-smoothing effect for workers and their families during times of joblessness; and second, to sustain and stabilize consumer spending during economic downturns. The UI system enables unemployed workers to keep paying bills and caring for their families, which, in turn, keeps other workers employed and regional economies vital.
In short, the UI system is a lifeline for jobless Americans in bad economic times that also has the “countercyclical” effect of shortening recessions. However, the system nearly crashed in many states during the pandemic, and experts believe it’s not prepared should the economy start contracting and shedding jobs. U.S. policymakers need to act now, while the system is not under stress, to make it more resilient against future emergencies.
As they do that, policymakers should not overlook UI’s untapped potential to create more opportunities for entrepreneurship. Currently, a small program within America’s UI system seeks to address this need — the Self-Employment Assistance Program (SEA). SEA offers qualifying individuals the opportunity for self-employment by combining income support during periods of unemployment with activities related to starting a business. Only 5 states have active programs and as a result, the SEA program serves a very small, distinctive slice of UI recipients, with less than 1% of UI claimants participating in the program. In fact, in 2022, there were only 1,404 SEA participants nationwide. This is a stark comparison to the number of entrepreneurs across America’s workforce — with some research now showing there are 31 million entrepreneurs in the U.S. making up 16% of the adult workforce.
While UI undeniably offers support during job loss, it falls short in fostering opportunities for entrepreneurship. This policy brief aims to illuminate the importance of creating more opportunities for entrepreneurship in the U.S., the transformative role UI can and should play in creating these pathways to self-employment and outlines actionable policy recommendations for federal leaders to consider. By enabling dislocated workers to pursue entrepreneurship even amidst financial distress, we can provide increased economic opportunity for individuals, communities, and the nation at large.
Today, the Progressive Policy Institute’s Metro Federalism Caucus and the Association for Enterprise Opportunity (AEO) released a new report highlighting the supports United States federal and local policymakers can implement to help returning citizens — those who were previously incarcerated — find new opportunities through entrepreneurship. The release of the report will be highlighted at a Capitol Hill briefing, featuring Senator Ben Cardin, who has been a longtime leader of entrepreneurship opportunities for returning citizens.
“Returning citizens in the U.S. face significant barriers to economic security and reintegration into their communities. However, there are opportunities for U.S. government, civic, and business leaders to help the stream of returning citizens find good jobs, achieve financial stability and, if they have the aptitude and inclination, go into business for themselves,” write the report authors. “Our challenge now is to extend that opportunity to more people and scale up proven initiatives…”
This report highlights two entrepreneurship training programs — Aspire to Entrepreneurship in Washington, D.C., and ASPIRE MO in Missouri — which help returning citizens overcome the natural hurdles new entrepreneurs and small business owners face.
The U.S. has the highest incarceration rate in the world, and those who have a history of involvement with the justice system face barriers to economic security and reintegration into their communities. Entrepreneurship can be a way out of this cycle, but local and federal support is vital for success. The report suggests four ways federal and local policymakers could work together:
The Progressive Policy Institute, in partnership with the Kauffman Foundation, has launched the Metro Federalism Caucus to advocate for a more direct and empowering relationship between national and local government leaders. The Caucus consists of former local officials who now serve in Congress, as well as accomplished mayors and former mayors from around the country, whose governing experience and insights can help U.S. policymakers reimagine the division of labor among national, state, and local governments. Its mission is to open a direct channel of communication that does not run through state governments, aimed at forging a stronger partnership between Washington and metro leaders. Organized and supported by PPI and Co-Chaired by Representative Marilyn Strickland (WA-10) and former Mayor of Kansas City Sly James, the Caucus will champion a new approach to federalism that channels resources and decision making directly to metro leaders. PPI calls this decentralizing dynamic “Metro Federalism.”
The Progressive Policy Institute (PPI) is a catalyst for policy innovation and political reform based in Washington, D.C. Its mission is to create radically pragmatic ideas for moving America beyond ideological and partisan deadlock. Learn more about PPI by visiting progressivepolicy.org. Find an expert at PPI and follow us on twitter.
For more than 30 years, Association for Enterprise Opportunity (AEO) and its over 2,700 member and partner organizations have helped millions of underserved entrepreneurs in starting, sustaining, and growing their businesses. Together, AEO is working to change the way that capital and services flow to underserved entrepreneurs so that they can create jobs and opportunities for all.
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Media Contact: Tommy Kaelin; tkaelin@ppionline.org
By Taylor Maag, PPI’s Director of Workforce Policy
Apprenticeship is engrained in America’s history — three of our Founding Fathers started their careers as apprentices. George Washington, for example, apprenticed as a land surveyor. Yet even with this 250-year runway, apprenticeships have not taken off in the United States as they have in other advanced nations.
Our country has about 500,000 registered apprenticeships today, mostly in traditional sectors such as building trades and heavy industry. As a share of their labor force, Great Britain, Australia, and Germany have roughly 10 times more.
It is puzzling that the U.S. hasn’t followed its peers in scaling up apprenticeship, a training model that is also a job, allowing people to work and earn while they are learning the critical skills necessary for good jobs and careers. It’s an especially relevant model now, when most U.S. jobs require at least some postsecondary education and training, and when employers, even in our tight labor market, report a serious shortage of skilled workers in their fields.
Join PPI Vice President and Chief Economist Michael Mandel on October 21, 2021 at 10:00am ET for the next IBM Policy Lab Live event, “Driving SME Growth and Resilience Through Digital Technologies and Data Flows“, focused on how digital technologies and cross-border data flows support growth and resilience for Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises (SMEs).
Using the main findings of reports by the Visa Economic Empowerment Institute and the American Leadership Initiative as a point of reference, this virtual conversation will propose policy recommendations that support “worker-centric” trade and help small businesses recover and thrive during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Panelists:
Chris Padilla, Vice-President of Government and Regulatory Affairs, IBM
Dr. Barbara Kotschwar, Executive Director, Visa Economic Empowerment Institute (VEEI)
Dr. Orit Frenkel, CEO, American Leadership Initiative
Dr. Kati Suominen, Founder and CEO, Nextrade Group
Michael Mandel, Vice President and Chief Economist, Progressive Policy Institute
On Tuesday, April 27, theProgressive Policy Institute will host two events with Members of Congress and diverse panels of experts on supporting women in the workforce and creating more opportunities for students and young workers.
In the morning, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) and Rep. Terri Sewell (AL-07) will keynote an event focused on policies that help women return to the workforce as we emerge from the COVID-19 pandemic.
Later that day, Rep. Chris Pappas (NH-01) will keynote an event with PPI’s Reinventing America’s Schools Project on creating more school-to-work pathways for our students and young adults. Recently, PPI’s Veronica Goodman, Tressa Pankovits, and Tess Murphy published a report titled Preventing Failure to Launch: Creating More School-to-Work Pathways for Young Adults, which focused on four key themes across school-to-work models, including the importance of work-based learning that connects students to employers, re-designing curriculums to emphasize soft skills and social capital, increasing supportive or wraparound services to help students get across the finish line, and helping high-school students earn credits toward postsecondary education.
Information and registration links for both events are below:
Helping Women Return to the Workforce with Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand and Rep. Terri Sewell
On Tuesday, April 27th, PPI is hosting a webinar with special guests Senator Kirsten Gillibrand and Representative Terri Sewell on policies to help the women return to the workforce following the devastating effect of the pandemic on women’s labor force participation. Our panel includes policy experts on labor, child care, and gender and racial equity.
Date/Time:
April 27, 2021 at 10:30AM ET
Keynote Speakers:
Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY)
Rep. Terri Sewell (AL-07)
Panel:
Veronica Goodman, Director of Social Policy at PPI
Chandra Childers, Study Director at the Institute for Women’s Policy Research
Elliot Haspel, Author of Crawling Behind: America’s Childcare Crisis and How to Fix It
Rhonda V. Sharpe, founder & president, Women’s Institute for Science, Equity, and Race
Kate Bahn, Director of Labor Market Policy at the Washington Center for Equitable Growth
Preventing Failure to Launch: Creating More School-to-Work Pathways with Rep. Chris Pappas
On Tuesday, April 27th, PPI’s Reinventing America’s Schools project is hosting a webinar with special guest Rep. Chris Pappas on creating more school-to-work pathways for our students and young adults.
Date/Time:
April 27, 2021 at 1:00PM ET
Keynote Speakers:
Rep. Chris Pappas (D-NH)
Jennifer Kemp, Director of Youth Services, U.S. Department of Labor; Office of Workforce Investment
Panel:
Veronica Goodman, Director of Social Policy at PPI
Tressa Pankovits, Associate Director of PPI’s Reinventing America’s Schools project
Jeanne Russell, Executive Director of the Centers for Applied Science and Technology
Cate Swinburn, President of YouthForce NOLA
Ryan Craig, Managing Director of Achieve Partners
A new report released today by the Progressive Policy Institute shows how the tech-ecommerce ecosystem is creating jobs at a pace comparable to post-war manufacturing. The report also analyzes the geographic job gains from the tech-ecommerce ecosystem, and the ecosystem’s ability to cushion the employment blow from the pandemic.
“People don’t think of tech as being a big source of jobs. But today’s tech-ecommerce leaders employ almost as many workers as did manufacturing giants such as GM, GE and IBM,” said Michael Mandel, Chief Economic Strategist at PPI.
This report comes at a turning point in the economic crisis caused by the pandemic. The U.S. Department of Labor announced today that the labor market had the largest rebound in jobs since August, with 916,000 jobs added in March, and unemployment falling to 6 percent.
Key findings from the report include:
The tech-ecommerce ecosystem – including both large and small employers – has arisen to become the top job creator in the U.S. economy.
Based on data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the industries in the tech-ecommerce ecosystem generated more than 1.2 million net new jobs from 2016 to 2020, including the pandemic.
Average pay in the tech-ecommerce ecosystem is 44% higher than average pay in the private sector, and 21% higher than average pay in manufacturing nationally.
The growth of tech-ecommerce jobs has also expanded beyond the coasts and regions known as tech innovation hot-spots, including growth during the pandemic in Arizona, Ohio, Texas, Indiana, and Florida.
For most of the 20th century, manufacturing was the paradigmatic industry for generating jobs through innovation. Industrial giants such as General Motors, General Electric, Eastman Kodak, IBM, and DuPont were renowned global technology leaders, blazing new trails in areas ranging from lighting and X-ray machines, to photographic film and computers, to synthetic materials such as nylon and Teflon and commercial jet engines.
Technological innovation, in turn, enabled these pioneering companies to become potent sources of good-paying jobs for U.S. workers. Collectively they employed millions of Americans, collaborating with smaller suppliers to form overlapping industrial ecosystems that supported communities in rural and urban areas across the country. Kodak was the classic example, of course, with the company’s powerhouse position in photography fueling the rise of its headquarters and main manufacturing center in Rochester (NY).
Manufacturing employment in the United States peaked in 1979. Since then, the sector has been a drag on job growth. Big companies have shrunk, consolidated, or disappeared. The once vibrant web of manufacturing suppliers has atrophied, with much of the supply chain now outside the country. And states where manufacturing once ruled have seen factory jobs dwindle, in some cases to almost nothing. In 1979, factory jobs accounted for more than one-third of the private workforce in 21 states, topped by South Carolina and North Carolina with fully 43% and 42% of their private employment in manufacturing. By 2019, those states were down to 15% and 13% of jobs, respectively, in manufacturing.
Instead, the mantle of global innovation leadership has shifted to America’s tech-ecommerce ecosystem. And perhaps surprisingly, so has the role of job creator. As we see in the next section, the top five tech-ecommerce firms—Apple, Alphabet, Microsoft, Facebook, and Amazon—employed 1.8 million workers globally as of early 2021. By comparison, the top 5 industrial firms by stock market value in the peak manufacturing employment year of 1979—GM, GE, IBM, Kodak, and Dupont—had a total global employment of 1.9 million, just slightly more.
By our calculations, the tech-ecommerce ecosystem—including both large and small employers—has arisen to become the top job creator in the U.S. economy. Based on data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the industries in the tech-ecommerce ecosystem (described
below) generated more than 1.2 million net new jobs from 2016 to 2020, including the pandemic. The next biggest growth sector was healthcare and social assistance, with 700,000 net new jobs created.
Moreover, average pay in the tech-ecommerce ecosystem, even omitting the headquarter states of California and Washington, is 44% higher than average pay in the rest of the private sector, and 21% higher than average pay in manufacturing nationally. This calculation is based on looking across all roles and positions in the tech-ecommerce ecosystem, from fulfillment center and delivery workers to software developers and AI experts.
In this paper, we analyze the historical role of manufacturing in job creation in the twentieth century, going back to the founding of General
Motors in 1909. Based on the metrics we calculate, we find that the tech-ecommerce ecosystem is as economically important to overall job growth today as manufacturing was during the postwar period.
Delving deeper into today’s tech-ecommerce workforce, we find that the distribution of pay in the tech-ecommerce ecosystem is spread out far more evenly than in the manufacturing sector. Manufacturing jobs are heavily concentrated in occupational groups with average hourly pay of $20 or less, based on data from the BLS Occupational Employment Statistics program. By contrast, the techecommerce sector has a relatively even distribution of low, middle, and high-paying jobs.
One concern is that tech-ecommerce jobs are excessively concentrated geographically in a few states, while manufacturing has historically been an important source of jobs over a wider area. In order to examine this issue, we developed three new tools to analyze the geographic impact of the tech-ecommerce ecosystem.
First, the PPI Tech-Ecommerce Manufacturing (TEM) Index compares tech-ecommerce and manufacturing jobs and pay for each state. The TEM Index gives states such as Colorado, Florida, and Georgia high marks because their tech-ecommerce ecosystem is sizable compared to state manufacturing, and those tech-ecommerce workers are paid more on average than manufacturing workers in those states.
Second, the PPI Tech-Ecommerce Change (TEC) Index measures the pre-pandemic contribution of the growth of tech-ecommerce jobs by state. We compare net new jobs generated by the tech-ecommerce ecosystem in the 2007-2019 and 2016-2019 periods with total net new private sector jobs to calculate the index. States such as Mississippi, Illinois and Ohio ranked high on the TEC Index because tech-ecommerce job growth helped compensate for slow job growth in other parts of the state economy.
Third, the PPI Tech-Ecommerce Resilience (TER) Index measures the ability of the tech-ecommerce ecosystem to cushion the economic blow from the pandemic. In virtually every state, private sector jobs fell from June 2019 to June 2020 while tech-ecommerce jobs rose. The index is calculated as the absolute value of net new tech-ecommerce jobs over this period, divided by the decline in private sector jobs. For example, Arizona was ranked number 2 by the index because of its large growth in tech-ecommerce jobs relative to the overall economy. Also high on the list were states such as Idaho, Utah, and Ohio.
We conclude with a brief consideration of the future of tech-ecommerce ecosystem jobs. Note that this paper draws on earlier PPI research, namely our 2017 papers, “An Analysis of Job and Wage Growth in the Tech/Telecom Sector,” and “How Ecommerce Creates Jobs and Reduces Income Inequality.”
A new report released today by the Progressive Policy Institute calls on the European Union to support artificial intelligence (AI) industry growth and innovation by enacting targeted reforms to help small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Europe succeed. The report also calls on the EU to consider policies to facilitate the emergence of a highly-skilled technical workforce, and strike a balance between consumer protections and overly burdensome regulations.
Report authors Caleb Watney and Dirk Auer outline the existing regulations that hamper the development of AI systems in the EU, as well as the unique promise AI holds for SMEs. Unlike the United States and China, the EU has largely failed to foster global players in the digital platform industry. Of the 30 largest internet companies in the world, only one is European. Those in the EU’s tech industry are smaller players who often rely on foreign AI platforms – mostly American – to boost AI adoption. The EU’s protectionist tax and trade measures hamstring these platforms, stifle innovation and limit job creation in Europe.
“There’s a real opportunity here for the EU to bootstrap the AI adoption process for their SMEs and become a global player in the tech industry. But it won’t happen without smart investment in public datasets, increased regulatory certainty, and an openness to working with rather than against US firms,” said Caleb Watney, Director of Innovation Policy at PPI.
Artificial intelligence is already being used across a wide range of domains to decrease power costs, improve logistics and sourcing systems, predict cash flows, streamline legal analysis, aid in drug discovery, improve factory safety conditions, and identify logistics efficiencies. This is in addition to opening up entirely new fields like autonomous vehicles, drone delivery systems, and instantaneous language translation. While many of AI’s most eye-catching use cases will likely remain the preserve of large platforms, the technology also holds tremendous promise for SMEs.
Key policy recommendations in the brief include:
Data investment as a public good:
Where appropriate, align incentives for the private sector to contribute industry-level SME data to public and private data trusts that could be used by everyone.
Invest in making more government datasets open to the public.
Fund Focused Research Organizations or similar groups with the explicit goal of creating new scientific and commercial public datasets.
Provide regulatory certainty:
Clarify existing regulations and the obligations that SMEs must meet when utilizing a new AI tool.
Consider the creation of a new SME regulatory website that provides informational resources to SMEs about the benefits of AI adoption for their business and the potential roadblocks that they need to be aware of.
Before promulgating new regulations or regulatory bodies, closely scrutinize the ecosystem to see if the same goal could be better achieved through existing industry specific regulations or fine adjustments to liability laws.
Encourage an ecosystem of AI platforms:
Avoid protectionist tax and trade policies that make it difficult for international AI platform companies to serve EU SMEs.
Invest in the creation of open-source AI platforms that could be utilized by SMEs and create a forum for receiving feedback on the types of tools that would be most useful for SMEs.
Articulate best practices on the member state level for encouraging AI adoption so that the best ideas can be identified and quickly adopted elsewhere.
Expand the AI talent pool
Encourage upskilling of the EU population by offering to cover a portion of the costs of specialized AI training courses.
Reevaluate EU immigration pathways to make them more attractive for international technical talent.
Facilitate global knowledge spillovers by removing potential obstacles to cross-border M&A.
For the firms that adopt them, artificial intelligence (AI) systems can offer revolutionary new products, increase productivity, raise wages, and expand consumer convenience. But there are open questions about how well the ecosystem of small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) across Europe is prepared to adopt these new technologies. While AI systems offer some hope of narrowing the recent productivity gap between small and large firms, that can only happen if the technologies actually diffuse throughout the economy.
Policymakers have naturally been attracted to this topic as SMEs represent the backbone of the European economy, making up 99% of all businesses. And an AI-enabled productivity boost would be particularly timely as SMEs are recovering from the effects of the ongoing Covid-19 crisis.
At the same time, the EU has articulated a desire to be on the forefront of developing novel AI regulations. The EU is contemplating new regulations on the development and deployment of AI that seek to address dual priorities2: How can the EU simultaneously increase the uptake of AI by European firms while shaping the regulatory environment to protect European consumers from harm?
And while the EU’s ambition is laudable, the Commission’s pronouncements have so far failed to grapple meaningfully with the significant tradeoffs that the regulation of new technologies entails. As is the case with all new technologies, the adoption of AI systems — i.e., the broad suite of technologies that are designed to automate or augment aspects of human decision making — involves a tradeoff between risk-mitigation and rapid adoption. Unless carefully managed, the effort to protect consumers from potential risks places additional burdens on firms, which can chill investment and adoption, especially among SMEs. Policymakers thus need to achieve a balance between these two objectives.
With this in mind, our report outlines various policy considerations that should enable policymakers to achieve this balance between the two goals and embody the principle of Thinking Small First3 — the idea that public policy should consider the potential impacts on SMEs from the ground up. The report discusses the promise for AI systems to increase productivity among EU SMEs, the current barriers to AI uptake, and policy tools that may be useful in managing the risks of AI while maximizing the benefits.
12 Women Join the Effort to Diversify the Policy Debate
Today, the Mosaic Economic Project, an initiative of the Progressive Policy Institute, announced it’s second cohort of policy experts participating in the ‘Women Changing Policy’ workshop, March 29 – 31, 2021. The women are all experts in the fields of economics, business and technology, who are forging a path forward to bring a diverse perspective to today’s public policy debates.
The project’s goal is to locate, elevate, and advocate for the inclusion and engagement of experts with diverse experiences and an interest in meaningful policy conversations with a focus on Congress and the media.
“We are thrilled to welcome another class of talented, highly skilled, and diverse leaders to Mosaic Economic Project’s second cohort. This event will help this dynamic group of women hone their skills for high-profile engagement in public policy debates, and promote inclusiveness within the economic growth and innovation fields of study,” said Crystal Swann, Mosaic Economic Project team lead.
This diverse and talented group of leaders will hear from experts in public policy and media, including leaders and representatives from the United States Congress, the media, communications consulting firms, and more.
The Mosaic Economic Project Cohort includes:
Hilary Abell, co-founder of Project Equity
Dr. Lisa Abraham, Associate Economist at the RAND Corporation
Joanna Ain, Associate Director of Policy at Prosperity Now
Talisha Bekavac, Vice President of Government and External Affairs for the U.S. Black Chambers (USBC)
Dr. Carycruz M. Bueno, Postdoctoral Research Associate at the Annenberg Institute and The Policy Lab at Brown University
Melissa Gopnik, Senior Vice President at Commonwealth
Dr. Tiffany Green, Assistant Professor of Population Health Sciences and Obstetrics and Gynecology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison
Dr. Leshell Hatley, Associate Professor of Computer Science at Coppin State University
Gabriella Kusz member of the Board Directors and Public Policy and Regulation Committee of the Global Digital Asset and Cryptocurrency Association
Aditi Mohapatra, Managing Director at BSR
Dr. Sarah Oh, Senior Fellow at the Technology Policy Institute
Jessica Schieder, Federal Tax Policy Fellow at the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP)
For more information on how to contact the members of the Mosaic Economic Project please reach out to Crystal Swann at cswann@ppionline.org.
Speaker Pelosi, Majority Leader Schumer and Members of the 117th Congress,
As a member of the first Cohort of the Mosaic Economic Project — an effort to advance women experts in the policy debate — and in the spirit of International Women’s Day 2021 “Choose to Challenge” theme, we ask you to choose to deepen your bench of economists, business leaders, and technology experts on Capitol Hill.
The under-representation of women in economics and technology, despite women constituting a larger share of the population and having a commensurately greater economic influence, has many causes, including lack of educational opportunity and unequal opportunity within the workplace and male-dominated professions. We need Congress to be part of the solution.
The lack of diverse experts in senior staff, as resources, and those called to provide informal expertise as well as formal testimony has long been a blind spot among policymakers. You—the most diverse Congress in history—can do better. Otherwise, Congress will continue to advance economic policies lacking the perspective of all Americans.
As authorities on pocketbook issues that affect us all, economists are highly sought-after, with celebrity-like status among reporters, investors and policymakers. Why? With increasingly frequent and severe episodes of economic volatility, that politicians seek guidance from those who specialize in rigorous analysis makes sense. Yet tens of thousands of hours of expert testimony show mostly men have been called upon. Despite our contributions, women still do not have equal opportunities to showcase our expertise.
It will take time to fix the broken educational pipeline, wherein elementary school girls too often don’t receive the same encouragement in math and science as boys do. Congress must dig a little deeper to find women experts in economics, business and technology. They are out there. We are out there. The Mosaic Economic Project will be happy to help you connect.
President Biden’s upcoming address to Congress is an opportunity to speak directly to the more than 10 million Americans who find themselves out of a job because of the pandemic recession. On the question of how to help these workers, Biden need look no further than the Build Back Better platform he campaigned on. A key element of the BBB platform is a $50 billion investment in workforce development, including apprenticeships.
Americans, especially young adults, need more pathways to careers that don’t require a traditional four-year college degree. While Millennials are the most educated generation in history, as of 2015, only about a third of Americans ages 25 to 34 were college graduates. That number is even lower for older Americans. Most people don’t go to college, and apprenticeships are an underappreciated way for finding jobs for the millions of job seekers who will have to find work after the pandemic, including those whose pre-Covid jobs might never come back. Compared to other high-income countries, the U.S. lags significantly when it comes to apprenticeships and other “active labor market” policies and it’s time for us to make investments to fill this gap.
Recently, the White House announced several ways that the Biden administration is strengthening registered apprenticeships across the country.
President Biden has endorsed Congressman Bobby Scott’s bipartisan National Apprenticeship Act of 2021, which will “create and expand registered apprenticeships, youth apprenticeships and pre-apprenticeship programs.” This legislation had been passed in the House in November 2020, in the last Congress, but the Republican Senate Majority failed to take up the bill for a vote. With Democrats now in the majority, there is renewed hope that the country’s underfunded and outdated apprenticeship system can finally be modernized to meet our 21st-century workforce needs. The reauthorization of the National Apprenticeship Act is estimated to create nearly one million high-quality apprenticeship opportunities and includes provisions that target opportunities for key groups, such as young adults, childcare workers, and veterans. The bill also aims to increase apprenticeships in industries that do not require a four-year degree for well-paid jobs, such as healthcare, IT, and financial services. We’ve supported this bipartisan legislation in the past and we look forward to seeing it make its way through Congress.
Additionally, the White House has reversed a harmful Trump-era policy by rescinding the industry-recognized apprenticeship programs (IRAPs), which threatened to undermine registered apprenticeship programs across the country and weakened employer-protections for trainees.
These are important steps, but the White House and Congress should go even further to modernize the current apprenticeship system. First, they should formalize and incentivize intermediaries (public or private) who create “outsourced” apprenticeships programs that get paid for each placement when they hire candidates who meet certain criteria (such as eligibility for Pell grants), provide them with an apprenticeship that pays minimum wage or better, train them, and place them in permanent positions. Second, they should create relationships with high schools to set up apprenticeships and career and technical education programs that begin in the 11th or 12th grade and pair students with local employers. These have shown promise in other high-income countries that employ a high percentage of their younger workers through apprenticeships. And, lastly, they should create public service apprenticeship opportunities and programs at all levels of government, including in industries such as information technology, accounting, and healthcare.
As President Biden crafts his address to Congress in the coming weeks, we hope that he acknowledges that millions of Americans who are out of a job lack a college degree. For them, other pathways to jobs, such as through investing in apprenticeships, will be a critical step forward in regaining their economic footing.
WASHINGTON, D.C. – A new report from the Progressive Policy Institutediscusses the impact of state and local price controls on food delivery services and explores other policy solutions that would actually help small restaurant owners and their workers weather the recession caused by the COVID pandemic.
The industry has some big chains, but most restaurants are quintessentially small businesses. More than 9 in 10 restaurants have fewer than 50 employees. More than 7 in 10 restaurants are single-unit operations. Restaurants also offer lots of entry-level jobs for less-skilled workers (almost one-half of workers got their first job experience in a restaurant). Delivery services have been one of the few sectors expanding during the pandemic, providing work for those who need it and helping many Americans stay safe during the pandemic. With the goal of helping restaurants, some states and cities have temporarily capped the commissions these platforms can charge restaurants for delivery. These price controls are popular with elected officials because they look like a cost-free way to help struggling restaurants, but their costs are hidden, not free, and will hit small restaurants and their workers hardest.
There’s a better way forward. The federal government can provide (and has provided) direct bailouts of the businesses and their workers. Unemployed workers have received extended and bonus unemployment benefits. These benefits should be continued for the duration of the public health emergency. Restaurants should receive grants and loans so they can continue paying rent and other fixed costs while closed. These programs should be funded to the level that every restaurant can benefit from them. “Just give people and businesses cash” sounds simple (and expensive), but the alternatives are much worse. Providing no help to restaurants would force them to choose between closing permanently or staying open — thus exacerbating and prolonging the pandemic. Imposing price controls will likely lead to a reduction in output, harming consumers, drivers, and restaurants in the process. The answer is for the federal government to help bridge the gap to the end of the pandemic by continuing and increasing its support for workers and businesses.
Author Alec Stapp, director of technology policy at PPI, had this to say:
While bailouts are never uncontroversial, bailing out the restaurant industry is an easy call. There is no moral hazard risk as there was with the bank bailouts in 2008, when it was reasonable to worry that bailed out financial firms would increase their risky behavior in the future knowing that they would be bailed out in the event of a crisis. In this case, restaurants won’t change their behavior in the future in a way that increases the odds of a deadly pandemic.
Last Friday, the U.S. House of Representatives voted to dramatically expand investment and access to apprenticeships with the passage of the National Apprenticeship Act of 2021 under the leadership of Rep. Bobby Scott. This legislation had been passed in November in the last Congress, however, the Republican Senate Majority failed to take up the bill for a vote. With Democrats now in the majority, there is renewed hope that the country’s underfunded and outdated apprenticeship system can finally be modernized to meet our 21st-century workforce needs.
The reauthorization of The National Apprenticeship Act is estimated to create nearly one million high-quality apprenticeship opportunities and includes provisions that target opportunities for key groups, such as young adults, childcare workers, and veterans. The bill also aims to increase apprenticeships in industries that do not require a four-year degree for well-paid jobs, such as healthcare, IT, and financial services.
For the more than 10 million workers who have lost jobs or been laid off, there is no guarantee that their jobs will be there once our country returns to normal. Some estimate thatat least 3.7 million Americans will not have jobs to return to. Many will have to reinvent themselves and apprenticeships can play a critical role in helping workers get back to work better after the pandemic.
As policymakers consider how to help American workers weather the Covid recession, PPI strongly supports an increase in public investment in apprenticeships and work-based “career pathways” training programs that connect workers, including those laid off during the pandemic, to well-paying careers. We look forward to its progress in the Senate Health Education Labor and Pensions Committee under Senator Patty Murray, and we encourage the Senate to pass this important workforce legislation.
Colin Mortimer, the Director of the Center for New Liberalism, is joined by two special guests. First is Adam Hartke, the co-owner of a music venue in Wichita, Kansas, and the co-chair of the advocacy committee at the National Independent Venues Association. We talk about what it has been like to be a music venue owner during this pandemic, suffering the brunt of the economic fallout. Second, PPI’s Chief Economic Strategist Michael Mandel comes on to talk about how an obscure tax cut that expires in December might make the recovery for music venues, bars, restaurants, brewers, and others even more difficult than it was already expected to be.
