What is the national work strategy for the U.S.?
It’s a simple question. Yet there is no broadly-distributed existing plan, or even a process for developing a plan.
The world of work is changing far too rapidly for our existing structures to effectively guide our national work ecosystem. The COVID-19 pandemic response has illustrated just how precarious these systems are. In the same way that the U.S. healthcare system is actually the opposite - a “sick-care system” - our national employment system is actually an unemployment system, with services and resources that only appear when someone is no longer gainfully employed. Worse, our approach to these services and resources is predicated on old workplace dynamics that have since changed dramatically. These systemic fractures were drastically amplified by the COVID-19 pandemic, deeply illustrating how fragile that work system could be.
A National Work Strategy is critical for the recovering and continuing health of the American work economy.
