Decent Work Indicators

The American social contract embodies American reverence for hard work while discouraging public welfare benefits.  While this construct encourages work, it also obscures the important role American workers play in helping each other, with government acting as the facilitator through policy and regulation.  Our social contract is a system of economic and social arrangements that support Americans, and it must evolve to support workers in a changing labor market.  The International Labour Organization’s Decent Work Agenda, which recognizes the central role of work to the well-being of all people, can help Americans rethink the role of our social contract.  

One bottleneck to the advancement of our thinking and advocacy in this area is the lack of a common foundation from which researchers and policymakers can quantify the social contract.  To address this gap, the New America Foundation’s Next Social Contract Initiative has adapted the ILO’s Decent Work Agenda indicators to the U.S. context.  We establish a set of indicators that allow us to analyze, benchmark, and track the state of the American Social Contract, with the hope that this analysis can set the foundations for evaluating the role that our social contract should play in creating decent work for Americans.

Using the Decent Work Agenda framework, the decent work indicators are organized into four areas:

1.    Creating Jobs
2.    Guaranteeing Rights at Work
3.    Extending Social Protection
4.    Promoting Social Dialogue