After each A New Promise of Work briefing, I found myself replaying the conversations long after everyone had left Zoom. Not because of a particular quote or breakthrough moment, but because of how the conversations evolved.
As part of a new national initiative called A New Promise of Work, NSC brought together people from more than 100 national organizations representing workers, employers, labor, education, philanthropy, workforce development, advocacy, and community leadership to explore a simple but ambitious question: What should work promise people in the future?
Immediately, familiar issues surfaced: quality jobs, childcare, transportation, economic mobility, employer accountability, skills, equity, and access. None of that was surprising. The sector has spent decades trying to advance and build solutions around these exact priorities, and they matter. But the conversations also revealed something else: we’ve become incredibly good at tinkering with and patching up the system we currently have. And I started wondering what would happen if we gave ourselves permission to imagine something entirely different.
Imagining a different future means listening to the people who will experience it. In our conversations, partners agreed: the future shouldn’t be built for the people who will experience it, but with them – moving workers, learners, employers, and practitioners from end-users to lead designers.
Across our conversations with partners from national organizations, three clear themes emerged:
So many of the people we talked to recalled workers who, after completing a training program, started earning more – only to lose access to essential supports like childcare, healthcare, and food assistance. It’s a moment that should feel like progress: the pride of completing a program, landing a better job, or earning a promotion. Yet that sense of achievement can be quickly erased by anxiety about how to make ends meet.
If you think about it, it’s an absolute absurdity. Learning a new skill, earning more money – these achievements should come with rewards that reinforce your efforts. Life should get easier, not more precarious. That’s why the people we talked to imagined a world without draconian benefit cliffs for workers, but with policies that reward advancement rather than undermine it. They imagined a world where “economic mobility” makes people more economically secure – and gives them a reason to keep moving forward.
Across our conversations, people described different versions of the same challenges they’ve seen after years of working in their organizations. They know that when they talk workers they’ll hear about the needs of more training, childcare services, help with transportation, and accessing SNAP benefits – and getting that support means different applications, confusing eligibility rules, endless documentation, and having to find the right people to call. They also know that if they talk about challenges with employers, they’ll hear problems like: “I need 20 trained workers next year, but I don’t know where to find them.” They’re wondering: should I call the workforce board? A community college? A job center? A state agency? An apprenticeship intermediary? These are known challenges that have persisted for years and years on the field. Organizations that serve workers, employers, and others know that people constantly get lost and confused in our current systems. Instead of a system that requires workers, employers, and practitioners to navigate overwhelming complexity as they pick their way through a maze of programs, systems, and bureaucracy, the people we talked to imagined aligned systems that work together so that people experience seamless access to the resources they need.
The future workforce system is one where workers, employers, and practitioners can simply plug in, rather than having to solder all the connections themselves.
Learn the skills. Earn the credential. Get the job. In the age of AI and rapid technological change, it’s almost hard to remember when work used to be that simple. That was the world in which the Workforce Investment Act (WIA) — the predecessor to today’s Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act — was passed in 1998. One person we talked to recalled just how different the world was then, saying, “When WIA passed in 1998, we just got the internet. Now we’re in a different time, where things never moved this fast. But this is also the last time we’re ever going to move this slowly.”
That really stuck with me. If this is the slowest that change will ever be, what kind of learning, exactly, do we need for what comes next?
If jobs, skills, and industries are going to continually change, people need opportunities to continually reshape their skills, talents, and opportunities. The future our partners imagined was one where people could continue to learn throughout their careers, not just in response to one technology or one moment of economic disruption. Learning wouldn’t be something that happens before work; it would be a fundamental part of work. They wondered aloud if apprenticeships or other work-based learning programs could teach us something about what learning needs to look like in the future. They asked what other models, including ones we haven’t imagined yet, could make learning and skills training something that is woven throughout a career, not something that ends once people earn a credential or land a job.
Addressing the impacts of AI on work matters. The benefits cliff matters. Work-based learning tax incentives, aligned funding, and data infrastructure all matter. We have decades of research, policy proposal recommendations, programs, and partnerships to draw from.
But the one thing I’m taking away from these conversations is that the future can’t be our regular collection of solutions for familiar problems. We have an opportunity to start with the future we want for work and work backwards – and reconsider who gets to help design that future in the first place. Workers, practitioners, learners, businesses, and community leaders already have tremendous wisdom to contribute. Despite the uncertainties many people experience around work, people still believe a better future is possible. And there is an incredible willingness to imagine something better.
