AI, the Future of Work, and Equitable Advancement

Sieberg: The future of work is rapidly changing due to automation and AI, adding to existing trends impacting employment and the racial wealth gap. In fact, by 2030, McKinsey estimates that 4 1/2 million jobs held by African Americans will not exist or will experience reduced wages. Hello. I'm Daniel Sieberg, and you're watching "Getting Connected," powered by Comcast Newsmakers. We're on location at the 2024 Skills Summit in Washington, D.C. And joining me now is Michael Collins. He is the Vice President of the Center for Racial Economic Equity at the nonprofit Jobs for the Future. Michael, thank you so much for being here.

Collins: Thanks so much for having me.

Sieberg: Let's start with your motivation for forming the Center for Racial Economic Equity. How was that started?

Collins: Sure. The Center for Racial Economic Equity really grew out of the crisis that the country was in in 2020, with the murder of George Floyd and the outbreak of the pandemic and its disproportionate impact on the Black community. JFF, like a lot of organizations, really kind of looked inwardly to assess kind of our performance with that population. We work on education and workforce development. And what we saw, we had some positive outcomes but not nearly as much as we would have liked to have. And so we made a concerted effort to kind of focus on ensuring that this population was better supported.

Sieberg: And now tell me about some of the challenges then that you're seeing Black Americans are facing within education, but also the workforce within this changing landscape of new technologies and digital skills.

Collins: Absolutely. I mean, one of the things that I would start with is the challenges are multifaceted, but I would start with actually progress. So Black people have made tremendous progress in education and postsecondary and workforce, but gaps and kind of disparities still remain. So when Black people go to postsecondary education, when they take on kind of workforce development training, often they're in programs and trainings that are not directly aligned to labor market opportunity. In fact, they are concentrated in industries that are associated with low wages and they are disproportionately in front-line roles. Those are roles that are often, you know, customer-facing, often not well compensated, often aren't accompanied by benefits and schedule flexibility, issues around job quality.

Sieberg: And so what are the strategies then that the Center is applying? What's working the best?

Collins: One of our priorities is really working to transform kind of our education and training system to increase the number and share of Black learners and workers who have access to high-wage, high-demand programs and training. And we think that, if we do that, we will disrupt what we characterize as occupational segregation. So occupational segregation being kind of the concentration of that population in lower-wage jobs. Part of that challenge is around the programs and training. The other part, though, really is racial bias. And so we have to really work on both, and we do. So we work with community colleges. We work with workforce organizations to get more Black learners and workers into high-wage, high-demand programs, but we also work with employers, our employer partners, to increase kind of the uptake of equitable talent practices, ensuring that, you know, applicants are able to compete. They're able to apply for roles where race is not kind of determinant of whether or not they would be successful in those roles. So some of the work around that includes kind of anonymized hiring, you know, kind of anonymized skills-based assessments, really practices to decrease the chance that race would be a factor in hiring.

Sieberg: And as you're looking ahead and applying these strategies, I understand your organization has a new North Star. How would you characterize that?

Collins: Absolutely. So JFF, we're guided by our North Star and our North Star is that, in 10 years, 75 million people facing systemic barriers will be in quality jobs. So that's about double the number of workers in quality jobs today. And, by quality, we mean quality by -- it's a range of dimensions, so it's not just wages. But it's wages, it's benefits, it's scheduling flexibility. That's what we're guided by. Our mission is equitable economic advancement for all. So, when we say all, to ensure that populations who historically have not been successful are in that North Star. So, when we begin to count our success towards people with quality jobs, we want it to be inclusive. So that's a big part of how we think about the North Star.

Sieberg: Congratulations on all the excellent work you're doing. Michael Collins of the Center for Racial Economic Equity at Jobs for the Future. Thank you so much for joining us.

Collins: Well, thanks so much for having me.

Sieberg: And thank you as well for watching. For more conversations about digital equity and broadband expansion, visit gettingconnected.com. I'm Daniel Sieberg.