JOBS & EDUCATION
Real progress toward expanding economic opportunity and security requires a deep understanding of strategies for job creation, improving job quality, and preparing disadvantaged workers for the labor force. Our work on employment and education issues offers new frameworks, research-based insights, and tangible policy solutions.
Unemployment Insurance & Protections are Vital for Women & Families
Unemployment insurance provides temporary support to unemployed workers who have lost their jobs through no fault of their own. This fact sheet, published jointly with the National Women’s Law Center, National Employment Law Project, and Center for American Progress, shows the importance of unemployment insurance for women and families and suggests changes that would improve the program’s effectiveness for women, their families, and the economy as a whole.
Types of Occupations in Subsidized Employment Programs
Subsidized employment is a proven strategy for creating more equitable and accessible pathways to stable employment for all—especially people facing serious barriers to employment. Subsidized employment programs can increase incomes and employment, reduce involvement with the criminal justice system, improve the psychological well-being of participants and their families, and reduce long-term poverty. This resource, published jointly with the Heartland Alliance, illustrates the wide reach and versatility of subsidized employment programs by highlighting the broad range of occupations available to program participants.
Sophie Khan, Kali Grant, & Indivar Dutta-Gupta
Carrie Felton, Amelia Nawn, Caitlin Schnur, & Melissa Young
Improving Education & Income Generation Outcomes for Undocumented Youth: State & Local Solutions
This joint report with the National Youth Employment Coalition highlights state and local solutions to improve education and income-earning outcomes for undocumented youth. These solutions can be advanced by elected officials, policymakers, advocates, nonprofits, foundations, and education leaders across the United States. This project is a part of GCPI’s broader policy development work on the Youth Opportunity Guarantee, which would ensure access to education and employment for all young people in the United States.
Rashaun Bennett, Thomas Showalter, & Laura Tatum
Fighting Poverty with Jobs: Projecting the Impacts of a National Subsidized Employment Program
Jobs are at the heart of our nation’s debates around poverty and economic security. In this joint report from the Georgetown Center on Poverty and Inequality and the Center on Poverty and Social Policy at Columbia University, we find that a comprehensive subsidized employment program would reach millions of U.S. workers left behind in today’s economy, reducing the poverty rate among participants by nearly half.
Casey Goldvale, Kali Grant, Indivar Dutta-Gupta, & Sophie Khan
Sophie Collyer, Christopher Wimer, & Isaac Santelli
The Youth Opportunity Guarantee: A Framework for Success
This report introduces a Youth Opportunity Guarantee of education, training, and employment for all youth ages 16 to 24 in the United States. After years of extensive research and consultation with well over 100 experts and stakeholders, GCPI has created a framework that integrates secondary, postsecondary, and employment systems to make long-term labor market success a reality for all youth in the United States.
Laura Tatum, Indivar Dutta-Gupta, Cosette Hampton, Huixian (Anita) Li, & Peter Edelman
Investing in Futures: Economic and Fiscal Benefits of Postsecondary Education in Prison
GCPI and the Vera Institute of Justice make the case for how lifting the current ban on awarding Pell Grants to incarcerated people would benefit workers, employers, and states. Specifically, it analyzes the potential employment and earnings impact of postsecondary education programs in prison; identifies the millions of job openings annually that require the skills a person in prison could acquire through postsecondary education and estimates the money states would save through lower recidivism rates these postsecondary education programs would yield.
Patrick Oakford, Cara Brumfield, Casey Goldvale, Laura Tatum
Security & Stability: Paid Family and Medical Leave and its Importance to People with Disabilities and their Families
The Arc and the Georgetown Center on Poverty and Inequality are excited to release a new report, “Security and Stability: The Importance of Paid Family and Medical Leave to People with Disabilities and their Families.” The need for paid leave is universal and well documented. Our report is the first to contribute an overview of the disability angle on paid leave.
Kali Grant, T.J. Sutcliffe, Indivar Dutta-Gupta, & Casey Goldvale
Building the Caring Economy: Workforce Investments to Expand Access to Affordable, High-Quality and Long-Term Care
This report proposes caregiving jobs investments to address two national needs: the pressing need for caregiving; and the equally pressing need for good jobs.
Indivar Dutta-Gupta, Laura Tatum, Peter Edelman, Kali Grant, & Casey Goldvale
Bare Minimum: Why We Need to Raise Wages for America’s Lowest-Paid Families
The Leadership Conference Education Fund and the Georgetown Center on Poverty and Inequality released “Bare Minimum: Why We Need to Raise Wages for America’s Lowest-Paid Families,” a report on working people and their struggle to make a living when paid the federal minimum wage or tips. The report makes a case for raising wages that is grounded in history, economics, and movements across the country, but particularly in the lived experience of our nation’s lowest-paid working people.
Elisa Minoff, Indi Dutta-Gupta, Kali Grant & Anita Li
A Civil Rights Issue: The Tipped Minimum Wage & Wage Theft
Raising the minimum wage, improving wage theft protections, and eliminating the tipped minimum wage can help ensure workers’ receive their legally owed earnings and improve their economic security.
Christopher Brown, Anita Li, Indi Dutta-Gupta, Laura Tatum, Emily Chatterjee
A Civil Rights Issue: Sexual Harassment & The Tipped Minimum Wage
Raising the minimum wage and eliminating the tipped minimum wage would empower workers to report and address sexual harassment in the workforce and would be especially beneficial to women.
Christopher Brown, Anita Li, Laura Tatum, June Zeitlin, Arielle Atherley
A Civil Rights Issue: The Tipped Minimum Wage & Working People of Color
Eliminating the tipped minimum wage would help redress the racial and gender iniquities that are rooted in the racist origins of the tipped minimum wage and that still exist today.
The Tipped Minimum Wage Hasn’t Budged in 25 Years. That’s a Problem.
Read the center’s blog written in partnership with The Leadership Conference Education Fund on the 25th anniversary of the tipped minimum wage.
Ten Solutions to Fight Economic Inequality
Indivar Dutta-Gupta and Kali Grant provide ten solutions to combat the trend of income inequality in the US.
Raising Wages, Reducing Inequality, Sustaining Families: Why raising the minimum wage is a civil and human rights issue
The Georgetown Center on Poverty & Inequality along with the Leadership Conference published this report on how raising the minimum wage is essential for civil and human rights.
Improving Wages, Improving Lives: Why raising the minimum wage is a civil and human rights issue
The Georgetown Center on Poverty & Inequality and the Leadership Conference Education Fund released this report which advocates for the raising of the minimum wage.
Working to Reduce Poverty: A National Subsidized Employment Proposal
We partnered with some of the country’s leading experts to develop a proposal for the first permanent national subsidized jobs program. Read more in the latest The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences.
Indivar Dutta-Gupta, Kali Grant, Julie Kerksick, Dan Bloom, Ajay Chaudry
Working to Reduce Poverty: A National Subsidized Employment Proposal
A national subsidized employment program with dedicated and flexible funding streams could lead to further-reaching gains for the well-being of participating workers and their families, employers, and communities. This brief is based on the article, “Working to Reduce Poverty: A National Subsidized Employment Proposal”, a detailed policy proposal for a permanent, national subsidized employment program.
Lessons Learned From 40 Years of Subsidized Employment Programs
A framework, review of models, and recommendations for helping disadvantaged workers. Featured in The Atlantic article, “The Case for a New WPA,” the center’s report presents the most extensive review to date of subsidized employment programs and models spanning four decades that target populations with serious or multiple barriers to employment in the United States.
Taking on Chronic Unemployment: Lessons Learned From 40 Years of Subsidized Employment Programs
GCPI, the National Employment Law Project (NELP), and the Heartland Alliance held a webinar on how states can explore adopting and innovating subsidized employment programs as a promising strategy for helping long-term and chronically unemployed workers succeed in the labor market.
Strengthening Unemployment Protections in America
In partnership with the Center for American Progress (CAP) and National Employment Law Project (NELP), the center released a report on modernizing unemployment insurance for a 21st century economy and establishing a new Jobseeker’s Allowance.
A Plan to Improve Unemployment Protections in America
This document succinctly summarizes recommendations laid out in the 2016 CAP, GCPI, and NELP report, “Strengthening Unemployment Protections in America.”
The Wall Street Journal article feature: “Should an Unemployed Uber Driver Be Eligible for a “Job Seeker’s Allowance”?.
The Georgetown Center on Poverty and Inequality’s report on Job Seeker’s Allowance is referenced in identifying the main challenges facing unemployed Uber drivers eligibility for job seeker’s allowances.
Where States Are and Where They Should Be on Unemployment Protections
CAP, NELP, and GCPI identify the main challenges facing states’ unemployment insurance (UI) programs, provide recent state-level data, and recommend steps that states can take to substantially strengthen their UI programs.
Strengthening Unemployment Protections in America: A Discussion
Rep. Sandy Levin (D-MI) and White House Council of Economic Advisers Chairman Jason Furman explain the need for unemployment insurance (UI) reform. Co-Executive Director Indivar Dutta-Gupta served on a panel of experts to debate UI and the Jobseeker’s Allowance (JSA).
Unemployment Insurance Modernization and Eligibility
Updated, independent analysis from the Urban Institute commissioned by the center, CAP, and NELP—which shows that just three of the center’s proposed reforms would significantly increase the share of newly unemployed workers who are protected by UI.
The Obama Administration’s Wage Insurance Proposal
The center’s Indivar Dutta-Gupta weighs in on wage insurance in this segment on President Obama’s FY 2017 budget from CCTV America.
Caregiving Jobs
America must build a caregiving infrastructure to help our families
Executive Director Indivar Dutta-Gupta and Sarita Gupta (Jobs with Justice) make the case for investing in creating new jobs through a national caregiving infrastructure plan.
Building the Caring Economy
Building the country’s caregiving infrastructure would simultaneously address two national needs: the need for care and the equally pressing need for good jobs.