[Many U.S. workers without degrees have been] weakened by decades of stagnant real wages, automation of low-skill jobs, and the erosion of benefits.
In a June 24 Fortune opinion column about the need to get Americans back to work amid the economic crisis triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic in a way that doesn’t exacerbate economic inequality, Terah Crews, a vice president of learning solutions at Guild Education, turned to JFF CEO Maria Flynn for insight.
Crews notes that wage stagnation set in after the Great Recession because training programs designed to get people back to work during that crisis emphasized short-term employment opportunities over long-term career potential.
Illustrating the need to avoid that mistake in programs designed to help people recover from the current economic crisis, Crews cited Flynn’s observation that many people who lost work during the COVID-19 crisis find themselves in especially dire circumstances because the bottom quartile of Americans without degrees entered the pandemic “weakened by decades of stagnant real wages, automation of low-skill jobs, and the erosion of benefits—including health insurance—as the ranks of gig workers grew.”
