As Americans across the country celebrate their long weekend, marking the end of summer, PPI wants to remind everyone the reason for this holiday — American workers — and offer a new way for our government to celebrate them.
Labor Day became a federal holiday in 1894, to acknowledge the contributions and achievements of American workers. As the economy shifted from agriculture to manufacturing, workers pressed for better working conditions and higher pay, and the holiday commemorated that struggle.
While today, we applaud those who fought for progress, we also must acknowledge that we are living in a very different world than we were a century ago. Today, jobs are changing, and new jobs are being created due to technical advancements. As a result, workers, especially those in jobs at risk of being automated, need to learn new skills to remain relevant. On top of that, the nation is still recovering from a global pandemic which disrupted service industries that are critical to our nation’s tourism, health, and learning, including retail and hospitality industries as well as health care and teaching careers.
We need new policies that truly help American workers economically advance.
Yet federal policymakers have done little to support working Americans that have been hardest hit by these shifts. While stimulus dollars provided workers emergency assistance, there has been too little policy innovation aimed at getting people back to work in good jobs that offer new opportunities for upward mobility.
This neglect has affected workers returning to jobs that are facing severe labor shortages — changing hours and ways of operation (i.e., health care workers and teachers); workers that have been laid off and need re-skilling to find in-demand employment and workers that have left the workforce entirely due to personal and familial needs. These challenges are affecting workers across an array of careers, industries and circumstances— leaving more and more people feeling frustrated and forgotten.
This Labor Day, PPI urges our government, to recommit to workers across our nation. This recommitment does not mean pouring more dollars into the status quo, but focusing on quality skill development strategies — deploying new and innovative policies that work to solve persisting challenges facing workers.
Federal policymakers should continue to look at apprenticeship models, scaling these opportunities across an array of industries to ensure more Americans can access quality earn and learn programs. They should expand opportunities in the short-term — including more flexible postsecondary programs that better meet the needs of individuals, their families and businesses — and they should work to harness the power of private markets and innovations in technology to provide new ways of delivery learning that are tied to industry demand.
These approaches can help solve talent shortages in industries that are key to our health, education and safety; create opportunities for individuals to access skill development opportunities so they can prepare for the jobs of today and tomorrow and provide the necessary supports individuals need to retain employment while also supporting their families.
This is critical to ensure American workers are better off, can economically advance, and we avoid further leaving behind those that are working so hard to keep America thriving. If we could do that — now that would be something to celebrate.
