Why Care and Good Jobs are Central to the Future of Work and Wellbeing

Blog Post
Oct. 19, 2022

In recent years, as so many future of work conversations focused on the coming of robots, the “cool factor” of tech or the dangers of artificial intelligence, we at the Better Life Lab have been making the case that the future of work is inextricably linked to the future of care. And what we need to be working to solve is not only how to ensure we all have the time, flexibility at work and support from our culture and public policies that we all need in order to care for ourselves, our children and our loved ones, but that care jobs become good jobs.

As our society continues to age, the Bureau of Labor Statistics projects that, by 2031, less than a decade from now, home health and personal care aids will not only see the largest increase of any occupation, but it will be the largest occupation in the economy. And yet these jobs, like child care jobs, pay poverty wages. Schedules are unpredictable. Many have no benefits like paid sick days, paid time off, training or retirement.

In fact, the main takeaway from a new Better Life Lab report and public virtual event that the Lab hosted this week is that ensuring that all new jobs in the future are good jobs is key to a more equitable - and productive - future of work and wellbeing.

The new report - Mapping the Road to a Better Future of Work and Wellbeing: Meeting the Challenges of Automation, Inequality and Care, with Shared Responsibility for Action, by BLL Director Brigid Schulte, Molly Martin, New America’s director of strategy and Events Manager Angela Spidalette - is now available on the Better Life Lab website.

We’re also sharing a recording of the live virtual event we held earlier this week, hosted by Brigid and Molly, who presented the findings, with Angela and her team in charge behind the scenes. The 90-minute event also featured a fireside chat with Rep. Jim Himes, D- Conn., chair of the House Select Committee on Economic Disparity and Fairness in Growth, followed by a powerful discussion on the role each of us has to play in both imagining a better future, and taking action to help us all get there. The panel included home care workers, Brittany and Danielle Williams, advocate Francisco Diez, senior policy strategist at the Center for Popular Democracy, researcher Sarah Kalloch, executive director of the Good Jobs Institute, and Warren Valdmanis, partner and co-founder of Two Sigma Impact, a private equity firm committed to investing in good jobs, and author of Accountable: How We Can Save Capitalism. 

The panel agreed that creating good, life-sustaining jobs and supportive policies that provide time for care, connection, leisure, and joy, is key not only to worker wellbeing, but also to healthy businesses, communities, economy, society and democracy.

For instance, Sarah Kalloch pointed to research that shows that jobs that are labeled “low skill,” like care jobs, are not only essential, but require great skill - helping people in and out of bed, checking skin health, nutrition, understanding medications, knowing people’s favorite shirts or the way they do their hair. In fact, Kalloch and her colleagues have written a research brief showing that racism and misogyny lay at the heart of labeling jobs “low skill,” because it’s work that women and women of color have primarily done.

“You can offer really bad jobs and make a lot of money,” she said. “But you can also offer really good jobs and make a lot of money.” Kalloch and her colleagues at the Good Jobs Institute have worked with more than 20 companies and found that most don’t calculate or see just how expensive bad jobs are - in turnover, staff instability, retraining, waste, shrink, poor safety and lost revenue because customers aren’t being well served.

During Covid, covid morbidity in nursing homes would have been more than 40 percent lower if care workers had had one good job, rather than multiple part-time jobs that required them to travel to several workplaces.

Brittany and Danielle Williams, home care workers in Washington state and Arkansas, respectively, spoke about how the ability to come together and organize can not only make worker jobs better, but also improves the quality of care and saves money in the long run, keeping people in their homes, where they’d prefer to be, rather than in more expensive nursing homes.

Francisco Diez has worked with worker organizations fighting for stable schedules, and pointed to research that shows that predictable scheduling leads not only to happier, healthier workers, but to better business performance.

Warren Valdmanis, himself the son of a social worker and husband of a preschool teacher, said business has a big role to play in creating better jobs in the future. He said he not only believes that good jobs make for better, more profitable companies, but that he has the research to prove it. His firm invests in companies that commit to creating good jobs based on four principles: fair treatment of workers, with living wages, benefits and flexible schedules; promising futures with the ability to grow over time; psychological safety and a place to speak your mind and be heard, and a sense of purpose.

The event and roadmap release are the culmination of our American Karoshi podcast on Slate and virtual convening held over several days last spring exploring how power and inequality are the central issues driving work stress and future of work and care trends. The key takeaway: How we shape the future of work, care and wellbeing is very much a choice. And we all have a role to play.

The roadmap includes several recommended actions. Here are just a handful:

·  Policymakers can rethink accounting practices and tax policy so human capital investment, like investments in equipment and technology, are an asset and not a liability.

·  Storytellers can break out of status quo assumptions and focus on metrics that matter, the quality of jobs created, for instance, as opposed to simply reporting the total number in the monthly jobs report, many of which are low-paying and precarious.

·  Business leaders can reframe the “efficiency” mindset to recognize that investing in human capital, rather than seeing labor as a cost to cut in order to boost short-term earnings reports, leads to long term business gains.

·  Workers can come together to share their stories, their challenges and their needs and work together to demand action for improved jobs and working conditions.

·  Advocates can work alongside workers, create space and make it easier for them to organize, share their stories and find creative ways to improve work and working conditions.

·  Researchers can work with companies to collect data that really matters, such as worker caregiver status. Research has found that many employers don’t track caregiving responsibilities, and remain “oblivious” to the pressure many workers are under to juggle work and care, even though 73 percent of the workers surveyed had some form of caregiving responsibility.

·  Tech Policy Leaders can invest in research to understand how monitoring, surveillance and timekeeping are not boosting productivity, but are detrimental to worker wellbeing, morale and antithetical to fostering healthy, engaged work cultures of trust and psychological safety.

We are so grateful to the panelists, and the many workers, researchers, thought leaders, advocates, business leaders and policymakers who participated in the scoping and reporting of the project, the podcast, convening and event, and to Paul Tarini and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, for their partnership, support and commitment to improving health and health equity in the United States.

Please reach out to us individually at schulte@newamerica.org, or martin@newamerica.org,  comment on the report and share it and the event with your networks. We'd love your help amplifying our findings. And we’d value your insights and feedback as we continue to build on this body of work and, along with like-minded partners, continue to center future of work conversations on humans, wellbeing, equity and care.