Worker Voices, comprised of representatives of all 12 Reserve Banks, is
designed to reach workers who do not have a college degree and the
comparative job stability it represents.
Worker Voices explores one of the great questions of the post-pandemic labor situation: what do workers want out of a job and a job market?
Worker Voices goes behind employment numbers presented by entities such as the US Bureau of Labor Statistics. Workers, in their own words, talk about living in an economy influenced by market forces and Federal Reserve policy.
Atlanta Fed president Raphael Bostic and Philadelphia Fed president Patrick Harker led a 90-minute discussion about results Bostic called a "grassroots brand of intelligence gathering." Topics discussed at "Shifting Perspectives and Expectations on Employment," the August 10 installment of Connecting Communities, a webinar series for community development professionals, included workers' expectations of job quality and their efforts to develop skills in hopes of landing a better job.
Worker Voices is an important step in deepening our knowledge of the dynamics of sustainable employment during profound shifts in the labor market, Bostic said. "To get a true sense of how real people are living in the economy, we have to talk to real people. That's what the Worker Voices project is all about."
The labor market is at a watershed moment and Worker Voices provides insights that policy makers and employers would overlook "at our own peril," Harker said. "The soft data provided by worker voices are equally important [as], if not perhaps even more important than, numbers-driven hard data. ... I'm excited not just about this report, but for the research that is going to grow out of it."
Worker Voices was designed to reach workers who do not have a college degree and the comparative job stability such a degree represents. The effort grew out of a working group focused on workforce development and comprised of representatives of all 12 Reserve Banks. The project is co-led by Sarah Miller, a principal adviser with the Atlanta Fed's Center for Workforce and Economic Opportunity, and Ashley Putnam, who directs the Philadelphia Fed's Economic Growth & Mobility Project.
Miller said the research was born from conversations about growing labor shortages and the national narrative in 2021 that questioned where workers were and why they were not coming back to jobs as the economy reopened.
As the effort expanded, all 12 Reserve Banks became involved. This partnership became one Bostic described as among the first formalized System-wide outreach efforts designed to target a population hit hardest by the COVID-19 pandemic, when 22 million jobs vanished in two months at the pandemic's outset.
The Worker Voices project team conducted 20 focus groups between May and September 2022. Of the 1,243 workers and job seekers who responded to a questionnaire, 175 were selected to participate. The main topics involved what workers experienced at the outset of the pandemic and how they weathered the economic recovery.
The discussions reinforced how profoundly participants felt the pandemic employment shocks as they navigated an objectively strong labor market with an increased expectation of finding a job with high-quality characteristics.
The following is a selection of comments from unidentified participants, along with insights by Miller, on two of the several themes that emerged from Worker Voices.
On the tight labor market:
- "I've probably put in for the last three months about, I would say, 80 to 100 applications, and so since I haven't been able to find a job. … I've been pulled in for interviews and not selected because I'm not what they're looking for."
- "Jobs are out there, but they're not really giving you enough money to maintain. … $12, $13, $14 an hour is just not going to work."
- "Because they did let a lot of other people go, everybody that stayed had, you know, double, triple whatever they had to do. And it was very, very stressful, you know. … I kind of had a little bit of, you know, breakdown in a way. So I started to see that I didn't want to do this, you know. I didn't want to devote my life to a company. So it made me kind of rethink my life and look for something that was more fulfilling."
Miller noted that "these experiences of not finding work in a hot labor market left many workers feeling not just confused but frustrated. They hear how strong the economy is rebounding, but they're still left out."
On enhanced expectations of job quality:
- "We want certain benefits, we want certain hours, certain schedules, and before the pandemic, we were not like that. That is, what they gave us, we accepted because we needed the work. And after the pandemic we realized … work sometimes needs us more."
- "I think during the pandemic it kind of flipped the tables a little bit. Like … I know that I can bring a lot to the table. Are you going to uphold your ... half as an employer? So at least for me, it gave me a different perspective of like ... l don't settle for less."
- "It's kind of easier now [to find a job] because people kind of have eased up on that part [job requirements] ... They'll change the title and lower the pay. ... It could be the same administrative position they offered last year; it's just lowered by $2 hourly pay."
Miller noted that "workers are now expecting more from what they get out of a job, not just how they're paid, but how they're treated. These are qualities many high-wage workers take for granted. Now, regardless of the type of role or sector, workers expect more than they might have prior to the pandemic."
Harker said Worker Voices' use of a qualitative method provides useful descriptive insights into workers' experiences. These views can inform those who have studied economics as they "rethink some of the premises we had previously relied upon," Harker said.
The project has influenced Harker's own view, he said. "When I hear someone utter the apocryphal question, 'Why doesn't anyone want to work anymore?,' my response is to ask in return, 'What are you doing in your workplace to make them want to work for you?' And point them to the Worker Voices project."
David Pendered
Staff writer for Economy Matters