 My name is Mary Alice McCarthy and I direct the Center on Education and Labor at New America. So thank you for joining us for today's event, building a good jobs economy, which we are thrilled to be co hosting with our friends at America achieves. I feel like our timing couldn't be better. The economy is reopening. And as the pandemic is hopefully being brought under control. We are in a pivotal moment. We still need to create millions more jobs before we get back to where we were at the beginning of 2020. So I think it's that said, while we are, you know, millions of jobs away from getting back to the beginning of where we were, I think it's also true that for many Americans on both sides of the aisle. There is a strong desire not to go back to the pre pandemic economy, but to hit the reset button and chart a new and different course for the future of our labor market. Of course that includes more jobs that are secure that pay a family that pay a living wage and that provide essential benefits like paid leave health insurance and access to unemployment insurance. The pandemic certainly put into sharp relief the fact that many Americans were in jobs that did not provide economic security, or access to critical benefits at a critical time. Indeed, at a time when Americans desperately needed to be able to stay home and take care of themselves and their families. The reality was that fewer than half of low wage workers had access to paid leave at the onset of the pandemic, compared to more than 90% of workers in the top earnings portal. There's more many frontline workers in retail hospitality and health and health care, who are also disproportionately black and Latinx did not have the option of working remotely, forcing many to choose between unemployment or risking their help or their family's health. And of course the unemployment rate for black and Latinx workers was nearly double that of white workers throughout much of the pandemic, and the youth unemployment rate soar. So we hopefully turn a corner on the pandemic. It is incredibly critically important that we not lose sight of the fact that the pre pandemic labor market was not a good job labor market and it was the, and that the pandemic built on and amplified those existing weaknesses in our pre pandemic economy. Indeed, according to a study by Brookings 44% of all workers between the ages of 1864 and 2000 and 2019 were low wage workers. And according to Cornell University's job quality index. In the period of 2010 to 2020, the US economy generated more bad jobs that is low wage and insecure jobs than good jobs. And I believe in mine is that this economy that's been full of bad jobs and low wage jobs, particularly for workers without a college degree, existed during a period of historic record breaking economic growth. The period from 2010 to 2020 was the longest period of sustained economic expansion in the United States history, going back to 1855, February of 2020 marked the 128th consecutive month positive economic growth. The period of historically low unemployment, 3.5% in February of 2020, a 50 year record and low inflation. And of course the stock market broke record after record, which is all to say that economic growth on its own did not create a good jobs economy from 2010 to 2020. And if we're not careful and intentional, these labor market pathologies will reappear, and we could find ourselves right back where we were in an economy in which four and 10 Americans in 2019 said they would struggle to cover an estimated expense of $400. So here at New America, we have been working with a loose coalition of national organizations called the Better Employment and Training Systems Task Force or BEDS. On a series of white papers and policy briefs aimed at helping the new administration and Congress sees opportunities to build a good jobs economy. We'll be hearing from some of the authors of those briefs in a moment, and we'll also post a link to them to others in the chat. But the one point I want to share from those briefs is the importance that we place on bringing in all of government approach to building a good jobs economy. Specifically, we need to think about advancing on three distinct and measurable goals. And all of the government approach needs to be needs to move us forward on these mutually reinforcing goals of creating new good jobs and improving existing jobs, using access to good wages and benefits as a measure of progress. We need to facilitate broad access to those good jobs through well targeted workforce development strategies and active labor market policies. And we need to strengthen worker protections and worker power so that workers can effectively advocate for themselves. A good jobs economy is not just one system or one set of investments. It is an interlocking set of investments and policies that put job quality and more visit the center. And a few moments you'll hear more about what it looks like to actually do that to create job quality, while creating new jobs, while building worker power, and thank you to all of our panelists who are going to share their work on that. So with that, let me pass the baton to my co-host John Schnur, Chief Executive Officer of America Achieves, and thanks to everybody for tuning in. Great, Mary Alice, thank you so much and really appreciate New America's partnership on behalf of America Achieves. I want to thank all the guests and the panelists and the speakers in New America and Paul Fanar moderator and I'll introduce our first speaker in a few minutes. But this is a really amazing group that's come together truly with great insight at a historic juncture in our country's history and a moment of very high stakes policymaking in Washington Congress and administration. This is, we just were coming out of a once in a century pandemic that has exposed and exacerbated longstanding inequities in the country, and we're coming out of it, but big, tough road ahead. Second, we are the Congress and the administration have already made and are potentially may build on what may be a once in a century investment in a recovery. And as the president calls building back better in a way that we rarely had rarely will have an opportunity for the both scale and focus, hopefully effectiveness of the investments we made in Congress. We are at a time where we are as a country ratcheting up the much needed focus on racial equity on our country to be both build on our strengths and our ideals as a country and overcome longstanding and structural racial inequities and racism. And while all of this is happening, the world and the economy hasn't changed. It's changing, the world economy has is changing, and it's changing faster than it's ever changed before, maybe faster even then when we started the industrial age or began the information age. We have economic competitors are moving ahead. We have employers who are looking for talent. And including in high demand, high growth sectors and occupations, we have over 40% of our population and low wage jobs before the pandemic, who are looking for good jobs. We have real need for economic growth, got a real need for inclusivity, got a real need for competitiveness, really for equity at a moment of historic opportunity, if we get it right. At this very moment, Congress and the administration are working on historic policy options on that could help address these issues. And today's event will help us learn from some of the leading policymakers leading practitioners, we hope to really provide specific information that could inform the policymaking that will go on in the coming weeks and coming months. And that's essentially on the policy front, America chiefs and thanks to the fantastic team at America chiefs, as well as our partners in New America. We've been working on a policy agenda as well. And let me just highlight very briefly. We see the central problem here is how in this historic juncture. Do we help put Americans both back to work and to work in good jobs that rebuild their careers and rebuild the economy. Both address employer need and worker need at the same time. We are three or four principles that drive this work you'll be hearing throughout the panels today. One is that every effective effort we've seen at this is driven by jobs, good jobs, including workforce policy workforce policy workforce policy and workforce training doesn't succeed. We've been informed by and shaped by what it takes to actually get people hired into real and good jobs with employers needs being met and stepping up to address that a good job driven approach to work second principle. We've seen that there is evidence base that we have success in this country. There are those who would say well okay invest more in job good jobs workforce development, but does that really work. The evidence base is clear. There are programs that actually impact wage outcomes and employment outcomes. When they have programs that partners employers that's backward map from what's needed to get somebody into a good job. When they invest not only in training but in job coaching and job referral and wrap around transportation and childcare and food. And it includes when people haven't had significant work experience, there's paid learning experience paid on the job work experience matched with training. And in fact, there's a Gallup Polar this year that showed that over 90% of Americans believe that we ought to have a national strategy that invest in paid work and learning at the same time, very strong bipartisan support for that. Lastly, the research shows, you need to be adequately funded, adequate investments, you need the right design you need to actually funded including for the individuals to access to the programs that are not are not as, as in fact as low cost as many the current federal programs are those principles I think are clear. Before I introduce our speaker, I'll just put out a couple of policy ideas of me come back to you during the forum. If Congress is looking at potential workforce legislation, we think there ought to be a big measurable outcome goal that would shape legislation. We think funding is needed significant funding, but ultimately it's to achieve an outcome. So potentially a goal of significant wage gains that workforce legislation be dry, designed to achieve, or a certain number of people moving into family sustaining and specifically uplifting jobs with opportunities for advancement in in demand sectors certain number of jobs, a measurable goal. We think maybe there ought to be a nationwide individual financing mech to finance individuals who actually can go into quality programs, fulfilling the intent of individual training council, maybe a career scholarship that would make sure the people who really needed it, particularly those who've been suffering the most before the pandemic but in the pandemic, those who are in rural communities, women, people of color, youth, people had access to good programs. And finally, we think that there is a real need for regional coordination and focus that programs by themselves don't work. As you'll hear from a number of speakers today from the National Fund for Workforce Solutions from Los Angeles to Indianapolis, you can be program rich and systems poor we need to be an investment and how employers can step up, as Maurice will share, how regional intermediaries workforce but others can share and ensure there's a collaboration among employers and providers to address these needs not just for individuals, not for program but for whole system. We think there's an opportunity to move on this to scale what works to really address this historic juncture with that I'm going to turn me and introduce you to I think one of the most significant leaders in the country. Maurice Jones is the CEO of 110 and which is a very important coalition of CEOs and companies that are coming together to not just talk but do in terms of upskilling, hiring, promoting 1 million black Americans. He comes from being the CEO of LISC, which is one of the most important issues in the country that promoted community revitalization and economic mobility, and he's able to speak from a real responsibility taking perspective and a real solutions perspective, not only on behalf of the employers he represents but from communities in the country that he's been serving soably for a long time, really thrilled to turn it over to Maurice. Thank you Maurice. Thanks john nice, nice to be with with everybody good, good afternoon I think to some and good maybe even good morning to some I'm not sure who's watching but I'm really, really happy to be a part of this conversation on building a good jobs economy. What I thought I'd do, and then get out of your way is just leave you some reflections on this concept of building a good jobs economy, talk to you about an effort that's going on in the private sector, and then, and then maybe drop a couple of ideas. Let me start with unpacking this in a couple of guidelines or principles, when we think about what are good jobs right a good jobs economy so some thoughts about good jobs to start with. I believe that as we're talking about building a good jobs economy then we should be talking about jobs that pay a living wage jobs that pay a living wage we shouldn't consider anything that is that is not paying a living wage. We should be aspiration with respect to a good job so I want to throw that out there to start with jobs that pay a living wage or the jobs we should be focusing on. Secondly, we should be focusing on. Jobs that have a low, low risk of automation jobs that are going to be around long enough that will give folks the opportunity to work and progress and earn a living and have some security that they're going to be around. Thirdly, jobs that one can acquire compete for get promoted into that actually are based on skills skills based approach to hiring skills based approach to promotion, as opposed to credentials, which a lot of our jobs are based on now. And the gap between credentials and actually having the skills to do the job is more and more one of the challenges to confront in an economy that's trying to base itself on on good jobs so jobs that actually are based on skills. And then lastly, I think we've got to get at this issue of the experience that folks are often requiring for jobs. We're suggesting in the 110 coalition that employers for these jobs to make them accessible to more folks to build an inclusive great economy can't be requiring more than five years experience for these jobs. I'm going to put those elements out there as elements that we should wrestle with, as we are defining what we mean by good jobs. And I think it's really important that we do define what we mean and I'm going to give you those ideas as starting points to think about as you as you delivery today. The last piece of this is with respect to a good jobs economy. Here's a thought for us. A good jobs economy is a team sport. It requires the private sector. It requires those of us who are in the talent development space. It requires talent. It requires talent supports. It requires the public sector and the philanthropic sector. It is a team sport. You cannot actually build I would submit a good jobs economy. If you don't have the active and aggressive participation of all of those players that I just touched on. So I think as we're thinking about where responsibility lies for actually building and sustaining a good jobs economy. It's in all of those places, corporate government philanthropic talent developers talent, nonprofits and others in the wraparound support business. Let me leave that with you to wrestle with. Let me give you an example of where I believe the corporate sector is really stepping into its role with respect to this good jobs economy in the form of something that's called 110. So let me give you a data point to start with. If you look at America's economy today, and you look at jobs that pay $60,000 or more, you'll find that 79% of them today require a four year degree on paper. If you look at jobs that pay $40,000 or more, you'll find that on paper, at least 71% of them require a four year degree. If you look at our workforce, 66% of them do not have a four year degree. If you look at black talent, 76% do not have a four year degree. These data have motivated a coalition now of about 50 companies who come together to form something called 110. 110 is a CEO led coalition that aspires to hire, promote and advance a million black talent without four year degrees into family sustaining careers over the next 10 years, thus 110. And the way that that coalition is going about doing its work is precisely, it includes precisely some of the elements that I just touched on. It is there being part of building an ecosystem, an ecosystem that starts with demand starts with employers putting good jobs on the table. It also starts with employers, recredentialing removing the four year degree from jobs that don't require it really to get the work done and moving to a skills based approach, making those jobs with those skills, transparent to the talent developers and talent developers, taking that knowledge and crafting boot camps and courses and licenses and certifications that are responsive to those demands and that can impart on talent the skills needed to actually thrive. Black talent who are able to actually see the job, see the talent developers understand their skills gaps and work with talent developers to get competitive for those jobs. Lastly wrap around support providers. That ecosystem is being built via a technology platform, all online and in person in about 35 places around the country. That is an example of putting together the team that you need to truly build and sustain a good jobs economy. Last thing and then I'm going to get out of way because I know running up against my time. What can the public sector, what can the philanthropic sector do at this moment to catalyze, to accelerate our aspirations, our efforts to build a good jobs economy. The first and foremost is invest in that ecosystem, invest in the necessary wrap around supports that talent are going to need to thrive it's more than just skills based training. That really requires an investment in a transportation infrastructure and a childcare infrastructure and frankly a structure for mentorship and sponsorship for the talent. So invest in obviously the talent preparations piece. This country has under invested in apprenticeships for example, as a vehicle for talent development and talent mobility for all of its all of its shelf life so far all of its lifetime. We can really have some incredible impact if we can scale apprenticeships as models to actually do this work. So building the ecosystem and also investing in talent preparation talent development vehicles and solutions would be two of the ways that both the public sector and the philanthropic sector can really step into this moment and help us build this good jobs economy. The bottom line though is, it is a team sport, and it will require all of us to be bold, and to be a high functioning team in order to actually have success, but I'm encouraged, an effort like 110 definitely has inspired me that to believe that we're in a new chapter, and we need to really make this chapter last long enough to have true impact. Thanks for letting me be with you I hope. There's some kernels of thoughts there that can be useful. And now I'll turn it over to Paul Fane who I think is going to be leading the first panel conversation. Paul, over to you. Thanks Maurice. Fantastic framing. Thank you. So I'm Paul Fane. I'm your moderator here. Thanks to New America and America chiefs for hosting this. I'm a long time higher ed reporter now focused on connections with the workforce, which is kind of what we're talking about here. It's a hot issue. Just to reframe what I heard there as a mandate going into these fantastic panels. First of all, this is a team sport. We've got a lot of players here, and covering a lot of bases for solutions for our economy. What I'm calling good jobs and the great reconnection. And what I heard from Maurice, or Mary Alice and john really want to focus here on these discussions on the high stakes policymaking that's happening now to seize that once in a century opportunity on how to avoid labor market pathologies as Mary Alice said so for the speakers I know we're going to run out of time here. I'm going to push you a little bit to think about solutions and what you'd like to see from the policymakers some of whom are listening right now. So the first panel I'm going to introduce now folks in the audience please ask questions we'll try to get them. I'm going to introduce the second panel after we wrap up the first one, but getting right into it these are just brief, biographical details not the full laurels of all these folks. Jason cloth, President and CEO of ascend Indiana, a nonprofit group focused on the state's talent pipeline. Hello Jason. Then Dr Paul Polito, director of data evaluation and strategy for slate Z the South Los Angeles transit empowerment zone, which works on economic opportunity for residents of South LA. And then Abby Solomon, CEO of the SEIU 775 benefits group, which offers training to roughly 50,000 home care workers in Washington state. Thanks to you all for being here. Let's start with Abby. How have you and how has the state of Washington work to improve the quality of working life for home care workers, who we know have had a busy and difficult 16 months. Paul, and thank you for having me on this panel. It's great to be here. My name is Abby Solomon I am the CEO of SEIU 775 benefits group and as Paul said we, we provide training as well as other benefits to in home caregivers in Washington state. We are a labor management partnership. So we work with both employers, as well as unionized caregivers who are represented through SEIU 775. And what we've done is, you know, we serve a population of about 50,000 caregivers who through through unionization and through partnership with both the state of Washington, as well as private sector home care agencies have developed a program where caregivers can not only receive portable training that they can carry with them, but also a whole set of portable benefits that enhance the, the job quality for caregivers and reduce some of the burden on our workers and on the state of Washington. So caregivers that come through our program are able to move to different individual consumers so work with families individually, or through private employers, they pull together their workers, they carry that training with them. They have common access to a common retirement fund, and they also have job matching services to us which enables them to continue to have flexibility. And a lot of options as they think about how they're going to meet their own needs, as well as the needs of their clients and through this labor management partnership, we've been able to really invest in this workforce, ensure that it is thriving and that our employers and the and consumers that everyone can kind of focus on the things that they need to do, like providing that high quality care, and we can take some of that burden and economy of scale and be able to sort of look at it more holistically across the whole system, while enabling caregivers to have a voice through their union to have input into what these services programs and benefits look like. I really appreciate that so let's turn to Dr. Polito. I know Slate Z takes as I'd be described in Washington State a multi pronged cross system approach. Can you talk a little bit about what you're working on and the principles that inform it. Absolutely. And you know, similarly, thank you so much really excited to be here and represent the South Los Angeles community. And as a federally designated promise zone. One thing that Slate Z does is focus on really deep cross sector place based initiatives to move our residents towards economic opportunity. So in that sense being cross sector means we acknowledge the full spectrum of things that create that opportunity for economic mobility. And also equity and equity focused work that really animates a lot of the approaches we take you know as a key guiding principle to the work that we do. And that is reflected in a lot of the very deep engagement and involvement with the local community, particularly on the part of our partners. That ability for us to leverage a robust network of nonprofit organizations with decades of experience in the community it creates these opportunities to specifically target local issues that are faced by our residents but also simultaneously the strengths that we know that our residents have oftentimes it takes us in some unique scenarios. And I like to think of our promise zone, and also the other promise zones across the nation as these innovation centers, where our partners can collaborate and design really intriguing solutions that are cross cutting, and you know cross sector in nature. And ultimately the promise zone are these nexus points to bring about public private partnerships that are meant to empower local communities, highlight innovations and really facilitate ways to braid together multiple sources of, you know, resource support from both public and private resources. That way we can scale up the innovations that our partners are really pursuing. Thanks for that. Let's turn to Jason. You know, I know that you also work across sectors and are very engaged with your employer partners and making sure you're helping to place folks in good jobs. Can you talk a little bit about that work. Yeah, so ascent is essentially an intermediary and Indiana's labor market that's focused on ensuring that we're a place of economic opportunity for all. But the problem we work to solve is the gap between open good jobs and available talent in our state continues to widen. And when we look at what's causing that we really think there are three primary drivers. The first is what we would call asymmetry of information so there are good jobs out there, and there are individuals with the knowledge skills and ability to fill those jobs, and for a variety of reasons they don't find one another. The second issue is there are some fields where we don't produce enough individuals with the knowledge skills and ability to fill the open jobs that exist within our regional labor markets. And then finally, we have a disconnected and I would argue in an antiquated workforce system in terms of its ability to allocate public resources to the right places in the right time in the right ways. So the way that we go about solving those problems is really three key things the first is called the ascend network, which is a software platform that we built that allows us to profile companies, teams, and then internships apprenticeships jobs within those companies, but we go a level deeper by seeking to understand truly what are the knowledge skills and abilities for each of those jobs in a way a traditional job board would not do that. And then we have partnerships with higher education institutions community colleges and data sharing agreements where we can interact directly with individuals obtaining those knowledge skills and abilities with the aim of building out profiles and then capturing different traits, technical skills and work styles, or the knowledge skills and abilities, which allow us to be much more effective in matching people to those opportunities within Indiana labor market, far more efficiently than the purely technological tools that exist today. The second is we have a management consulting function that comes alongside employers have a stated workforce problem. We want to understand what that problem is, why it exists and how we could solve it with them. And then go and identify education partners that are well positioned to do that. And we bring all of those entities together and build out programmatic content that leads directly to a good job so how will we market recruits select matriculate. What will people learn who will teach them. And we build that with the partners side by side. And then finally, we feed that information back to public policymakers in ways that should improve the system over time. And I think that by building this out at scale we can be far more efficient, having a decentralized really workforce system that's capturing the demand created by employers, capturing the supply, and then building more of what we need more quickly and more efficiently. Great. Thank you. Let's, let's start on that connection piece and how some of the policies that are on the table now could help. And I mean specifically, making sure that the good jobs that are out there are open to folks and open to folks in an equitable way. Abby in Washington State, specific to health care, you know, assuming that there are good jobs that are that are open. How can the feds or folks in Olympia, make sure that those connections are being made. Where is there a role for policy there. Yeah, that's a great question, Paul. You know, part of part of what we're so excited about the work that we do working with in home caregivers I know there's a lot of interest in equity and inclusion. And when we think about jobs, you know, there's, when we look at you know, in home care is one of the fastest growing jobs in our in our country, we know that our country is aging and we know that people need services in every corner and every community of the state, you know, age crosses into all communities, disability crosses into all communities. And so, you know, in home care is one of the only professions within the healthcare system that you can train in your own language, you can test in your own language and you can work in your own language which opens the doors for a lot of communities, you know, new, new, new immigrants, others to come into our system. And we're really interested in continuing to invest in those kinds of programs and services that really meet people where they're at. Enable people to have on the job training. We're very interested within the Medicaid system and workforce dollars and thinking about pre employment training opportunities. So right now we're able to provide on the job training to caregivers as they come into the system. We're very interested in setting up cohorts and enabling people to come in sort of pre employment to partner with employers who are looking to hire caregivers and other health care workers we know there's a big shortage. So creating opportunities for people to come in on the front end and have more sort of orientation and understanding into what these jobs are going to be, and then help match them. That's one, one way we could do that. And then certainly anything from a policy perspective that incentivizes, you know, higher wages, you know, investments in, in labor management partnerships, and making sure that we're really meeting where they're at and investing in the jobs that are already there. So it's not just about creating new good jobs, it's about making sure that we're taking, you know, jobs in the service sector and other spaces, and making those good jobs. And there's a lot of work that we can do together to incentivize and create policies that enable people to access, you know, higher wages and benefits that they need to be able to thrive and have a lot of options across the entire workforce system. Got it. Yes. Let's turn to Dr. Polito. Living wage jobs and the barriers that typically prevent folks that you work with from getting there. And, you know, are there a bunch of them. I mean, are you focused more on finding them or do you know where the jobs are and is it more overcoming barriers to get to them. I think the reality is it's a both and question, because one of the things that we do in leveraging our network is really how our CBO partners are community based organization partners, they have that really deep connection with the local community so being able to identify what the local needs are of the community and how that, you know, has like an upward swing towards influencing and impacting the way that, for example, a training program might roll out or how policy can be influenced based on the local needs of the community. But at the same time, you know, that kind of top down approach also needs to be acknowledged and figure out how we create those points where the conversation can be had so it really is that both and question. One of the things that we like to point out is that, you know, particularly in the pandemic. So many people so many residents have put in put in these zero some decision points you know did do I go on the unemployment do I risk my job. And even you know what we experienced previously about, you know, people having a hesitance even about getting higher wage careers because does that take them off of their means tested services so what are we doing to create a broader ecosystem sort of the way that Maurice pointed out that navigates people through this entire system that creates the ability to have living wage careers, but also coming up with really cross sector innovations that take that full ecosystem into consideration. So many times it's not just about the career and the training but what are the additional social supports that ensure people are put in a position of success. These are the ways that people receive mentoring with their navigating a new career, and ultimately, kind of touching on the policymaker component you just referenced. How are our partners and the services that they're providing, how do they receive the continued investment so that they can create that ecosystem of support that puts people in that position to succeed. Jason, in Indiana. What sort of potential do you see for expanding apprenticeship or other subsidized work based learning opportunities, how much, how much potential is there, and what would it take to get it right I know that's not an easy question to answer. I think there's tremendous potential for for youth apprenticeship and for apprenticeship in general. And we're really fortunate to be spearheading much of that work here in Indiana. And what I particularly like about apprenticeship is it addresses a number of issues that individuals are facing so they're able to be working while addressing some of those issues that cause students oftentimes not to persist while earning credit for the work that they're doing, which will enable them to then complete post secondary education attainment and have greater economic mobility over the long term. So we're in the midst with generous philanthropic support of piloting a cohort of what we call modern youth apprentices, building off the work of the trades but now focusing on it business services healthcare varieties of other sectors that may not historically be associated with apprenticeship, really piloting that effort and as we pilot it, bringing together a community of practice of of practitioners and of policymakers, the Senate Education Chair the house Education Chair the commissioner for higher education and the superintendent of public instruction to say how would we build a system that incentivizes employers appropriately that encourages students to pursue this that has intermediaries that can support them throughout that process. And that awards that credit and recognizes that through prior learning assessments, or other means, and you know in other countries this is built out in a very robust way in places like Switzerland and Germany and I think, you know we're really building off what we can learn from those models, but making it applicable to our state and to our labor market. Well I'm glad you brought up the post secondary piece I know some audience folks were asking questions related to Reese's comments about credentials versus skills. And I want to, I want to ask all of you a little bit about that question that distinction. How important is it to you in the work that you do to have post secondary pathways that clearly lead up to a degree versus being able to stack credentials to get to a higher to get to those good jobs potentially without a degree. And I'm going to say, you know moderators privilege here I don't think there are too many stackable pathways that really existed scale. I'm curious for folks like you who are working on the ground just how important of a piece that is to you and let's start with Abbie. Thank you, thank you for the question. The way that we approach this is we really think about your sort of skills and competencies. So what do caregivers really need to be successful on the job and we know that there are certain things that are going to be very intentional across whatever kind of client that you're caring for. But the skills that you need to care for someone with dementia versus a 30 year old in a wheelchair are going to be very different sets of skills and so we'd like to think about how you can sort of build upon that. It is, it is, we are very interested in figuring out ways to help connect what people are doing across a broad career lattice and looking at sort of stackable skills competencies credentials I think are all part of that journey. We've been pretty excited to have our apprenticeship program, which is really based in on the job learning in that you know we've got 50,000 caregivers and 50 plus thousand clients with different situations and so having the ability to work with a mentor or a coach in our case we do that remotely because they don't work side by side, but to help you sort of, you know, improve your confidence on the job, all of that can be translatable and we've been partnering with some community colleges in our region to have, you know, our training program and our apprenticeship program count toward credit that could then be used to further someone's career within the healthcare field. Now we're very focused on making our job, a destination job rather than just a launching pad because we know there's a workforce shortage and we know that people need these services so we've run to continue to invest in that. Like I said, people are on a journey in their career and we think that there need to be a lot of different options for people's different needs whether you're a young person entering the workforce, or we have a lot of people who are in that 50 plus age group that are kind of aging out of their more traditional jobs and are looking for a way to continue to make ends meet and they may find their career goals are going to look a little bit different. I'm not sure I completely answered your question but we think there's a role for having the credential, having the basics, and then really thinking about what are the, you know, unique skills, competencies that people need to fill confident on the job and to want to stay on the job and to be able to have that pride is all, you know, are all really important components to what we do and how we think about this work. Thanks. You did answer the question. Let's turn to Paul. I know you all focus on post-secondary pathways. What are some of the key strategies that you employ there to make sure that folks get what they need out of that post-secondary piece? And how do you work with employers to make sure that the competencies line up there? Yeah, and that's a great refinement as well because I'm similar to what Abby just mentioned it really is the pursuit of multiple strategies that meet what the particular workforce sector might be looking for. So we're trying to foster really based on community input is thinking about how skills are transferable potentially across different sectors. A great example is one of the initiatives that came out of our partnerships was one focusing on staffing our community-based organizations who provide homelessness services. So something like that really wanted to leverage identifying people who had what they're calling lived experience because that creates a much more meaningful relationship with the folks that they're trying to serve. But in addition to leveraging that, the training component actually does create this opportunity to get transferable skills. And so there's a career exploration path. I think similar to what Abby was suggesting where it is a career journey and then how do people want to interface with our, for example, our local community college partners to dive deeper or what they might be able to do and navigate across different sectors. So in that sense, what we do is we're able to leverage the relationships again, which is a critical component. Some of our partners have these deep relationships with employers and then the others have these infrastructures in place that allow for the creation of really robust in depth comprehensive training programs. So when they can sit together at a convening table like we provided the promise zone, employers have a way to design a particular training curriculum that they know meets the requirements that they have. And if they're able to get a training partner to be able to do that, I think that just speeds up the ability for people who go through that training program to then get fast-tracked into those positions. But a lot of that is relationship building. It's having the right folks at the table and it's also finding or building that will to be able to engage in that type of partnership building, which actually is kind of not quite the norm yet, but I think it's getting there. But ultimately, it's being able to leverage just the deep partnerships in your local communities and how they can all come together for innovations. Thanks for that, Jason. Anything you want to add on the post-secondary piece you've addressed it a bit. Yeah, sure. I think what I just add is if you look at the way that our workforce system has historically operated, we would capture information about jobs through the unemployment or through the unemployment insurance system, be that back to BLS and then that information would make its way to policymakers and 20 years later we get computer science in our high schools. And I think, and not to be critical of that system, it served us well. But I think the, now we're talking about in-demand fields, who are saying EMSI and Burning Glass will give us more directional information about the kinds of jobs that are out there and the skills required. And then we want to see schools and institutions create that training relevant to those in-demand quote unquote fields. And so the personal view about where we need to go, and it builds off both Paul and Abby's comments, is a much more employer-centric, customer-centric focus on what are the actual jobs, knowledge, skills, and abilities required, and capturing that information alongside employers, and then working with the appropriate intermediaries to build our training that we know links directly to that set of jobs. Where it's not, hopefully, those people will get skills that leads to those jobs, but that that connection is as explicit as possible in its design. And so I think what we should be talking about in this country is how do we build that particular system where what is out there and is good, and what is being built with public resources are as synchronized as they possibly can be. And that's going to require intermediaries that are scanning that labor market capacity to build these training programs alongside employers in higher education institutions, funding to support wraparound services for individuals they go through. And I think thinking about that policy framework as a 21st century workforce system is really, really critically important. For about to hit time, but I'm going to ask one kind of lightning round question here. Success for the three of you in the next few years. What does it look like? And for the policy folks out listening, what is one or two things they can do to help you get there? Let's start with Abby. Thanks, Paul. You know, success for us looks like being able to meet meet the demand for for care with high quality jobs. So we want to see greater investment in, you know, direct dollars into workers pockets being able to raise those wages and create more opportunities for them to advance. I think one thing that policymakers can do specifically in the caregiving field is to help us think about how we can increase the connections between the work that our caregivers do in long term care with opportunities within the team within the health system. There's a lot we can do about integrating those two, both in terms of generating better health outcomes and meeting greater demand, as well as creating some alternate pathways for funding. Thank you, Paul. Quick last thoughts on that. Yeah, it's somewhat similar to what both Abby and Jason have been discussing. It really is about sustainable long term partnerships that connect residents to living wage careers. And I think I know it's been like my mantra of the day but it is that emphasis on sustainable long term partnerships because it allows us to address the needs of the day, but if the partnerships are in place, should there be another curveball that's thrown at us down the line, we know we have the relationships in place to be able to pivot and act, you know, in with much more speed and with much more effectiveness. And in terms of how policymakers can get involved, it really is, you know, not just for us to continue to have the conversation with the community but I would encourage everybody else to really listen to what the needs of your constituents are and build out those partnerships with the private sector with the public sphere and how you can move forward together. Team sport again Jason very quick last thoughts from you on that. Map the demand side of the labor market in the state of Indiana across all job types map the supply side of the labor market efficiently match people to the opportunities that exists when there's not enough supply be able to efficiently do that and provide people with support and means to do that. And then as it relates to policymakers, focus everything around placements and wage to build up john's comment at the beginning. We need to orient our system around that living wage and everything sort of backward mapping from that end goal, along with of course creating good citizens and the like. Thank you all three of you for just an incredible job of covering a complex landscape briefly. I'm sorry to move on so quickly, but I would a big hand of virtual applause for all three of you so thank you. We're going to widen the aperture a bit to federal policy with four experts representing a wide range of constituencies just very quickly going to introduce them here Amanda cage. The National Fund for workforce solutions, which works on workforce development with a national network of partners in about 30 communities. Then Cheryl Hyman vice provost for academic alliances for Arizona State University, one of the nation's largest, and then Jason Tishko vice president for the Center for Education and Workforce at the US Chamber of Commerce Foundation. I'm going to start with Amanda White, National Director of New America, our host, the partnership to advance youth apprenticeship, and also a senior policy advisor for K 12 education and workforce. So I'm going to start with Amanda, we've heard a lot from just some fantastic experts on state level solutions. Can you talk a bit about this this moment of opportunity, what we're going to need from a policy standpoint to scale to meet this enormous challenge and opportunity. So I think it's really important to first say that you know the US has a jobs problem, we, we don't have enough good ones and we built our economy on low quality jobs and we have now we have all this evidence about what it looks like for essential workers, especially workers of color, especially black women and Latinas who showed up, despite low pay, difficult working conditions, health and safety concerns and lack of support, including childcare. Because that existed before, and what we're really trying to disrupt is that from continuing. And I think it's important I'm going to go back to the question that Maurice asked at the beginning it's important to remind people about what good jobs look like. You know, we believe at the National Fund that there are core elements of good jobs, the things that we think about sustainable wages and benefits, stable hours and scheduling health and safety, fairness and respect and those things have been deteriorating and so we have to restore those. But there's also opportunity around skills training and career advancement, and then voice around employer empowerment engagement and inclusion I think one of the things we also learned during this time is that for a lot of folks, racial equity and inclusion, we're not something that was happening within their work and I think in order to think about good jobs, we really have to start just by making an explicit goal of our systems right now we still have a focus that is any job is a good job and if we are going to actually create a scalable system we have to acknowledge and create the goal of having quality jobs be that objective, and that in itself is a major milestone. It's truly a federal government that both invest in quality job and access a role model in terms of being a purchaser or an operator or that you know is involved very heavily in some sectors like healthcare and childcare that we need, we need those kind of public investments. Thanks for that very helpful reminder that many of these problems were here before they're just harder to ignore for folks and also that you know the good jobs piece. We're seeing data every day that that folks are are going to push harder for a good job across the economic spectrum which is pretty exciting. So Cheryl, it's almost impossible to briefly summarize what issue is up to. But can you talk a little bit about how the institution is retooling and might be able to do more with the right incentives to help students in this uncertain labor market. Yeah, thanks, thanks Paul and it's good to see you again I want to reinforce a little bit of what Amanda said and a few others have said, we're talking a lot about good jobs to creation of good jobs, what good jobs are. The fact that the American economy has millions of unemployed or underemployed individuals, while millions of high pan jobs go on field has been on a horizon for a long while now. So it scares me a little bit when we talk about creating all these new jobs, when we're not successfully fulfilling the ones that are there now and we have so many millions of Americans going without jobs. We started to see unprecedented declines and enrollment in some of our post secondary educational sectors at a time where we're in a pandemic and people are losing jobs and we need to be educating them to get them back to work. And so I think what's needed and what issue is is focus on one is obviously technological innovations. How can we help supplement the service that we provide any access that we provide to learners we quite often talk about hiring more people in post secondary education or needing more advisors are needing more of this or that and I think it's unfair to think we can solve our nation's problems with human capital, like we have to start looking at technological innovations. So I think what's needed and what we're doing is accountability for learning providers learning providers need to be held accountable to help solve this issue to learners who need to have immediate access to high quality, high relevance programs that lead to jobs and growing well compensated industries in each city of America and we're ensuring that we do that learners need to be guided and supported through structured paths that lead them to their end goal, which is completion and a relevant credential or upscaling and rescaling for those who are already in the market. And we need to make sure that learners can move their credit or credentials freely and flexible between institutions. So a issue is highly focused on creating technological solutions that allow us to partner with other institutions so that learners can have a seamless experience it's no longer about one institution solving this problem, but also like to lastly say Paul, we need to figure out how to support our current workforce at all levels. We need to, we need to figure out how to make every job a good job with fair wages. We need to figure out how to support our single moms how to support formerly incarcerated. How do we support the entire population and getting back back to work. And so I think these are the four tenants that some of the four tenants that a issue is really focused on that I think will require drastic changes in higher it, it will require immediate closure some irrelevant programs creating new programs and infrastructure that's in place that constantly connects post secondary to industry so that we can have a constant review and remain relevant, and it will require I think true engagement with our industry partners and leadership accountability. It's fantastic job of framing things by Cheryl and Amanda there Jason to build on what Marie said. It really does feel to me that employers are at the table in a different way with different urgency for a lot of reasons I'm curious what you would say to that observation and I know that chamber is working on a lot of pieces to build on it, what sort of incentives you'd like from the federal government to help there. Yeah, Paul thank you and good to see you again and you know the one of the things I want to really emphasize as part of this discussion is, you know, we do not have an employer led workforce system. It's often done in the name of employers, but a lot of what we've been trying to put our communities attention on is the need to really kind of build up the demand side of our system and to better engage employers so they can organize themselves to collective action and go through a structured process of surfacing their, their workforce needs actually cleaning up their job descriptions and hiring requirements, actually mapping where they get their talent from and partnering with those partners who give them access and reach to populations that are important to them. There aren't available to them in their current pipeline. A lot of this is assumed that employers, they have their act together they have all of this information if we just give them to show up at the meeting they can give it to us. What we've often found is that's not the case at all. And we're instead relying on all this proxy data like the own that data, we're relying on big data analytics is not telling that the whole story or the or the real local story that matters to the folks were actually trying to deliver services on the ground. And we have to get that side organized so if we're going to actually have a system that can actually look employer led like we've heard about like Germany or Switzerland. We have to work with the infrastructure we have and we have all this untapped potential and capacity and economic development groups, chambers of commerce and others who could be equipped to be providing these talent pipelines or talent supply chains as a service to companies to better get them to engage in this collective action so when they show up to partner with ASU, or with the National Fund for Workforce Solutions or for somebody else. They've really done their homework they've done it together and they can they've already cleaned up the hiring requirements and they're ready to partner engage on the most critical jobs that are the good jobs, the ones that aren't going to be automated the ones that they increasingly depend on because we are an economy to compete on talent and our talent supply chains are going to be just as important to us as any other part of our business so as we're thinking about kind of federal policy and where we're trying to take the workforce system at large. What I would really impress upon this audience is doubling down on the system we had is not going to be a solution. If we want more in better jobs, we need to do a better job of getting the employer community better organized and that doesn't mean more advisory boards. That means a whole new employer led infrastructure and capacity building inside organizations and institutions that have long been neglected in this space. We've been trying to put a lot of our attention and maybe I'll come back to it later with time permitting but I think another big opportunity with the federal government is an effort to modernize our workforce data infrastructure which is woefully behind. But there's great promise and actually modernizing our data infrastructure and ways that could unlock all types of new opportunities. So data infrastructure, obviously an issue for you and for in for the last panel, something going on there I think let's turn to Taylor. So apprenticeship, among other things. What gives you what makes you the most excited about what's what's on the table right now what gives you the most pause how do we get this right. Thank you Paul for moderating for having us and into my co panelists for their insights thus far. And, you know, I think there's a lot to be excited about and everything that's moving at the federal level in terms of apprenticeship. I think it, you know, we, there's a lot in certainly President Biden's budget that would support further investment in a workforce system that prioritizes apprenticeship as a as a sort of piece of that infrastructure. I think to you see opportunities across infrastructure plan the families plan to support a lot of the institutions that are necessary for apprenticeship systems to function well and to become more and more accessible and effective for populations of workers who stand really benefit but thus far have not been well served or equitably served by the apprentices apprenticeship system that we have. You know when we think about I spent most of my time focused on youth and youth employment issues youth career pipeline issues. I think one of the things that does give me pause when I look across federal investments at this moment both with respect to apprenticeship and more generally and something that we drew out very much in the youth focus bets memo that that's been referenced thus far is that there is just sort of a lack of coordination across education and workforce investments it's pretty clear that young people in particular and when we talk about youth employment at the federal level we're talking about young people ages 16 to 24 which is a pretty diverse group of learners and workers. But we don't really see a concerted effort to draw meaningful connections between the investments across education and workforce. There are efforts, but they are scattered and there's not really coherent approach to supporting those transitions from secondary into post secondary opportunities whether that's a, you know, certificate and credentialing programs to your degrees for your degrees apprenticeship. And I do think one of the things that does give me pauses that we don't really have a cochlear and agenda for supporting that and I worry at times that we will repeat some of the mistakes that we saw coming out of the last discussion with this population that we sort of lump them in and hope that they're either well served by education programs and education funding, or really specific workforce programs that don't necessarily meet their specific needs. And I think, as we tried to make clear in the memo that we wrote, we have an opportunity now to really focus on that, on that age group alongside older workers to make sure that they are not lost in a recovery, and that a lot of the programs and sort of structured as Cheryl was referencing, get support now and are developed with these resources that are coming down the pike, so that we don't just sort of put band-aids on the problem but that we're building systems and structures that can support more effective transitions in a better system to support that over time. Thanks for that. So I'm going to be bouncing around a bit here to maximize time. So I might not get to all of you for some of these questions but in the questions from the audience I'm seeing a couple that hit on the theme of let's assume we get training right, whatever that means. I would like to quickly train folks to re-enter the economy. Concern that the good jobs just aren't going to be there, that the living wage jobs may not meet what we could do in terms of training. I want to start with Amanda on that. Is that a legit concern? Is there something that we can do that policymakers should be mindful of and looking at incentives? I'm going to go back to what Cheryl said. We have all these great jobs that are going unfilled now, right? The question is, how do we get the training right? And I think the training right, there's lots of different aspects to that getting that training right. I want to focus on one, which is we're overlooking a variety of people who can fill those jobs. So we have a very deep occupational segregation in this country. Some of the fastest growing fields, information technology, or if we're talking about infrastructure through the Biden plan, we know that those are fields that are growing and we have a number of people of color who don't have access to those jobs for a variety of reasons and training can be one of them. So I don't worry about not being able to create those jobs partially because we have them. We're just not making them equitably accessible to the variety of people. I worry more about making sure that we have the jobs that we currently have that aren't quality, that we can make those jobs quality jobs. Jason, I'm going to ask you to respond to Amanda there. Obviously, we heard from Maurice about the DNI imperative. I think a lot of employers are sounding the right notes there. How can policy help make those matches to good jobs in more of an equitable way? And what are the roles from the players there? Yeah, I mean, this whole topic of creating a more equitable talent marketplace. I mean, there's a sea change happening inside the private sector. We have a huge focus on it now even at the US Chamber of Commerce. We've launched our Quality of Opportunity Initiative, the America Works Initiative, and we're trying to do everything we can to not only do our part to kind of diversify our Federation, but also trying to help equip our membership. So companies know how to do this in their communities themselves and to do it together. So we're all trying to get better at this. Now is the time for public-private partnerships to get it done. And when it comes to the good jobs, I agree with Amanda and Cheryl, we're going, there's jobs right now, we got to get them filled. We got to keep this economic recovery going. We could always do better. But one thing, and maybe this is me getting on my soapbox a little bit, Paul, if you could humor me, is what I want to differentiate is it's not good jobs versus bad jobs. And it reminds me a lot of how we used to talk about and they have like high-road firms versus low-road firms. And it sets things up like it's a black and white zero-sum game. And from where we sit at the Chamber, it's a much more complex continuum of, how do I benchmark where my jobs are, where I'm at, and how do I get better? Everyone could get better. But kind of coming at it and saying, this is a good job, that's a bad job. I often find it's not the most constructive approach. Coming in and saying, let's meet you where you're at and let's talk about where you are relative to your peers and how we can incrementally make you better along a number of different areas, not just wage and salary, but what's the total compensation offering and what are the other benefits that could be explored like stable hours. So, again, if we think like somehow the private sector just knows this and knows how to do it and isn't doing it, I'm here to challenge that assumption to say, you know, a lot of these folks have, you know, we need to resurrect not only the law start a workforce planning, so employers know how to do this and do it effectively. But we also need to bring back high quality job design, and there's just missing capacity in the system to do that. But if we pulled ourselves together to say it's not about good versus bad, but how do we make everybody better, I think we put in place systems and structures through chambers and other groups to work with companies to do that benchmarking that analysis into improve so I think it's much like we say, or I think it was Mary Alice was saying earlier like it's all of government approach I'd say it's, this is America it's public private approach, it's the whole economy, it has to be public and private if we're going to get better. If, if, whether it's the DEI goals whether it's the good jobs discussion, if we think we're going to get there through through federal regulation and mandates that's going to be a long hard road. But if we approach it as a public private partnership where we all get better and we all win. I think that's the way to do it and the private sector is here to engage that's why we're here as part of this meeting where we're working with America achieves and we're glad to partner with new America I think we can do it but we have to do it together has to be public private. Thanks for that. I'm going to, I'm going to ask a specific question that was directed towards Cheryl here. And how issue is thinking about connecting smaller providers short term programs to the seamless experience you mentioned and obviously we're talking at a time when a short term workforce Pell grants might might become a thing sooner than later, any thoughts there. Thanks, John, for the question and thanks, Paul for playing it out. First, I want to take a step back and talk a little bit about how a issue sees itself in the world of post secondary education. And you may hear our President Michael Crow or some of my colleagues talk about universal learner. That means that we here know that learners or believe that learners will be in a continuum of learning, like the traditional I get my baccalaureate degree I go into the workforce I work 30 years in our retire that no longer exist. We have to recognize that learners will need to upscale retool industries will change things are changing so we will all be in this continuum of learning. We've also come to realize like most foreign institutions should that our cohorts are no longer made up a first time freshman. We have a lot of transfer students, which accounts for more than 40% of our population now, we have a lot of learners coming back to us with some college no degree people are just at various points in their learning journey and those learning journeys will be ongoing. So what we've done, or what the President have done is structured the institution around that learning journey with three different enterprises, the academic enterprise, the learning enterprise and the knowledge enterprise. So essentially we've taken the best of our research with the best of our academic knowledge and put it together to figure out how to service every learner at every part of their journey and what are who and what are the people we should be partnering with to do that. So, in, particularly in learning enterprise which will focus on that upscaling retooling some college no degree, but we all work together to do it so now partnerships are not just community colleges they're actually some other short term providers. Who whose learners will be on a longer learner journey after they finished that short term career, or it helps us not to duplicate that that short term credential and work with them to create a bridge into a longer credential. So we have a whole enterprise that's dedicated to looking at looking at that while being supported by academic enterprise and knowledge enterprise. Thanks for that Taylor I think you may be typing an answer to a question I was about to ask you from the audience about national programs or policies that provide incentives to employers who start apprenticeship programs and hire our youth what's out there what would you like to see. So it's a good question I mean right now there's no federal definition of youth apprenticeship so there's no really like specific easy discrete program that incentivizes employers who start apprenticeship programs for youth right I mean there's there's a lot out there to support apprenticeship to support registered apprenticeship the Department of Labor last year made a historic 42 and a half million dollar investment in youth apprenticeship in particular that went to 13 or 14 states and intermediaries to develop those programs. But right now there is not to the question that's here, like a really specific program that I could point to at the federal level to incentivize employers who start apprenticeship programs for youth. There are a number of state incentives they usually come in the form of tax benefits and I think the jury is still out as to just how much of an incentive those really do provide for employers but they do exist and they are out there. There are a number of federal programs that do support the hiring of youth through sort of, you know, more traditional workforce and workforce like activation type programs but apprenticeship to the question is there isn't a specific one I think. But we would love to see our is a federal investment in subsidized job programs for youth as part of the recovery, whether that's through some expansion of summer job programs, or the investment in some sort of national on the job learning initiative, or a more traditional federal subsidized job program I mean I do think that we know that young people are often the last to bounce back when when economies come back online. And so, though we've seen, you know, may jobs report should, well, a lot of craziness but some improvement for at least the 16 to 24 set. And there has been continued improvement for them I think we'll see that throughout the summer as is typical. We do need is, we do need a sort of coherent and concerted effort to support young people's transition to the labor market to find help them find jobs. You know that they are over represented in a lot of the sectors that were hit hard by the pandemic. Those are not necessarily jobs we want to see young people go back to on a permanent basis for their careers. And without a sort of dedicated investment in programs that support their transition they're very likely to get kind of stuck in those jobs and language in a lot of jobs that do not have career potential, which has, you know, has scarring effects on their future and labor market outcomes and given that the young people today are most diverse generation ever the implications for that sort of delayed labor or sort of career launch process for them has pretty big implications for the the exacerbating racial wealth So we don't really have time to wait we'd love to see more specific investment in this age group as we think about what's going to happen with the federal budget with with family plan infrastructure plans, etc, etc. So let's stick with the youth piece that Taylor mentioned there and specifically to the, how do you treat the you know the short term crisis with the long term goal in mind, make sure that the opportunities to help young people get back on track to prevent them from pursuing a degree if that's what they want to do, that the learning and opportunities lead to a job that it's a sustainable career what are the, what would you like to tell policymakers about threading that needle. Yeah, I mean this is true for young people it's true for adults as well as well especially in low income communities that people have the earn and learn thing is a real thing people if folks want to upgrade their skills. The kind of work that Cheryl's talking about if people want to move into new industries, new occupations, they still have to earn money, they still have to earn money to make a living and we see some of that. Workout in very formalized structures like apprenticeships but it's also about employers and I appreciate Jason comments about employer practices because a lot of this has to do with employer practices and thinking about your jobs and good job design. But employers need to think about growing their own and how they help create advancement opportunities there there are no jobs or industries that are by definition bad jobs. There are no jobs in industry that by definition can't have a career pathway it's just that we have to think about those jobs a little differently, and make sure that we're investing in people whether or not it's young people and their first job and you're trying to get them to have a successful attachment to the labor market that will pay off over time and where they learn that, you know, learning is an ongoing activity that they're going to have to deal with throughout their entire work life, or if it's somebody coming back to the, you know, coming back to the industry that has rapidly changed you know the issue sort of the same for folks and so I'd like to see both more public investment but more private support from employers as they help people, you know, navigate that. And I want to respond there and just to put a little bit of a point on it, you know, specifically to advancement opportunities that might lead to transferable skills that folks want to move to another employer any any of the work that you're doing that touches on that. Well, so we have through our talent supply chain system we've, we've been building guidance and instructional tools to work with employers and their associations and how to be hyper intentional with actually creating reskilling and upskilling pathways. Again, you have to be taught how to do this because if you're talking about scale doing it across an industry this takes system design. It takes pathway design. And it's, it's not something that's fly by night so I think we're building that capacity now there's a lot more work to be done but the more it can be explored as a national public private partnership to get more of this training inside companies and inside industries. I think we can have much more intentional reskilling and upskilling pathways and we have right now, which isn't much. So we need to build that capacity within the system I think we could do it but we need to train up the companies how to work together to build these pathways and then very intentional way, just thinking they know how to do it and they're just holding back. That's not it. It's about we all need to get better together as a community and here's the thing I wanted to also mention Paul, because I wanted to play up on or play off of what Cheryl was suggesting with the universal learner. We're trying to reimagine the economy and reimagine good jobs, we must reimagine workforce development as we know it, and think about all the learning we're leaving off the table, or leaving on the table, because we're not engaging what's happening on the job with intentionality. When we look at all the learning that's happening from work experience job experience and are able to document that learning and validate it, you would have an entirely new workforce development system and if we built the capacity for not 10 not 20 not 50 not 100 but 10,000 companies are more 50,000 companies to be able to actually have more intentional training that's documented and share, we would have an entirely new learning ecosystem. And I think we need to focus on that because there's learning happening, but it's not being assessed is not being validated and it's not being documented in a transcript that could be shareable with post secondary institutions are with other employers. So as we're thinking about this reimagining, I think we need to re look at what the workforce development system looks like and understand that employers are as much educators and could be as much registrars as we want them to be. But it's going to take a big system building effort to get them there and if we're doing it, we could do more reskilling and upskilling we can be documenting those skills those advancement opportunities, but making sure that that learning is valued is documented. And it's as valued as learning anywhere else, and that's going to take a big lift, but I think we can do it. And that's the kind of reimagine that we're that we're trying to do at the chambers to figure out how can we leverage employers and build their capacity to be the trainers and to be those registrars in this new economy. Well, I would love to turn to Cheryl to talk more about transcript and learning and knowledge, but alas, I cannot because we're out of time but I want to thank all four of you for just doing an amazing job of tackling these difficult questions with brevity and grace and clarity. And I'm going to turn it over to Mary Alice now for our closing thoughts. And that was a fantastic set of panels and thank you for the really really thoughtful discussion so I'm just going to share a few quick reflections before we wrap up. First I really do want to thank our panelists for really a lot of excellent contributions there. Just a couple of quick thoughts that I just want to double down on, particularly when we're thinking about the federal policy conversation. We heard a lot about this idea that getting people into good jobs as a team sport, and that improving existing jobs is also a team sport. So again, when we think about where we're going to direct dollars I think about who are the organizations these intermediaries like Dr. Polito and Slate Z in Los Angeles the National Fund for First Development, the Labor Management Fund, SCIU that really bring those partners together, the chambers as well, that bring those partners together that's hard work. It's really regularly funded right now and it's just this critical function that we know is essential to making, to making these pathways into good jobs work. Another big theme that I certainly caught my attention and I hope caught the attention of folks listening there is that apprenticeship is really again it is a high quality equity based workforce development strategy that really equitably shares the costs of learning and training between workers and employers. And that thinking about ways to really expand access to apprenticeship to many more populations and many more occupations should be a primary focus of policy and I hope policymakers will consider that it's incredible how much consensus there is on that point across many different arenas. And then the last point I just want to mention is two more points quickly is again, we heard a lot about, you know, the importance of investing in workforce development and it is really important to know that historically we are still massively under investing, under investing in workforce development and job training, compared to our counterparts, we're, we're just not, we're not putting dollars into this, this activity, and it shows I think in terms of how people have to really try to struggle hard to sort of sustain the kinds of partners and relationships that are so necessary to make this work. And then the last point I want to get back to is this idea of how do we define what a good job is, you know, this is tricky. But I think we have a pretty good sense of a living wage combined with a set of benefits and protections that make work secure make it stable, and make it something that that that people can sort of stay in for for a long period of time and hopefully we're going to have appropriate events. When, when our bets memo says that we really need to take an all of government approach to creating a good jobs economy. We're not saying that that's an exclusion of the private sector, quite the country. But what we are saying is that creating a good jobs economy is part of the job of all of government in the sense that it's not just it doesn't just belong to the Department of Labor doesn't just belong to the Department of Education. We have investments going through our Department of Transportation we have investments going through the Department of Commerce we have investments going through the Department of Agriculture. And to the degree that all of these different agencies at every level of government have a common conception of what a good job is and the importance of creating good jobs. The better that means it's all of government in the sense that we're all pulling in the same direction towards a common understanding of what the goal is around what a good job is. And the last point I'll say and I really do want to double down on this is, we need to focus on creating good new jobs but to a number of points made by the panelists. We also have to improve the jobs that are out there we need to make every job in America, a good job. That means dealing with the large numbers of jobs and particularly in our publicly funded care systems that don't meet anyone's definition right now of a living wage job, and that is just something that needs to be addressed. And I will, with that, turn it over to John Schnur of America achieves to finish us out. But thanks to everyone for just a great conversation and thanks to Paul thing for some excellent moderation. Today, a learning session I'll just tell you briefly recap a couple of themes I think came out. First of all, I think this last 90 minutes underscore what a moment, but yes of crisis, this is in our country, but also a moment of hope. And the need for this being a moment of action. We heard a number of panelists describe programs that really match the research that shows we actually have programs that lead to demonstratively better wage and employment outcomes. We heard maps from good jobs and outcomes and invest, including in the both the employers and the workers, the wraparound support to the local intermediaries to make those possible. This can work with support at large scale. We also heard that there's several problems to solve for. We need to make work pay and good jobs good jobs, we need to better match people who do already have skills with good jobs there's not enough and recognition of existing skill with credit for prior learning and intermediaries that match people to the jobs that good jobs and put a hiring for it. And that's actually a mapping of supply and demand and a matching functions needed. We heard about the need to make sure where there actually is a gap between supply of skilled talent and the needs to map where those good jobs are to map the skill adjacent populations and figure out how to in an effective evidence based way build a supply of skilled jobs and a laser focus on wage outcomes and good job outcomes. So there's several problems to solve for. I also is one other point that I heard. Abby Solomon made the point when she was asked by a Paul the moderator, what can policymakers do. She is for something said look, we can increase the connections and I'll give this as an example before I make the closing point between long term care and healthcare and she said that actually can better health outcomes and better career outcomes. And actually in some ways that underscores one of the core points that came out of this whole panel, the opportunity for policymakers, the evidence base suggests that Abby's right, and you focus on better outcomes in a sector, you can focus on better career outcomes to help each other. The public will reflects this too. The Gallup poll I mentioned at the beginning shows that 75% of Democrats and 75% Republicans or more support a nationwide strategy for paid work and training when it's coming from specific sectors, infrastructure, childcare, broadband, and more. So I think if there is in this coming effort on infrastructure, hopefully bipartisan, focus on building good jobs as are being called for by aligning a skill strategy to rebuild our economy better than before, while building up people's careers into good jobs, both the focus on the outcomes of building back our country better, the focus on careers can reinforce each other with the evidence base that was cited today. Thank you to the New America Foundation, thank you to our moderator, thank you to our great speakers and panelists, thank you to this fantastic set of guests and we wish in some ways most importantly in the coming weeks the best of wishes to Congress Administration to take all these ideas and others and turn this into law that can equip communities around the country to solve these problems for our country, for our economy, and for our workers and employers moving forward. With that, thank you all and look forward to seeing you all soon.