Strategies to Help Young Workers Succeed and Advance in the Labor Market

A newly released report from the Urban Institute as part of the WorkRise initiative, “Supporting Youth Economic Mobility,”offers a comprehensive look at what works to help young workers succeed and advance in the labor market, with a special focus on young people of color and those with low incomes. One of the report’s authors, Shayne Spaulding, a senior fellow in the Income and Benefits Policy Center at the Urban Institute, spoke recently with Spotlight. A transcript of that conversation has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

To get started, what is WorkRise?

WorkRise is an initiative that’s a partnership of multiple organizations, national funders and also businesses and nonprofits. They’re all focused on the issue of employment and the workforce and how to advance economic mobility for the workforce.

And this landscape report grew out of that?

Correct. It sits within Urban as a one of its special initiatives that was launched a few years ago.

And the aim for this report was to look at the state of youth employment opportunities at the moment and then recommend some strategies to make that better?

The purpose was really to lay out the evidence base for effective strategies—looking at the research and information on best practices to understand better how to support youth, both in terms of policy and practice. The idea was that also coming out of the pandemic, we knew that youth were disproportionately impacted in a lot of ways and wanted to take account of things and see what the evidence pointed to in terms of future directions.

Why don’t we start with the status quo or where you found things to be at the moment, if you want to hit the major themes there.

Sure. We have an increasingly diverse workforce. We also know that we have some demographic trends that point to needing to support younger workers as we have an aging baby boom population that at some point will retire and we’ll need to fill a lot of jobs in the labor market. So, just really trying to think strategically about the pipeline of workers as an increasingly diverse workforce, but also one that faces a lot of challenges.

There’s been a lot of research around supply side strategies or strategies that are focused on skill development. And so, we have a lot of evidence around different practices and approaches that help to build worker skills and help them be successful in the workplace. But there is less evidence around the demand side strategies; what are the things that you could do in the workplace to improve economic mobility for youth? And we highlight some opportunities there for further evidence building.

You mentioned the pandemic and the impact on this area. Were there particular things that you found, either pros or cons, coming out of the pandemic for youth employment?

I think the one that we’re all familiar with, especially those of us that have children or had children in school, was just the disconnection from school or having to go to school remotely. It was very much a shakeup for young people in that way. And then also, a lot of the jobs that were stopped during the shutdown period were jobs that youth often work in, like the food and retail industry. The slowdowns in those fields really affected youth and a lot of the summer youth employment programs discontinued, at least in that immediate period. Youth were not only not building skills for the future, but they weren’t able to earn income for their families. And for many young people, they are contributors to their family income.

I think on the plus side, I think it kind of made visible some of the conditions of work and the importance of work for youth. Sometimes we think, oh, this is just a little extra money for someone. That’s true for some young people, but for many young people, they’re contributing to their families. So, it brought to light what it means to have jobs that don’t pay enough for someone to support their families if they’re a young parent or contributing to their household and also brought to light issues of disparities based on race or gender in the particular occupations where young people tend to work.

And did the higher incidence of remote work have any particular impact? Or not so much given that these are more entry-level jobs?

I think not so much. Where you see that more is in white-collar jobs, but I do think it’s maybe changed some viewpoints on work flexibility and created a change in expectations among young people.

Let’s walk through some of your suggested policy changes in a little bit more depth, such as young people needing skills and supports to get good jobs. What are some of the things that you feel can be done there?

There’s a lot of evidence around the need to design programs that are aligned with the labor market and the jobs that are in demand. That means designing programs in partnership with employers and figuring out ways for people to build skills that are not necessarily within higher education. Sometimes that’s the right path, but sometimes there are alternative pathways. And so, there are a lot of opportunities to build, for example, work apprenticeship programs that could help promote access to good jobs and advancement in certain areas of the labor market. We also know that for young people that face a lot of disadvantages, there’s a need to provide support—financial support, counseling support, and support on how to navigate the labor market. Those services have to go hand in hand with skills development.

That’s a nice transition into the next one, which is better employee practices and labor policies.

We know there is some evidence around, when there have been increases in the minimum wage, youth are disproportionately impacted. But we haven’t seen an increase in the minimum wage in a very long time. And so, I think what we see often we see in this labor market is employers offering much higher wages because there’s been such a demand for talent. But there’s a need for a basic floor, and so I think that’s just one thing to consider. As I said earlier, this isn’t just play money for young workers—they’re often contributing to their families or have families of their own. And so, an adequate minimum wage is critical. The labor market’s been changing, and we know that people are working in different ways, not only in traditional employment relationships but also in the gig economy. What are the protections there for young workers? What are the ways of building worker power in those contexts? What are the ways that youth can use their voice or power to affect changes that improve their employment outcomes?

And are there union programs that are specifically targeting young workers?

I don’t know for sure. I wouldn’t be able to point you to the specific programs, although I believe there are such programs.

What about the importance of providing young people with multiple pathways to careers?

As I said earlier, there’s been big increases in college enrollment over the last number of decades. And for many young people, college has been pushed as the only option, and partly this is because we know that getting higher levels of education is associated with better employment outcomes. But it’s complex in that we know that college debt is a big issue. We know that there are pathways to good jobs that don’t have to do with college, and that might be a better match for some. And there are apprenticeships that can be a great pathway, and sometimes an apprenticeship can be linked to an educational program as well.

And what about community colleges or less than four-year institutions? There’s been a lot of attention paid to that in recent years. Does the research show that that’s having an impact?

The most recent data shows a preference towards shorter-term credentials and community college, and that might be because some of the programs offered are more directly connected to a job. Community college is so much less expensive than going for four years and you can always start in community college and transfer. Quite a significant percentage of community college students are actually high school students, so this is also a way of getting someone on a pathway early.

A large percentage of community college students are parents. Are there particular strategies that can be used to help young people who are in that situation?

We have a whole initiative at Urban called the Spark Collaborative, that’s focused on young parents and post-secondary education. So, lots of resources there. In addition to child care, food insecurity’s a big issue on college campuses. Housing is so expensive. We know there’s a housing affordability crisis. So, all those things put together makes it especially hard for a parent who has extra financial and family responsibilities.