This project seeks to understand the opportunities and barriers microbusinesses face in attracting and supporting workers.

Could unionization at hospitals and nursing homes have a role in improving wages and working conditions for frontline staff? A cross-disciplinary team will investigate that question and aim to determine how outcomes from unionization differ for Black workers in care settings.

This project seeks to identify more effectively how the workforce development sector is serving and underserving different communities, understand the types of jobs the sector trains for, and orient resource allocation and systemic change toward equity, effective programs, and areas of highest need.

For this project, researchers will pilot new data tools that could help state labor enforcement agencies more strategically deploy scarce investigative and compliance enforcement resources.

This project will explore how unions and worker power can address income disparities among Black workers in the South, where unionization rates are the lowest.

This project aims to advance employee ownership as a powerful intergenerational wealth-building strategy for Black communities and solutions to bridge the racial wealth gap.

This project will survey nearly 200,000 Spanish-speaking domestic workers to understand their voices and influence, aiming to improve labor protections and transform these essential but precarious jobs into good jobs.

Despite low unemployment and high job openings, labor force participation continues to decline across California’s diverse regions, fueled largely by demographic shifts and an aging population. The project seeks to understand this trend by conducting an in-depth analysis of the drivers of labor force participation in California, which has not recovered to pre pandemic levels

This research study seeks to examine whether the postpandemic transportation and warehousing sector has created more job opportunities for Black workers without college degrees, and whether those jobs are durable, quality jobs with respect to wages, working conditions, and risks of automation and displacement.

This project will analyze and compare labor market outcomes for workers participating in Unemployment Insurance and Short-Time Compensation programs during the COVID-19 crisis and the Great Recession.

Using linked datasets, this project will address knowledge gaps in research on employment, work hours, and other labor market outcomes of people participating in the SNAP, TANF, and EITC programs.

Researchers will build evidence on how employers allocate tasks and whether “bridging tasks” improve wages and economic mobility for workers in entry-level, low-wage jobs.

This project will conduct matched-pair testing at temporary staffing agencies to generate evidence on potential discrimination against workers of color in the light industrial sector.

Researchers will build public-use datasets that generate evidence on how minimum wage policies and the federal-state Unemployment Insurance program have both mitigated and exacerbated racial inequality.

Researchers will use microsimulation to model the effects on employment and income if childcare subsidies were made available to all parents enrolled in education and training programs.

This project will generate insights on occupational pathways that can drive upward mobility for the estimated 71 million people in the US labor market who lack college degrees but are “skilled through alternative routes.”

The research team will conduct a pilot experiment with retailer IKEA that develops, tests, and evaluates new ways of giving hourly workers greater control over their schedules and assesses both employee and employer outcomes.

Researchers will conduct a multiyear RCT to determine economic mobility outcomes of participants in the Pursuit Fellowship, a postsecondary IT skill and professional development program that prepares low-income adults without college degrees for careers in the tech industry.

Through the creation of a new linked dataset, this project seeks to understand how features and skill requirements of a worker’s first job shape wage and career trajectories and how these outcomes vary by race, gender, educational attainment, geography, and other worker characteristics. 

The workforce development sector plays an important role in creating pathways for economic opportunity and mobility for workers without four-year college degrees, yet little is known about the sector in aggregate. This project aims to address this significant knowledge gap by combining information from state, federal, and private data sources to build a new and comprehensive public-use dataset on the workforce development sector.

This project aims to address knowledge gaps on underemployment by painting a more detailed picture of who these workers are across a variety of dimensions, including demographic characteristics, scheduling conditions, industry, occupation, wage and household income levels.

The Work Equity initiative will generate evidence on small businesses’ approaches to equity in their practices and employment systems and the unique characteristics and needs of their workforce.

This project seeks to determine whether immigrant workers’ wages and employment are negatively affected by language restrictions that limit their ability to obtain a driver’s license.

This project will build evidence on the role of worker voice and representation in transforming low-wage jobs into good jobs and in creating safer health care settings. 

This project aims to discern the drivers of racial inequalities in registered apprenticeships to design more equitable and inclusive programs, empower workers’ decisionmaking about apprenticeships, and improve enforcement of antidiscrimination policies.

This project seeks to understand how Seattle’s 2014 minimum wage ordinance affected younger workers across several indicators, including starting wages, employment stability, and earnings.

This project will systematically analyze key legislative features of local earned safe and sick day policies across all 50 states, including equity provisions aimed at closing gaps in access and uptake of benefits.

Unemployment rates in California remain higher than the national rate, and expanded subsidized employment (ESE) programs in California appear to be underused by people who could most benefit from them. This project will undertake a comprehensive mixed-method evaluation of California’s ESE programs.

Fair workweek ordinances aim to improve the predictability, stability, and control over work hours and pay for millions of hourly wage employees. Yet little is known about how workers experience these laws. This project will address these knowledge gaps by building evidence on employee experiences of fair workweek ordinances.

A national survey by Rutgers University found that Asian-American, Black, and Latino workers experience discrimination in private sector and government workplaces. Black workers, particularly black female workers, face the highest levels of discrimination, including unequal pay and denied promotions. The study highlights the impact of discrimination on career advancement and calls for interventions to promote equitable workplaces.

This project seeks to build evidence on how different workers across industries and by race and gender experience efforts to gain voice and representation on the job through surveys of workers and labor organizers.

This project from the California Healthy Nail Salon Collaborative and the UCLA Labor Center explores how partnerships and sectoral boards can build a sustainable and equitable nail salon industry, focusing on two approaches from other sectors.

This project will explore how Florida state regulations have stifled workforce development, the relationship between occupational licensing and recidivism, and policy proposals other states can employ to reduce barriers to workforce development for people with criminal records.

A research team led by AdeptID and Grads of Life will test the use of predictive models that use artificial intelligence bias-mitigation technology to identify overlooked talent within employers’ applicant pools.

For this project, the Colorado Evaluation and Action Lab will evaluate programs through which three training and career development nonprofits in Colorado are offering their clients different cash supports, such as stipends and no-interest loans.

Northeast Ohio is a powerhouse of manufacturing with nearly 10,000 highly concentrated manufacturing companies. But the region’s manufacturing sector faces a significant talent shortage, with an estimated 8,000 open jobs that on average provide salary and benefits totaling $70,000.

The nonprofit Byte Back offers basic digital literacy programming for adults with little or no computer experience, a demographic that does not qualify for traditional tech training programs.

What would it take for small businesses owned by immigrants and people of color to improve their labor standards?

While many sectoral workforce development programs include post-employment advancement services, little is known about how effective they are, how much value they add, or how best to design them. Understanding such programs’ efficacy is critical to identifying proven, scalable strategies to expand economic security and mobility for workers with low incomes, and in particular, workers of color.

Findings from the project have the potential to strengthen employer hiring decisions, educational and workforce development approaches, and policy supports for skilled credentials.