EOP: Reimagining Workforce and Economic Development in the South

Why It Matters

Redefining workforce development is crucial to ensure public dollars generate quality jobs for Southern workers, directly influencing economic mobility and the nation’s overall productivity.

Key Takeaways

• Counting jobs and credentials no longer ensures quality employment.
• Most post‑secondary credentials add little economic value for workers.
• Tax incentives often favor big firms, leaving communities under‑served.
• Focus should shift to upgrading low‑wage essential jobs.
• Collaboration across employers, workers, and government is essential.

Summary

The Aspen Institute’s Economic Opportunities Program convened a panel of Job Quality Fellows to rethink workforce and economic development in the Southern United States. The conversation, part of a broader "Fixing Work in the South" series, highlighted a growing job‑quality crisis and questioned the effectiveness of traditional metrics that count jobs created or credentials earned.

Speakers argued that the old playbook—relying on sheer job numbers, tax incentives, and credential accumulation—fails to deliver decent wages or career pathways. With more than 1.5 million post‑secondary credentials on the market, research shows most provide little economic value, while public subsidies often flow to large corporations without improving local job quality. Low‑wage workers remain trapped in insecure, poorly paid positions despite full‑time or multiple jobs.

Matt Helmer cited the American Job Quality Study, noting only 40 % of Americans consider their jobs good. Fellows shared personal examples: Kim Eckert described growing up in a small, highly incarcerated Louisiana town where luck, not skill, dictated employment outcomes; Colby Hall pointed to $60 billion in federal investment in Appalachia that has not lifted median incomes or job quality. The panel emphasized upgrading essential roles—such as home‑care aides and CNAs—rather than merely funneling workers into new credentials.

The discussion concluded that a reimagined approach must be worker‑ and employer‑led, integrating workforce and economic development policies, and leveraging cross‑sector collaboration. By focusing on job quality, community ownership, and systemic investments in education, transportation, and health, Southern regions can create sustainable pathways to economic mobility and broader national prosperity.

Original Description

For decades, economic and workforce development systems have measured success primarily through job creation — the number of positions filled, the businesses recruited, the unemployment rate reduced. Yet for many workers, especially those in low-wage industries and economically distressed communities, job creation alone has not translated into economic security or mobility. More economic and workforce development leaders have begun to reckon with this gap, recognizing that traditional approaches are falling short — not for lack of effort, but because the systems were never fully designed with job quality as a goal.

In response, a growing number of practitioners are experimenting with strategies that go beyond placement and retention to ask a more fundamental question: what makes a job worth having? Job quality strategies — which address wages, benefits, scheduling, worker voice, and pathways to advancement — are increasingly finding their way into the toolkits of a range of organizations.

Join the Aspen Institute Economic Opportunities Program on Wednesday, April 1, from 2 to 3:15 p.m. Eastern time, on Zoom. In this conversation, we’ll hear how the Institute’s Job Quality Fellows are embedding job quality into their work across a range of contexts and strategies — from employee ownership models that give workers a direct financial stake in their company's success, to apprenticeship programs that create structured pathways to higher-wage careers, to worker advisory committees that bring employee voice into business decision-making.

Our speakers include Job Quality Fellows Kim Eckert (Craft Education / Western Governors University), Colby Hall (Craft Philanthropy), Daniel Marshall (Alabama Center for Employee Ownership / Ginkgo Bioworks, Inc.), Laurie Mays (Kentucky Chamber of Commerce Foundation), and moderator Matt Helmer (The Aspen Institute).

For more information about this event, visit: https://www.aspeninstitute.org/events/reimagining-workforce-and-economic-development-in-the-south/

To learn more about the Job Quality Fellowship Class of 2025-26: https://www.aspeninstitute.org/programs/job-quality-fellowship/class-of-2025-26/

This event is part of our Job Quality in Practice series: https://www.aspeninstitute.org/series/job-quality-in-practice-webinar-series/