Appendix: Study Methodology

Our qualitative methodology entailed hour-long, semi-structured interviews with a total of 40 workers in four cities or regions across the country: Buffalo, N.Y.; Washington, D.C.; the Bay Area, Calif.; and Indianapolis, Ind. With the help of external consultant Emily Tavoulareas of the Mosaik Collective, our research team developed an interview guide covering a range of topics. Through the interviews, we set out to better understand the context of workers’ lives, their hopes and plans for the future, their experience with technological change on the job, and their beliefs and concerns about what their jobs might look like in the future. We explored the following questions:

• What is the context of interviewees’ lives outside of work—their families, responsibilities, living situation, daily routine, hobbies? Who, if anyone, do they support financially?
• What does work mean to them? What do they want out of their jobs and from their employers?
• What do they worry about? What are the struggles and challenges that occupy them?
• How would they handle an unexpected financial expense?
• What is the background to their current job? What is their job history and how did they connect to this work?
• How do they feel about their job?
• How has their job changed over time? What role does technology play in their work now, and over time?
• If they were not doing this job, what else would they do? If they could do anything, what would they do for work? What would help them get there? If for some reason they had to find another job in short order, what would they do?
• Are they interested in learning anything? If so, what?
• What does their job look like in 20 years?
• What would they want to see their employer or government do to help prepare the workers of the future?
• What is their advice to a young person starting out today in their role?

To recruit interviewees for the project, we deployed four tactics. A primary method was the snowball method. Through this approach, we leveraged our personal networks and enlisted our contacts to help identify recruits. We approached both our close contacts—friends, relatives, neighbors, colleagues, classmates—as well as distant contacts we have encountered in retail stores, medical offices, schools, and in our previous work. These contacts, in turn, leveraged their own networks to identify additional candidates for interviews, “snowballing” into an ever-expanding pool of potential interviewees. Several of our interviewees also connected us to additional contacts. A second tactic involved partnering with worker organizations to identify recruits from their membership and networks. We collaborated with the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) union to identify grocery and retail workers; with the Fight for $15 campaign to recruit several fast food workers; and the nonprofit LISC (Local Initiatives Support Corporation) to be connected with several individuals in low-income communities. Third, we recruited through online message boards such as Craigslist. And finally, we engaged in “walk up” recruitment for a subset of interviews, approaching retail and fast food workers in their stores and in the mall. We also walked into several offices and cold called businesses to recruit administrative workers.

Who we interviewed, by sector and job type

Fast Food

The fast food workers we interviewed typically held entry-level positions such as food preparers, cashiers, servers, baristas, hosts and crew members. We spoke to employees of six of the top 10 largest fast food and beverage chains in America, as ranked by volume of sales.¹ The fast food workers in our study skewed young, with relatively short tenures, along with a few older workers with 15 years or more on the job. Just over half were women. They were nearly evenly split between African American workers and undocumented workers from Mexico and Central America, in addition to one Caucasian interviewee. Of all of the groups of workers we interviewed, the fast food workers were the least likely to have access to employer-provided benefits. None belonged to a union.

Grocery

The grocery workers we interviewed held a range of positions, from entry-level to management: cashier, bookkeeper, customer service representative, courtesy clerk, price adjuster, head teller, customer service manager, and seafood, meat, and bakery manager. We spoke with workers at four different companies, including those owned by two of the top three supermarkets nationwide.² Most of the workers we spoke with held union membership. Compared with the fast food and other retail workers we interviewed, these workers had significantly longer job tenure. Everyone we interviewed had tenures of at least five years and about half had tenures of more than 20 years. Slightly more than half were African American and nearly two-thirds were women, including all of those with clerical and bookkeeping roles. The majority of grocery workers reported having employer-provided benefits like health insurance. Many of the grocery workers with union membership earned wages that exceeded minimum wage.

Other Retailers

The retail workers in our study held a mix of entry-level, first-line supervisor, and management positions. Common job titles included cashier, stocker, assistant manager, engagement manager, and department manager. Many of the young retail workers had recently been promoted from entry-level positions to a first-line managerial position. Employers included several of the largest national retail chains, including two of the top 10 retailers in the country.³ Other employers included gas station chains, a home furnishing retailer, and two fashion retail chains. The retail workers included several current or recent college students. The rest were men and women of prime working age, with no workers above the age of 50. None of the retail workers we spoke with belonged to a union. Nearly half reported having employer-provided benefits like health insurance, while a few of the younger workers reported being on their parents’ insurance. Two-thirds were women.

Clerical and Administrative Work

The clerical and administrative workers we interviewed represented a wide range of roles, types of employers, and job duties. Jobs included administrative assistant, receptionist, support, and legal assistant. These interviewees worked in a variety of workplaces, from the headquarters of a Fortune 500 company to medium-sized law offices, a medical office, and large private companies employing thousands of people. All of the interviewees in these roles were women, half were over the age of 50, and a little more than three-quarters were Caucasian. A third had tenures of more than 15 years in their job and none reported belonging to a union.

In addition to these women in clerical roles, we also interviewed an additional four people for whom clerical and administrative duties constituted a portion of their job, alongside other responsibilities: a property manager, therapist, county board clerk, and public-sector employment program representative. These workers had significantly more formal education than the rest of our interview population, including postgraduate degrees. Through these interviews, we gained valuable insights into the way that partial automation of clerical tasks is changing the nature of these jobs. For the purposes of analysis, however, we considered these four interviews separate from the more traditional clerical and administrative work that was our primary focus.

Our approach and field methods

Our approach during the interviews allowed for flexibility. While guided by our list of questions, interviewers were free to go off script, follow up on specific answers, and explore themes more deeply. All the questions we asked were open-ended and we gave instructions to our interviewees that there were no right or wrong answers. We were careful not to lead interviewees toward discussions of technology and did our best to use general and open-ended questions about the future of jobs to explore the extent to which workers are already thinking about issues like technology and automation.

Our field team included New America staff—Molly Kinder, Amanda Lenhart, Autumn McDonald, and Roselyn Miller, with support from Rachel Alexander in the Bay Area—and two external consultants with extensive experience in human-centered design, Amber Schleuning and Emily Tavoulareas. Each interview was conducted by two or more members of the field team, including one person responsible for taking notes. With permission from the interviewees, the conversations were recorded and subsequently transcribed for the purpose of analysis and identification of quotes used in the report. Most of the interviews were held in public places like coffee shops and libraries, and several were held in union facilities. We compensated each interviewee $60 for his or her time. To enable frank conversation and reduce any unintended risk to interviewees, we assumed each person’s identity would be withheld from the report, with the option of using a first name if a worker so chose. We have erred on the side of caution in protecting identities.

Analysis

After each interview, members of the field team conducted individual synthesis and documented key themes that emerged during the interviewees and marked relevant quotes. At the end of the field work, the team convened for three days of intense group discussion. Consultant Amber Schleuning led the team through a structured process in which we clustered the individual synthesis points into themes, made connections across themes, and explored initial conclusions. Several New America colleagues offered comments and feedback at this stage, including Mary Alice McCarthy, Tara McGuinness, Vicki Shabo, and Cecilia Muñoz. Molly Kinder then spent several months reviewing the interview transcripts, conducting further analysis, and writing this final report.