In 2013, the Aspen Institute’s Economic Opportunities Program launched Working in America, an ongoing discussion series that highlights an array of critical employment and job quality issues affecting low and moderate-income American workers. This series brings to the forefront relevant ideas and policies that can work to improve the economy and jobs. These conversations feature a diverse set of voices and perspectives, including those of high-profile worker advocates, philanthropists, labor leaders, academics, and business leaders.
Working in America builds off of an earlier EOP discussion series, Reinventing Low-Wage Work: Ideas that Can Work for Employees, Employers, and the Economy which explored issues specific to industry sectors that employ large numbers of low-wage workers, including the restaurant, long-term care, retail, residential construction, and domestic work industries. Working in America expands the discussion and explores a broad array of issues and ideas, drawing from the realms of public policy, business practice, philanthropic investment and civic engagement. Through these conversations we hope to move forward innovations that can improve economic opportunity and the future of work in America. These discussions have helped to build momentum in the national discourse around various critical employment issues facing low and moderate income workers.
We are grateful to the Ford Foundation, the Prudential Foundation, the Surdna Foundation, and the Walmart Foundation for their support of this series.
