Summary

Collaboration among federal, state, local, and other stakeholders is essential if real progress is to be made in healing racial divisions in our country. The federal government invests billions in programs aimed at improving equality and diminishing substantial barriers to progress by racial and ethnic minorities. There is scant evidence, however, about which programs are most effective at achieving diversity, equity, and inclusion goals. Creating a temporary commission consisting of officials from relevant agencies can fill this gap. It can begin the process of building a body of evidence about what works and reinvesting in more effective practices. The commission would be responsible for inventorying programs designed to improve diversity, equity, or inclusion; assessing the body of evidence about them; and clarifying common goals. The Inclusion, Diversity & Equity in American Life (IDEAL) Commission would make an important contribution to finding more effective remedies to some of our country’s most lasting, difficult wounds. In fact, it would reinforce the Biden-Harris Administration’s recent executive order, “Advancing Racial Equity and Support for Underserved Communities Through the Federal Government,” which stated unequivocally that “[a]ffirmatively advancing equity, civil rights, racial justice, and equal opportunity is the responsibility of the whole of our Government.” A close working relationship between the commission proposed here and the Equitable Data Working Group established by the executive order would be essential.

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Competitive job markets are critical to the success of the national economy, spurring innovation while boosting wages and labor equality. The moment is ripe for the new administration to foster competitive job markets by banning noncompete agreements (noncompetes). New empirical evidence shows that noncompetes have harmful effects on job mobility, wages, competition, entrepreneurship, and equality. Yet noncompetes are widely included in employment contracts. And inconsistent state rules on noncompetes (and their enforcement) have led to employee confusion and disputes among state courts.

A tough, consistent federal strategy to eliminate noncompetes is needed. Several recent federal and state initiatives addressing noncompetes have created momentum that the new administration can build on to rapidly address this issue. The Biden-Harris administration should (1) adopt a federal ban on noncompetes, (2) actively educate the public about their labor-mobility rights (and actively support those rights), and (3) take proactive steps to ensure compliance with labor-mobility policy. Specific steps the new administration could consider include:

• Barring noncompete agreements through legislation or executive order. If barring all noncompetes is not yet feasible, a federal ban on noncompetes imposed on low-wage and unskilled workers would be a good first step.
• Issuing executive orders that (i) restrict or eliminate government contracting with companies that use noncompetes; and (ii) require employers in states that restrict noncompetes not to sign noncompetes with employees in those states, and/or to give prominent notice of the unenforceability of noncompetes in those states.
• Requiring employment contracts to include a notice about employees’ right to leave their employer.
• Banning secrecy imposed by employers regarding salary information.
• Requiring the Department of Labor, Federal Trade Commission, and Department of Justice Antitrust Division to collaborate to actively enforce laws and policies governing noncompetes nationwide.

Challenge and Opportunity

Noncompetes Hurt Workers and the Economy

Noncompete agreements are contracts that prohibit employees from working for or becoming a competitor for a certain period of time. By restricting employees from switching employers or starting their own competing businesses, noncompetes have harmful economic effects. They depress wages, reduce entrepreneurship, and impede efforts to correct inequities in labor markets. In the past decade, a wealth of research—including diverse empirical, experimental, and theoretical studies—have revealed the adverse effects of noncompete contracts and similar restrictions on the free movement of human capital. As a 2018 article states, “policymakers, economists, and legal scholars…overwhelmingly conclude that the harms of noncompetes far outweigh their potential benefits.” The research shows that lifting noncompete restrictions—thereby increasing job mobility—is good for entrepreneurship, wages, industry and regional economic growth, and equality.

Entrepreneurship

Increased enforcement of noncompetes favors large, incumbent firms. Studies find that markets become more concentrated when noncompetes are adopted and enforced. When employees sign noncompetes with established firms, start-up companies have difficulty recruiting talent. Indeed, a ban on noncompetes in California generated greater and faster innovation because employees with good ideas that their employer did not want to use were able to take those ideas elsewhere.

Wages

Noncompetes decrease wages. Employers calibrate compensation largely based on competing external offers. When external offers are reduced, employers face less pressure to increase wages. In 2015, Hawaii passed a law banning noncompete and non-solicitation clauses from employment contracts in the high-tech industry. A recent study found that Hawaii ban increased employee mobility in the high-tech sector by 11% and increased new-hire salaries by 4%. Noncompetes even decrease wages for employees who have not signed them. In a market that enforces noncompetes, wages and mobility are lower for everyone, including those not directly bound by noncompetes. These impacts can last a long time. A 2017 study found that post-employment restrictions have persistent wage-suppressing effects that last throughout a worker’s job and employment history. 

Equality

Restrictions on job mobility have a disproportionate negative effect on certain demographics. In job markets, discovering one is competitive depends on the frequency with which one is exposed to information about one’s comparative options in the market. In job markets where workers don’t often move from job to job, the “price” of labor (i.e., the terms and conditions of an employee’s contract) will lag behind an employee’s true market value. If an employee discovers their undervalued labor compensation by receiving an external (better) offer from a competitor employer, the employee can use that information to negotiate a higher salary with their current employer. If the current employer offers to match the higher salary, the competitor employer can come back with an even higher offer. This process continues until one employer backs down, leaving the employee better and more fairly compensated as a result.

The existence of noncompetes cause this process to break down by taking away employee bargaining power. Noncompetes harm equality in several ways as a result. First, noncompetes exacerbate the gender pay gap. Women are more likely to have geographic constraints based on family and spousal obligations. Noncompetes that restricts employee capacity to compete within a region therefore disproportionately hurt woman. Second, taking away employee capacity to entertain outside offers can cause historical pay gaps to persist or widen. Employees cannot discover their true value without external offers. The more external offers are available, the more equity norms and competitive pressures from mobility drive employers to raise wages as retention efforts. Third, white women and people of color are more likely to have non-monetary preferences for a workplace that is free of discrimination and hostility and that values diversity. For example, if a woman discovers that her employer systematically allows harassment of its female employees, she will have a strong interest in examining other opportunities in the market. A noncompete restricting her mobility will prevent her from escaping the discriminatory workplace.

Noncompetes are on the Rise

The use of noncompetes is on the rise in the United States. Employment agreements routinely prohibit workers from accepting a competitor’s job offer, and/or from working in a competing business for a specified period in a certain geographic area. The Treasury Department recently estimated that nearly 30 million workers are bound by noncompete provisions. A study of executive employment contracts found that 70% of the firms investigated imposed noncompetes on their top employees. A forthcoming 2021 study found that noncompetes are also common for non-executive employees with base salaries below $100,000 per year. A 2019 report noted that “the use of noncompetes is so pervasive that even volunteers in non-profit organizations, in states that do not even enforce them, are asked to sign away their post-employment freedom.”

Workers currently have limited recourse when it comes to contesting noncompetes. Court decisions in cases involving noncompetes are highly unpredictable, and litigation can be prohibitively expensive and burdensome for individual employees. Some states—recently including Massachusetts, Washington, Maryland, and New Hampshire—have passed laws voiding most noncompetes, but this state-specific legislative patchwork can be difficult for workers to understand. Many employees, especially those outside the professional class, end up complying with noncompetes even if they aren’t enforceable in the state in which they work (or are planning to move for a new job). Moreover, more and more people are employed at companies with a national presence. Such companies often demand adherence to a noncompete nationwide, even for employees in a state that won’t enforce noncompetes. Inconsistent state rules have also led to conflicts across state lines when an employee bound by a noncompete moves to a state that doesn’t enforce them. This has resulted in a “race to the courthouse” when employees change jobs, as each side tries to get its own state law to apply. It has even led to the unseemly spectacle of courts in different states attempting to prohibit each other from enforcing their respective state policies. Finally, the complex legal landscape surrounding noncompetes further entrenches established companies. Companies with substantial legal and financial resources can be more aggressive in using noncompetes to drive out competition even when their legal claims are on weak grounds. Incumbents may even use a reputation for suing employees who leave as a strategy to deter other employees from leaving.

National Leadership is Needed

Noncompetes aren’t just bad for workers, but for our economy and society as a whole. We do better when workers can easily move between jobs. Increased mobility makes it easier for employees to find employers that most value their skills, and for employers to find employees who are good fits. But without guaranteed labor mobility, the anti-competitive impulses of individual firms create a collective-action problem. Smart policy is needed to ensure everyone benefits from a continuous, high-quality, and flexible labor pool over time. The problem of noncompetes is not a problem that can be solved by states on their own. National leadership is needed. Several federal bills limiting the use of noncompetes (either entirely or just for low-wage workers) have already been drafted. The White House issued a Call for Action in 2016 urging states to limit the use of post-employment restrictions. Also in 2016, the U.S. Treasury Department issued a report on noncompetes warning that when noncompetes are enforced, “innovations spread more slowly, possibly inhibiting the development of industrial clusters like Silicon Valley.” In 2020, the Federal Trade Commission convened a meeting to consider a rule prohibiting noncompete clauses. But so far the FTC has taken no action.

The Biden-Harris Administration can build on this momentum to eliminate noncompetes in the United States once and for all.

Plan of Action

To support talent mobility and enhance human capital, the Biden-Harris Administration should (1) adopt a federal ban on noncompetes, (2) actively educate the public about their labormobility rights (and actively support those rights), and (3) take proactive steps to ensure compliance with labor-mobility policy. Below, we recommend specific steps that the new administration could take towards these goals.

Adopt a Federal Ban on Noncompetes

A federal ban on noncompetes could potentially be achieved by a Federal Trade Commission (FTC) rule barring noncompetes, action through the Department of Justice (DOJ), an executive order, and/or legislation. If barring all noncompetes is not yet politically feasible, targeting noncompetes imposed on low-wage and unskilled workers would be a good first step. 

FTC rule/DOJ action

The FTC and the DOJ’s Antitrust Division have only recently started to consider anti-competitive practices in the labor market to be within their scope of regulating competition and unfair trade practices. The FTC could use its regulatory power under Section 5 of the FTC Act’s prohibition on “unfair methods of competition” to issue a federal rule to ban noncompetes nationwide in appropriate circumstances, such as concentrated markets. The FTC could enforce this rule by bringing action against employers who use, or seek to use, noncompetes to restrict employee mobility in ways that interferes with competition. 

Moreover, California’s Section 16600 and Section 1 of the federal Sherman Act share the language of prohibiting contracts “in restraint of trade.” The California law has been consistently interpreted to ban employment noncompetes. Using this interpretation as precedent, the DOJ could leverage the language in Section 1 of the Sherman Act to ban employment noncompetes nationwide in appropriate circumstances, such as in concentrated markets.

Executive Order

The Biden-Harris administration can also issue executive orders that (1) restrict or eliminate government contracting with companies that employ noncompetes; (2) require employers in states that restrict noncompetes not to sign them with employees in those states, and/or to give prominent notice of the unenforceability of noncompetes in those states.

Legislation

Two recently proposed federal bills propose legislative solutions to the problem of noncompetes. The Workforce Mobility Act proposed in 2018 would prohibit and prevent enforcement of noncompetes for employees who “engage in commerce or in the production of goods for commerce.” Under the proposed bill, employers would be fined for each employee subject to a violation of this law, or for each week the employer was in violation. The House version of the bill goes further, specifically stating that noncompetes may violate antitrust laws.

The Mobility and Opportunity for Vulnerable Employees (MOVE) Act of 2015—proposes a full or partial ban on noncompetes, in addition to barring noncompete agreements entirely for low-wage workers. The bill would also require companies to notify job applicants ahead of time if they would be asked to sign a noncompete if hired.

The new administration could work with Congress to revive and pass one or both of these bills. Any federal bill governing noncompetes should also grant employees a private right of action for damages if they are asked to sign an overly broad noncompete agreement.

Actively Support and Publicize Labor-Mobility Rights

Even in states that ban noncompetes, a significant number of employers still require employees to sign them. For example, employers in California—a state that bans noncompetes—insert noncompetes into their employment contracts at rates similar to non-California employers. Because employees in these states may not be aware that noncompetes are illegal, unlawful noncompetes can have a significant deterrent effect on employee mobility. The administration should act to educate the public about their labor-mobility rights, and to crack down on employers unlawfully promulgating noncompetes. The Biden-Harris administration should issue an executive order directing the Department of Labor, FTC, and the DOJ Antitrust Division to collaborate to actively enforce existing labor-mobility laws, and to pursue some or all of the actions below.

Require “right-to-leave” notice in employment contracts

The Biden-Harris Administration should require employment contracts to include a notice about employees’ right to leave their employer. The Defend Trade Secrets Act (DTSA), enacted by Congress in 2016, provides a model for this type of mandatory notice. The DTSA gives employees immunity from criminal or civil liability for reporting illegalities at a company even if reporting reveals trade secrets. The DTSA requires employers to include notice of this immunity in “in any contract or agreement with an employee that governs the use of a trade secret or other confidential information.” Similarly, the Federal Government should require employment contracts to include a clause about the rights of an employee to compete with their previous employer after leaving a job. This clause should be required for all contracts in states that ban noncompetes post-employment. If a federal noncompete ban is enacted, it should apply nationwide. The Federal Government could further promote market competition by amending the DTSA to include a notice on the limits of trade secrets explaining that general know-how and information that is readily ascertainable from public searches cannot be deemed secret and proprietary.

Enforce mobility rights beyond formal noncompetes

In employment contracts, restrictive covenants do not simply appear as a formally labeled “noncompete clause”. Employment contracts regularly include other restrictive provisions such as requirements for non-solicitation of customers and coworkers, pre-innovation assignment agreements, nondisclosure agreements, and non-disparagement clauses. Restrictions like these impose harms similar to noncompete clauses: preventing employee mobility, slowing innovation, stifling start-ups, and concentrating industries. Customer non-solicitation requirements in particular effectively function as noncompetes “because a business without clients is like a pool without water.” Coworker non-solicitation clauses essentially reduce the job opportunities of every former co-worker that the employee in question knows, regardless of whether those coworkers agreed to be part of a restrictive regime. Nondisclosure agreements, theoretically designed to protect trade secrets, are often structured to include not just proprietary knowledge, but also readily ascertainable knowledge about customers and coworkers. The knowledge that a departed employee would use to solicit a former coworker—knowledge pertaining to a person’s skills, talent, personality, experience, and salary—is not an employer’s trade secret and should not be restricted by contract. California courts have recently recognized that employee non-solicitation clauses comprise unlawful restraints on trade under Section 16600. The new administration can build on precedent set in California to control proliferation of overly restrictive provisions in employment contracts nationwide.

Ban salary secrecy

The ability to reveal one’s salary to co-workers and others in the industry is protected by both federal and state law. The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) holds that prohibiting any employee—unionized or not—from discussing salaries violates their rights under the National Labor Relations Act to engage in concerted activity for mutual aid. The NLRB has specifically ruled that confidentiality agreements are invalid when they contain provisions that “prohibit employees from disclosing certain personnel information unless authorized by the Company.” Many state laws also make it illegal for any employer to prohibit pay discussions among employees. Digital platforms such as LinkedIn, Glassdoor, Salary.com, and SalaryExpert make compensation information easily searchable. Yet employers have attempted to claim that use of salary knowledge in recruitment efforts by a former employee of a co-worker can amount to a breach of a nondisclosure agreement. The administration should extend the NLRB rule beyond the context of labor unions, banning salary secrecy.

Ensure Compliance with Labor-Mobility Policy

As discussed above, litigation alone cannot address the widespread use of noncompete clauses. Employees often lack the money, time, expertise, or will needed to challenge a noncompete in court. The Federal Government must instead be proactive in understanding the effects that common employer practices and provisions have on labor mobility. Several state attorneys general have taken such a proactive stance. Illinois and New York in particular have recently investigated employers who required their employees to sign unenforceable contracts. These states used consumer laws worded similarly to the federal FTC Act as bases for prosecution. For example, Illinois’s Consumer Fraud and Deceptive Business Practices Act prohibits “unfair methods of competition and unfair or deceptive acts or practices.” The state attorney general’s office explains that: “An ‘unfair practice’ is one that (1) offends public policy as established by statute, common law or otherwise, (2) is immoral, unethical, oppressive, or unscrupulous, or (3) causes substantial injury to consumers. A non-compete that violates existing common law or statutory restrictions could satisfy each prong of this test, creating a cause of action in states with similar consumer protection statutes or strong unfair competition laws.”80 The Department of Labor and the FTC should collaborate on investigating employers who require their employees to sign unjustifiable noncompetes, using the FTC Act as grounds for investigation.

Conclusion 

The modern economy depends on employee mobility. Our workforce needs to be able to respond to sudden disruptions like COVID-19, which radically shifted demand for workers, and to longer-term geographic and economic trends. Employees should have the freedom to take the jobs that are best for them, or to start new companies if they have innovative ideas that otherwise will never see the light of day. 

Unfortunately, companies are too often able to prevent employees from leaving, either because the law permits it in many states or because employees don’t know their rights. This control depresses wages and employee initiative. It reduces innovation and the adoption of new technologies. And it keeps people stuck in dead-end jobs when they have better alternatives available to them. The current hodgepodge of state laws and the threat of enforcement of a noncompete means that even states that ban noncompetes can’t get the full benefit of the protections they provide to their workers and innovators. It is time for the Federal Government to step in.

The Biden-Harris Administration is committed to providing the best possible education to all students. Research has established that students of color experience benefits to social and emotional development and learning outcomes when taught by educators of color. Diverse educators and administrators are particularly important for schools with many students of color. Accordingly, schools across the country should prioritize hiring highly-effective teachers of color. This policy proposal identifies opportunities to recruit—and retain—highly effective K-12 educators of color.

As a first step, the Biden-Harris Administration should create an Under Secretary of Diversity at the Department of Education (ED), charged with organizing a White House Summit to establish the value of a diverse teacher workforce and convene leaders to identify best practices and a strategy for Federal Government support of state, local, and private programs. Following the summit, ED, led by the Under Secretary of Diversity, should revisit current programs that identify high need areas, such as math, science and special education to include the pressing need for diverse educators. Simultaneously, the administration must work with Congress to reauthorize the Higher Education Act, incorporating the previously introduced College Transparency Act to ensure robust data reporting and evaluate the effectiveness of financial incentives.

Challenge and Opportunity

A sense of belonging is widely accepted to be a basic human desire. Academic success can be heavily impacted by a sense of belonging in one’s academic environment. For students who do not feel that they belong, it can affect their mental and physical health, and future criminal activity. Schools have at least four racialized areas potentially affected by teacher composition: content, teaching methods, feedback type, and disciplinary practices. Teachers of color are one piece of the solution. Recognizing similarities between shared attributes and/or social identities of themselves and their teachers, connecting with people they can trust and be open with can help support a sense of belonging, which is critical to academic success.

Even as the demographics of the United States continue to shift, the teacher workforce remains overwhelmingly white, leading to a demand for teachers of color that far outweighs the supply. While certain states have had some success recruiting more teachers of color, individuals pursuing teaching careers face significant obstacles, causing many to leave the profession earlier than their white colleagues. For many first-generation students and students of color, the path to a profession in teaching can be perilous, with unsustainable wages and work conditions. Some federal programs designed to help teachers manage student debt and continue teaching have failed the very people who our students need to stay in the profession. The COVID-19 pandemic has only exacerbated current inequalities in educational outcomes, presenting additional challenges to all teachers, and particularly teachers of color.

Anecdotal evidence suggests that college students are very interested in teaching but lack supported pathways and incentives to pursue a career in the field. Many passionate and talented state, local, and private leaders are working to support highly effective teachers of color, and a strong evidence base shows the potential for successful small-scale programs. However, programs and successes are inconsistent and piecemeal across the country. The Biden-Harris Administration should build on these opportunities to create a strong federal infrastructure that establishes teaching career pathways and supports teachers of color in the classroom.

The success of our country in meeting the needs of the future STEM workforce and productive labor market will depend on our ability to effectively educate a diverse population. Technology is the future—and the present. In STEM and other core workforce areas, the United States is trailing behind other industrialized nations. As the workforce of the future continues to evolve, we need to prepare our students. In our memo, we involve the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH), as they, along with the Department of Education (ED), will want to prioritize the workforce of the future—ensuring that the United States is once again leading the world in breakthroughs in science and technology.

Plan of Action

On Day One, the incoming Secretary of Education should: 

Appoint an Under Secretary of Diversity, ED

On Day One, the Biden-Harris Administration should create a new leadership position at ED, an Under Secretary of Diversity. This individual will serve the role of a Chief Diversity Officer, tasked with examining the role of race at the agency, in curricula, teacher preparation and development, and in school and district leadership nationwide, and with ensuring that national education initiatives are inclusive and actively anti-racist. Once in place, the Under Secretary will launch a White House summit, revisit existing programs and practices at ED to increase support for highly effective teachers of color, and support passage of critical legislation.

Launch a White House Summit on how to recruit and retain a highly effective, diverse teacher workforce.

The Biden-Harris Administration should develop an interagency working group to coordinate efforts between ED, NSF, NIH, and the National Science and Technology Council (NSTC), as well as education funders and business leaders who have named teacher diversity as a clear priority, to convene leaders who have been successful in finding, developing, and retaining educators of color. This effort would be led by the Under Secretary of Diversity at ED and the Assistant Director for the Education and Human Resources Directorate at NSF.

A White House convening would establish that delivering the best education to students of color is a national priority. The broad goal would be to quickly generate new ideas and learn from best practices toward the goal of establishing a teacher workforce that mirrors the diversity of the American student population. The more specific goals would be:

• Identify early pathways for students of color to consider careers in education, beginning in high school.
• Increase the inclusion of minority teachers in federal task forces, advisory committees, and policy settings.
• Support effective, innovative traditional and alternative-certification models that ensure recruitment and retention of candidates of color.

The Department of Education should prioritize supporting highly effective teachers of color.

ED should revisit current programs to include diverse educators in the requirements for high-need areas. The department currently provides incentives for states and school districts to hire and for individuals to pursue teaching. A comprehensive plan to substantially increase the diversity of educators must also consider retention and the professional experience after training. ED should promote retention by providing incentives for school districts to hire cohorts of diverse educators in order to reduce isolation and provide support. A “best-practices” grant program to ensure deep investment in programming also warrants renewed attention.

ED should:

• Rebuild the Office of Civil Rights (OCR). Under the leadership of Betsy DeVos, without opportunity for public comment, OCR altered procedures, allowing the office to dismiss hundreds of civil rights complaints, disregarding ‘burdensome’ cases. These procedural changes should be reversed. Additionally, the office should ensure all data collection returns to 2016 levels of collection and rigor, including restoring special reports—such as the discipline report and the education equity report—to regular reporting levels.
• Issue a “Dear Colleague” letter to establish that supporting the recruitment and retention of diverse, highly qualified teachers is an agency priority. The agency should promote all federal programs available to aspiring and new teachers and amplify potential uses of Title I, II, and IV. Additionally, it should increase support to districts, including providing technical assistance and webinars.
• Immediately restore federal loan forgiveness for teachers. ED should expand the definition of Nationwide Teacher Shortage areas: districts should be enabled to consider the demand for culturally-competent educators in highly diverse schools, enabling teachers meeting these high-need categories to benefit from cancellation of up to 100 percent of Federal Perkins Loans, and other benefits.12 It should also simplify recertification requirements and reduce penalties for the Teacher Education Assistance for College and Higher Education (TEACH) Grant Program.
• Enhance the Support Effective Educator Development and Teacher Quality Partnership Program. The Office of Elementary and Secondary Education should launch a grant competition designed to retain high quality teachers of color, including proposals to hire cohorts of teachers of color. The Department should double the current budget of these programs, given growing concerns about increased teacher shortages following the pandemic.
• Increase diversity within education research, including among its leadership. The Institute of Education Sciences (IES) should increase diversity of researchers, peer reviewers, and programs supporting researcher development and early career scholars of color. Relatedly, the President should appoint diverse members of the Board of Education Sciences. Increase rigor of review and add accountability to states education plans. This should include efforts to effectively support students of color and provide technical assistance to support state success. ED should update federal guidance for the use of Title Funding to support a diverse, highly-effective teacher pipeline. This should include residency programs and support for colleges and universities graduating effective teachers to high-need districts supported with Title I funding.
• Ensure that federal funding for “grow-your-own” programs is widely distributed. This initiative should particularly encourage partnerships with programs that have a track record of recruiting and retaining (beyond 5 teaching years) successful, diverse, and effective teachers. A growing body of scholarship is establishing the value of recruiting people from local communities that could successfully transition as teachers.

Urge Congress to Reauthorize the Higher Education Act (HEA), incorporating the previously proposed College Transparency Act (CTA).

Sustained federal investment in achieving diversity of K-12 educators that align with the diversity of our students will lead to improved social and emotional development and learning outcomes of our diverse population. CTA legislation is needed to enable the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) to develop and maintain a secure, privacy-protected postsecondary student-level data system in order to accurately evaluate student enrollment patterns, progression, completion, and post collegiate outcomes, as well as higher education costs and financial aid. The Higher Education Act should be reauthorized to expand access, improve affordability, and promote completion for all students, including prospective teachers of color. Reauthorization should include critical protections for the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program.

Summary

The Federal Government should further invest in, support and scale four existing approaches to building local skills and vibrant, self-sufficient local economies by coupling localities’ needs with workforce development and small-scale manufacturing. This is achieved by scaling local programs and initiatives which harness the Maker Movement, a community-driven, grassroots effort to enable people to design, prototype and manufacture projects, solutions and products.

Specifically, the Federal Government should:

• Leverage makerspaces and Fab Labs as local sites for preparing the current and future workforce through real-world maker-centered learning and Employer Validated Training Programs.
• Build the “MakerNet” to connect employers with skilled talent.
• Cultivate makerspaces as engines for small businesses.
• Launch FabCity America to challenge cities to make what they consume.

By harnessing early successes from across the country, these policy solutions can rapidly stand up localized programs to immediately support more American communities grappling with skills shortages. This need is exponentially more critical in the face of COVID-19, as 80% of U.S. manufacturers have articulated that their business will be financially affected by the pandemic and 53% require a change of operations, including the increased use of automation technologies.

Summary

To address the massive unemployment caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, the Biden-Harris administration should establish a Digital Work Projects Administration (D-WPA), creating government-funded jobs that people can perform from their own homes or other safe locations. Inspired by the Depression-era Work Projects Administration, or WPA, the modern D-WPA would put millions of unemployed Americans to work serving the public good and speeding the country’s economic recovery.

In the D-WPA, work will be digital instead of physical. Digital tools allow many jobs to be done from anywhere good internet access is available. D-WPA participants could work safely and effectively no matter how long the pandemic limits in-person employment. Working remotely, D-WPA participants could help combat the COVID-19 pandemic and mitigate its economic and societal impacts. At the same time, participants would learn, practice, and improve digital skills of increasing value in the modern workforce.

The D-WPA should be established within the Department of Labor, with sufficient funding to put up to 4 million Americans back to work quickly and safely. Funds for this program should be requested in the next COVID-19 recovery package. In the meantime, existing DOL employment and training programs could be used to support an initial cohort of workers for the D-WPA, demonstrating proof of concept while efforts are underway to secure full funding. The D-WPA should create both public- and private-sector positions supporting the national response to the pandemic’s health and economic impacts.

Summary

The COVID-19 pandemic has had devastating impacts on communities across the country. Tens of millions of people lost jobs and millions of school children have fallen behind. To help people recover from the effects of the pandemic, the next administration should invest in proven solutions by working with Congress to embed evaluation and evidence-building into economic stimulus legislation, strengthening the foundation for an equitable and efficient recovery.

The new administration and Congress should ensure that any forthcoming economic stimulus legislation include provisions requiring commitments to build new evidence and utilize existing evidence. Specifically, the administration should establish a task force coordinated by the National Economic Council to:

1. Work with agencies and Congress to set aside a portion of recovery resources (up to 1%) for evaluation and evidence-building, based in part on agency learning agendas created in response to the Evidence Act.
2. Create a National Economic Mobility Innovation Fund at the U.S. Department of the Treasury.
3. Empower the Office of Evaluation Services (OES) within the General Services Administration (GSA) to help agencies develop evaluation and evidence-building capacity.
4. Create Excellence in What Works in Economic Mobility Awards.

These strategies, which we are collectively calling a “Stimulus Evaluation Act,” should be integrated into current and future economic recovery efforts.

Summary

Today’s unprecedented health and economic challenges demand a transformative approach to workforce training. Already, technology that immerses a person in a digital space (virtual reality) or that enhances reality with digital features (augmented reality) is making it possible to prepare workers faster and better for high-quality, high-demand jobs. Government investment in augmented and virtual reality (together known as “XR” technology) will supercharge workforce training, helping Americans across the country get into jobs that benefit them and our society.

The Federal Government should partner with industry to identify and implement “shovel-ready” applications of XR technology. Initial efforts should focus on demonstrating proof of concept by deploying XR technology towards two goals; namely:

• Work through the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to train 50,000 nurses over the next four years.
• Work through the Department of Labor (DOL) and Department of Energy (DOE) to train 50,000 solar-energy installers over the next four years.

These goals are readily achievable thanks to existing programmatic infrastructure at agencies with explicit workforce-development missions. Follow-on work could expand applications of XR technology to workforce training in other domains and/or through other agencies.

Summary

The next administration should establish a national fellowship for scientists and engineers to accelerate the transformation of research discoveries into scalable, market-ready technologies. Entrepreneurship is driving innovation across the U.S. economy—with the troubling exception of early-stage science. Transitioning scientific discoveries from the laboratory into prototypes remains too speculative and costly to garner significant support from industry or venture-capital firms. This makes it difficult for many of our nation’s science innovators to translate their research into new products and puts the United States at risk of falling behind in the quickly evolving global economy.

Entrepreneurial fellowships for scientists and engineers have emerged as an effective strategy for translating research into new products and businesses, showing tremendous early impact and a readiness to scale. The next administration should advance this proven strategy at the federal level by creating a national entrepreneurial fellowship. This new entrepreneurial fellowship would leverage our nation’s investments in science to drive national prosperity, security, and global competitiveness.

Summary

Due to technology’s disruptive force in society and on the labor force, voices representing business and state governments have recently emphasized the need to revisit the social contract among firms, employees, governments, and citizens. This need has only intensified with the COVID-19 pandemic. The economic emergency associated with the pandemic has left 21.5 million workers unemployed and an additional 11.5 million workers with reduced pay to date. Today’s unemployment numbers are far worse than during the 2008 Great Recession. Underscoring the racial disparity seen in this economic crisis, Black and Latinx workers are currently experiencing higher rates of unemployment than white workers.

The next president should immediately sign two Executive Orders (EOs) to address the current crisis in work and the urgent economic emergency that has left Americans evicted, unable to pay bills, make rent, or put food on the table. The first EO would modernize unemployment insurance nationwide by boosting state unemployment insurance programs. The second would establish a U.S. Future of Work Commission tasked with developing a new model of work that addresses the key challenges the Fourth Industrial Revolution presents to American workers today.

Summary

The next administration should institute a national White House Youth Innovation Showcase similar to the discontinued White House Science Fair to promote and provide new opportunities for increased K–12 participation in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM). As a national platform to amplify and inspire scientific accomplishments by students of all backgrounds, the Showcase will help the next administration strengthen the U.S. STEM talent pipeline and pave the way for future growth in American science and technology industries. The Showcase will also provide an opportunity for the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) to facilitate public-private collaborations that provide resources for participating students and support regional initiatives to increase diversity in STEM fields. The next administration can use the announcement of the Showcase to reveal its STEM agenda, outlining its policies to support STEM education and a diverse STEM workforce while articulating how its STEM goals will support emerging technology industries and overall economic development.

Just before Congress left for the holidays, the House Education and Labor Subcommittee on Higher Education and Workforce Investment held a hearing examining ways to prepare for the future of work. This has become a hot topic this year, particularly as presidential candidate Andrew Yang has incorporated it into his platform and elevated it onto the national debate stage. The issue highlights the societal and economic changes that are underway due to the development of new technologies such as automation and artificial intelligence. These technologies will cause major shifts in the types of tasks performed and skills required in our occupations, as well as the creation of a host of new employment opportunities. However, with this growth, there are concerns that low- and medium-skilled workers could be displaced and left behind. The federal government has a long history of administering job training and reskilling programs for displaced workers but these new technologies present unique challenges.

We asked our scientific community to submit questions and important topics that should be discussed and we provided them as an online resource for Members of the Committee before the hearing. The insightful, data-driven submissions we received included questions about lifelong learning, the expansion of apprenticeships, the decline in funding for workforce development programs, the impact of automation on the workforce, and the roles of the public and private sector in helping workers adapt to the future of work. All of these topics were touched upon during the hearing. Agreement between Members of the Committee and witnesses was most apparent on how the current patchwork of federally-supported workforce development programs are not enough, and that their funding should be increased.

Chairwoman Susan Davis (D, CA-53) opened the hearing by critiquing the lack of federal investment in U.S. workers. She emphasized how the U.S. government spends only 0.1% of its budget on workforce development, while other industrialized nations spend an average of six times more. This can leave valuable workforce programs strapped for cash and harm workers looking for help in landing their next job. In fact, displaced workers are expected to navigate the confusing network of federal programs on their own, needlessly extending their search for assistance and a new job. Chairwoman Davis noted that reskilling alone will be insufficient to prevent worker displacement and that government programs should prioritize lifelong learning.

Ranking Member Lloyd Smucker (R, PA-11) added in his opening statement that the Taskforce on Apprenticeship Expansion was created to reduce the red tape and establish new apprenticeship programs. To understand the complexity of the federal training program landscape, the Government Accountability Office performed a study in 2009 and found that the federal government administers 47 different job training programs in nine different agencies. Many of the current retraining programs target specific categories of workers, such as those who have been laid off as jobs moved overseas or those who are underqualified, instead of targeting the training needs for specific types of work. However, studies like the Taskforce on Apprenticeship Expansion’s 2018 report have found that training and apprenticeship programs focused on developing the skills that local businesses need to succeed are often more effective than their current federal counterparts.

The statement that triggered one of the more compelling exchanges during the hearing came from former Acting Secretary of Labor, Seth Harris. He insisted that the US does not suffer from an inability to find workers with the right skills, often called the “skills gap.” If there was an actual gap between workers’ abilities and the skills needed to succeed in the workforce, wages would dramatically increase for workers with the right skills and employers would spend more money on training their employees to learn those skills. This has not happened. He explained that the skills gap argument blames workers for not knowing what skills would be in demand when choosing an education, instead of acknowledging a systemic disconnect between degree and certification processes and employers’ needs, the lack of apprenticeships, and reduced funding for on-the-job training.

When Representative Mark Takano (D, CA-41) asked what Congress can do to help, Mr. Harris advocated for more transparency in the credentialing system and stronger Trade Adjustment Assistance Community College Career Training (TAACCCT) programs to help people get the right skills to succeed in the workforce. There are thousands of programs that claim to help workers earn certifications in sought-after skills; however, there is little data on which programs are actually effective. More transparency into the success rates of these programs would allow workers to enroll in the best programs for their career plans. The Department of Labor’s TAACCCT program began in 2011 and awards grants to community colleges to improve their curricula “to help adults learn skills that lead to family-sustaining jobs.”

The creation of learning savings accounts for workers was also the subject of vigorous discussion. James Paretti, Treasurer for the Emma Coalition, emphasized that the biggest challenge will be for both employers and employees to understand that some displacement is inevitable and workers must be prepared. Stockpiling funds is one way that workers could automatically save for their future education and weather employment challenges. A variety of learning savings account models have been proposed, with workers, employers, and the government all having the option to contribute funds at assorted levels, similar to the contributions made to retirement accounts.

This hearing covered a lot of ground, but Members have not completed their fact-finding into the future of work. Chairwoman Davis announced that her Committee will be holding another hearing about this critical issue. As Congress prepares to dig deeper into the future of work, we encourage you to email any data-driven questions or workforce topics that should be discussed to sciencepolicy@fas.org.