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
- How Working Women are ‘Leaning In’ Director of Family Values @ Work weighs in on Sheryl Sandburg’s book
- A Victory for Paid Sick Leave in Portland The Oregon city becomes the nation’s fourth to to require employers to offer earned sick leave to employees
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News from Ford:
Meeting the Needs of Today’s Families
Marking 20 years of the Family and Medical Leave Act
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Events:
A Special Preview of ‘Behind the Kitchen Door’
How do workers’ low wages, and the poor working conditions that so often go along with them, affect the meals that arrive on our restaurant tables?
Regions
Team
What We're Following
- Coordinating Human Services Programs with Health Reform Implementation Center on Budget and Policy Priorities provides a tool kit for states to improve their current eligibility and enrollment service delivery model for low-income Americans
- Workplace Flexibility in the United States: A Status Report Families and Work Institute examines emerging trends 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
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