Economic Fairness
Ensuring Good Jobs and Access to Services
Overview
The goal of this work is to help low-wage working families achieve economic self-sufficiency.
The Challenge
In the United States, millions of families have found that working hard is no longer a path to basic economic security. One in four working families (and the 21 million children in those households) is dependent on employment that offers poor job security, low pay, few benefits and little opportunity for advancement.
What We're Doing
We support two strategies to help low-wage workers move toward self-sufficiency.
First, to improve job quality held by low-wage workers, we focus on:
- Expanding access to unemployment insurance
- Ensuring that all workers earn a family-supporting wage and have access to paid sick days and paid family leave
We also help increase access to work supports by:
- Promoting efforts to adequately fund and expand coverage of benefits such as tax credits, food stamps, health care and child care
- Encouraging states to make benefit application processes more integrated, flexible and responsive to the needs of working families
- Expanding the delivery of benefits to new settings such as workforce services programs and community-based organizations
Learn more about how our strategies and approaches shape our grant making.
From the Newsroom
- Growing Support for Minimum Wage Increase With signs of bipartisan support, the issue is gaining momentum
- Improving Livelihoods by Raising the Minimum Wage Increases in eight states will affect one million workers
- Securing Labor Protections for Home Care Workers Guidelines would help home care aides achieve economic security
- Streamlining Access to Public Assistance Programs A Ford-supported project is testing ways to give families better access to key services
Regions
Team
What We're Following
- Workplace Flexibility in the United States: A Status Report Families and Work Institute releases the latest findings—from emerging trends to the impact felt across employment groups, low-wage and professional employees, and primary and secondary school teachers. 1 MB
- Labor Market Impacts of the Great Recession of 2007-09 Spotlight on Poverty and Opportunity reports employment, unemployment and underemployment gaps among U.S. workers
- The Three Faces of Work-Family Conflict Comprehensive look at the extent of work-family conflict in the United States and what the federal government can do
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