Research/Resources

The Job Quality Center of Excellence is a platform to drive improved job quality and economic dignity for workers through stakeholder engagement, idea generation, and resource sharing to prompt and support effective change/action. The Center draws on the work of the Economic Opportunities Program and the efforts of a range of others that are innovating and experimenting to improve job quality.

On this page, you’ll find Research/Resources—papers on promising policy ideas, evaluations of innovative practices, and insights on key concepts, metrics, and trends. Other sections include Exemplars, Practical Tools, and Inclusive Conversations.

Publications

Employment and Jobs

Quality Jobs Are a Choice

This brief looks at the benefits of designing high-quality jobs and emerging issues around technology, work-based learning, and employee ownership.

BY Economic Opportunities Program

Publication

09.07.2022
Employment and Jobs

Improving Job Quality in Small Businesses

Here are seven lessons around prospecting, recruitment, and engagement based on our experience working with Pacific Community Ventures.

BY Jenny Weissbourd, & 2 more

Publication

04.12.2022
Employment and Jobs

Tool for Conducting Worker Surveys

Workforce organizations can unlock worker expertise and engagement in ways that strengthen job quality, equity, and the business bottom line.

BY Jenny Weissbourd, & 4 more

Publication

04.12.2022
Employment and Jobs

A Guide to Worker Focus Groups

Workforce organizations can unlock worker expertise and engagement in ways that strengthen job quality, equity, and the business bottom line.

BY Jenny Weissbourd, & 4 more

Publication

04.12.2022
Employment and Jobs

Connecting Young Adults to Good Jobs

Workforce practitioners have tried and tested a range of strategies to build more equitable and inclusive employment practices.

BY Ranita Jain, & 1 more

Publication

06.30.2021
Employment and Jobs

To Build Back Better, Job Quality Is the Key

We must build an economy where people can work with dignity, support themselves and their loved ones, and contribute to a healthy and thriving society.

BY Maureen Conway & 3 more

Publication

04.14.2021
Racial Equity

Equity and Employee Ownership

Employee ownership can promote equity, improve job quality, and boost business performance.

BY Maureen Conway & 9 more

Publication

04.01.2021
Employment and Jobs

The Practice of Improving Job Quality: Views from the Field

While the low quality of many “essential” jobs has become more apparent amid the pandemic, the issue of low-quality jobs is longstanding ...

BY Maureen Conway & 1 more

Publication

12.15.2020
Employment and Jobs

Connecting Young Adults to Good-Fit Employment

Young workers are facing dire employment prospects. But asking employers the right questions can help identify opportunities.

BY Amy Blair, & 2 more

Publication

10.02.2020
Employment and Jobs

Equity, Health, and Safety in the Workplace

Strengthening health, safety, and equity during the pandemic can set a foundation for better working conditions in the long term.

BY Amanda Newman

Publication

06.30.2020
Employment and Jobs

Building Good Jobs at YouthBuild Philly

YouthBuild Philly shows how businesses can develop supportive practices to help young people succeed at work.

BY Amanda Newman, & 1 more

Publication

01.28.2020
Employment and Jobs

Manufacturing and Job Quality

Workforce practices are central to a firm’s success. What happens when companies focus on people and process equally?

BY Ranita Jain, & 3 more

Publication

12.18.2019
Employment and Jobs

Learning & Development at Goodwill San Diego

Faced with a higher minimum wage, Goodwill San Diego chose to invest in its workforce rather than cut staff. Learn how retail and other low-margin industries can remain competitive despite increased labor costs, such as minimum wage increases.

BY Jeannine La Prad & 2 more

Publication

02.04.2019
Workforce Development

Raise the Floor and Build Ladders

Raise the Floor and Build Ladders: Workforce Strategies Supporting Mobility and Stability argues for rebalancing workforce development strategies to improve the lives of low-wage workers.

BY Maureen Conway & 1 more

Publication

04.13.2016
Workforce Development

Restore the Promise of Work

Restore the Promise of Work: Reducing Inequality by Raising the Floor and Building Ladders encourages a broader community beyond workforce development to engage in initiatives that redesign work to expand economic opportunity and address growing social, political, and economic inequality

BY Maureen Conway & 1 more

Publication

04.13.2016

Essays

Employment and Jobs

To Advance Freedom, We Need To Improve Job Quality

July Fourth is the celebration of our country’s independence from monarchical rule, closely following Juneteenth, a celebration of the ema ...

BY Maureen Conway

Blog Post

07.06.2023
Employment and Jobs

How Putting Trust in Workers Can Improve Jobs

Trust is a critical piece of the employer-worker relationship.

BY Maureen Conway & 1 more

Blog Post

11.29.2022
Employment and Jobs

This Election Day, Job Quality Is on the Ballot

Voters will weigh in on three issues: minimum wages, collective bargaining rights, and involuntary prison labor.

BY Shelly Steward, & 1 more

Blog Post

11.04.2022
Employment and Jobs

Celebrating and Reimagining Worker Rights

Every worker deserves a quality job. Let’s build a better future of work — with greater freedom, opportunity, and prosperity for all.

BY Maureen Conway

Video

09.02.2022
Climate Change

Climate Investments Can Boost Job Quality

Can we leverage this opportunity to ensure America’s workers will also be winners?

BY Mark G. Popovich

Blog Post

04.22.2022
Climate Change

When Bad Weather Meets Bad Work

Short-term thinking has worsened climate change and exploited workers. That’s become a deadly combination.

BY Shelly Steward, & 1 more

Blog Post

04.21.2022
Employment and Jobs

The US labor shortage is the deserved outcome of a systemic failure to value workers

The trauma that the pandemic inflicted on workers followed decades of declining wages and working conditions. To bring people back, make work better.

BY Maureen Conway

Blog Post

03.29.2022
Technology

How Contract Work Drives Disparities in Tech

Temporary and contingent workers who work in tech have been largely locked out of the industry's prosperity.

BY Natalie Foster

Blog Post

03.10.2022
Employment and Jobs

Why Job Quality?

Job quality is essential to realizing the ideals of the American Dream, but today the US faces a job quality crisis: too many jobs are not quality jobs.

BY Economic Opportunities Program

Blog Post

11.16.2021
Employment and Jobs

Let's Choose to Improve Job Quality

Job quality is a choice, and we can choose to make it better.

BY Maureen Conway

Blog Post

09.03.2021
Employment and Jobs

There Aren't Enough Good Jobs

It is past time to update federal policy and support all of our workforce in a way that matches its skills, talents and contributions to America’s success.

BY Amanda Cage & 3 more

Blog Post

05.28.2021
Employment and Jobs

It's Not a Labor Shortage; It's a Good Jobs Shortage

Let's demand better job quality for the workers who sacrificed so much to ensure that the rest of us made it safely through the pandemic.

BY Grace Heffernan, & 1 more

Blog Post

05.23.2021
Employment and Jobs

Regular Wages Are Too Low

Congress needs to open its eyes to the pandemic of poverty wage work, stop abetting it, and start promoting the kind of work that makes a good life possible.

BY Maureen Conway

Blog Post

08.17.2020
Workforce Development

Three Ways to Improve Job Quality

A quality job includes livable wages, opportunities for career advancement, and essential financial benefits.

BY Lata Reddy

Blog Post

10.09.2018
Employment and Jobs

Increase Access to and Availability of Good Jobs

A Q&A with MIT Professor Paul Osterman.

BY Maureen Conway & 1 more

Blog Post

03.15.2017

Explore the Center

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