Stephen Goldsmith - Growing Fairly: How to Build Opportunity and Equity in Workforce Development (Brookings / Ash Center Series, Innovative Governance in the 21st Century)

GrowingFairly

How to Build Opportunity and Equity in Workforce Development

Stephen Goldsmith

Kate Markin Coleman

BROOKINGS INSTITUTION PRESS

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Copyright 2022

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Library of Congress Control Number: 2021949166

ISBN 9780815739487 (pbk)

ISBN 9780815739494 (ebook)

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Composition by Elliott Beard

1. Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms Dr. Michael Lomax

Together, we span over forty years of elected and civic leadership in the city of Atlantaone a former chair of a county commission that includes most of Atlantas residents, and the other the current mayor of the city. During that time, we have witnessed Atlanta become the tenth largest economy in the country and eighteenth in the world. Atlanta is the headquarters of several Fortune 1000 companies and multinational corporations.

We come together not only as local leaders cheerleading regional successes but as national advocates of more equitable economic opportunity. Even before COVID-19 hit, the Black-white wage gap was worse in 2020 than it was in 2000. The pandemic compounded the problem. COVID-19 has disproportionately affected workers of color, many in service jobs, who suffered the most in terms of both job loss and COVID-related death and illness. Of course, we are not surprised by these results given the numerous social and educational disadvantages faced by lower-income individuals in our region and in our wider society. Black women find themselves even worse off comparatively, as they try to overcome barriers related to race, poverty, and gender.

Our organizations, the city of Atlanta and UNCF, brought together a group of Atlanta educators and skill builders in an effort described in this book to highlight and address these problems. The analysis in that project, indeed, reveals disparities. For example, the data demonstrates that Black workers in Atlanta are concentrated in low-wage roles and have been disproportionately hit by job and wage declines due to COVID-19. These disparities are even more pronounced in the highest paying career areas, including business, finance, information technology, and math-related professions.

However, we write this foreword not as an ode to despair but, rather, as a national call to action to local leaders who can make a true difference by increasing economic mobility for all residents at the same time they address race and gender inequity. In Growing Fairly: How to Build Opportunity and Equity in Workforce Development, Stephen Goldsmith and Kate Markin Coleman provide a hopeful and comprehensive set of design principles that, if implemented with fidelity and persistence, will lead to better jobs and greater mobility for more of our residents.

The book emphasizes the critical need for a more effective and comprehensively designed regional workforce approach. We start by stressing the importance of education. We are fortunate. Both of us have advanced degrees. One of us, with a Ph.D., taught college literature before serving as president of Dillard University and has devoted the last sixteen years to moving UNCF to a position where it has exceeded $5 billion in funding for HBCUs and college students everywhere. The other, with a J.D., served as a judge before her election as mayor of one of the countrys most influential cities. After seeing men come into court and try to fill out papers without even a ninth-grade education, she implemented a set of major initiatives to assist the separately managed K12 system, including creating the citys first chief education officer, while establishing partnerships to advance training and apprenticeships. We both acknowledge that educational access includes not just college degrees but helping more individuals achieve the post-secondary necessary training to thrive in the workforce.