In the post-World War II period, workers with a high school diploma or less were able to attain jobs with middle-class wages in American industry. Good jobs were available in manufacturing and other blue-collar industries that employed large numbers of high school-educated workers. But as automation, globalization, and related phenomena have led…

Americans share a strong belief that the country offers access to opportunity. In 2017, 82 percent of Americans said they had achieved the American Dream or were on their way to achieving it. But do all Americans--regardless of race, ethnicity, gender, or socioeconomic status--have equal access to the American Dream? This report examines…

The economic and social landscape that young people encounter today is substantially more complex and challenging than the one faced by earlier generations. Technological change and globalization have transformed the labor market, increasing the value of postsecondary education and hollowing out industries that once employed many workers who had…

Between 1991 and 2016, employment among White, Black, and Latino workers grew by 20 percent, while employment in good jobs soared by 35 percent. Yet the opportunities and benefits of the modern economy have not accrued evenly across the three groups. Discrimination and a history of racial injustice in this country have led to Whites gaining a…

This is the executive summary for the report, "The Unequal Race for Good Jobs: How Whites Made Outsized Gains in Education and Good Jobs Compared to Blacks and Latinos." Between 1991 and 2016, White workers built on their past educational and economic privileges to attain bachelor's and graduate degrees in historically high numbers and…

This is the executive summary for the report, "Women Can't Win: Despite Making Educational Gains and Pursuing High-Wage Majors, Women Still Earn Less than Men." Gender wage disparities have always been an intractable problem in the workforce. Women are doing all the right things to close wage disparities--going to college in greater…

The gender wage gap, the disparity in pay between men and women, has narrowed to 81 cents in 2016 from 57 cents on the dollar in 1975. Nevertheless, the gap persists. Over the course of a career, the gender wage gap results in women earning $1 million less than men do. To close this gap, women have relied primarily on the advantages conferred by…

This report projects education requirements linked to forecasted job growth in healthcare by state and the District of Columbia from 2010 through 2020. It complements a larger national report which projects educational demand for healthcare for the same time period. The national report shows that with or without Obamacare, the United States will…

This report, provides detailed analyses and projections of occupations in healthcare fields, and wages earned. In addition, the important skills and work values associated with workers in those fields of healthcare are discussed. Finally, the authors analyze the implications of research findings for the racial, ethnic, and class diversity of the…