Fresh Strategies for Creating Jobs at Big Ideas for Jobs

Strength­en­ing the econ­o­my and increas­ing job oppor­tu­ni­ties remains crit­i­cal for our nation’s eco­nom­ic health. Big Ideas for Jobs — a project of the Insti­tute for Research on Labor and Employ­ment at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia, Berke­ley, and sup­port­ed by the Casey Foun­da­tion — is a one-stop shop for orig­i­nal job-cre­ation ideas for the nation, as well as a source for best prac­tices imple­ment­ed at the state and local level.

Launched in 2011 at the height of the reces­sion, the project has once again tapped into the minds of some of the bright­est experts from a vari­ety of fields to come up with a new round of big ideas this year that can lead to sus­tain­able jobs today. Their pro­pos­als span areas of fed­er­al pol­i­cy, indus­tries and entre­pre­neur­ship. The project also released a sup­ple­men­tal report by Bob Brehm of the Nation­al Hous­ing Insti­tute offer­ing lessons on non­prof­it social enter­prise job cre­ation in the com­mu­ni­ty devel­op­ment field.

New big ideas include:

• How state hir­ing cred­its can be used to best spur job cre­ation. State and fed­er­al pol­i­cy­mak­ers grap­pling with the after­math of the reces­sion have pur­sued ways to spur job growth, includ­ing adopt­ing hir­ing cred­its to encour­age employ­ers to cre­ate new jobs. This new big idea from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia, Irvine, pro­vides the lat­est evi­dence on the effect of these hir­ing cred­its — a first since stud­ies of the New Jobs Tax Cred­it of the 1970s. The brief also pin­points spe­cif­ic types of hir­ing cred­its that have shown suc­cess in boost­ing job growth.
   
• Solv­ing the prob­lem of job-skill mis­match­es, par­tic­u­lar­ly among youth and low-income fam­i­lies, through inno­va­tion. In today’s econ­o­my, even edu­cat­ed, expe­ri­enced work­ers strug­gle to find employ­ment. The chal­lenges are greater for youth and adults in low-income fam­i­lies, who tend to have less access to high­er edu­ca­tion, train­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties, work expe­ri­ence and net­works. A big idea by Fels Con­sult­ing at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Penn­syl­va­nia argues that employ­er-dri­ven job-train­ing pro­grams would alle­vi­ate skill mis­match­es and require far less gov­ern­ment sup­port than the tra­di­tion­al pub­lic ones.
   
• The grow­ing role of microen­ter­prise in state and local strate­gies. Microen­ter­prise devel­op­ment is a strat­e­gy with a near­ly 25-year his­to­ry in the Unit­ed States. Exist­ing data demon­strates the pow­er of these very small busi­ness­es to pro­duce jobs for their own­ers and oth­ers, many of whom are dis­ad­van­taged in the labor mar­ket. Yet invest­ment in microen­ter­prise assis­tance is rel­a­tive­ly mod­est. A new big idea by FIELD at the Aspen Insti­tute details strate­gies for state and local gov­ern­ments to sup­port microen­ter­prise development.
   
• Using tax cred­its to cat­alyze pri­vate cap­i­tal invest­ment for social ben­e­fit. The Cal­i­for­nia Orga­nized Insur­ance Net­work Com­mu­ni­ty Devel­op­ment Finan­cial Insti­tu­tion Tax Cred­it pro­gram, admin­is­tered by the Cal­i­for­nia Depart­ment of Insur­ance, has a track record of cre­at­ing jobs in some of state’s most under­served com­mu­ni­ties through impact invest­ing. Expand­ing the pro­gram through­out Cal­i­for­nia and to oth­er parts of the coun­try presents a promis­ing oppor­tu­ni­ty to direct pri­vate cap­i­tal to pub­lic pur­pose. This big idea by InSight at Pacif­ic Com­mu­ni­ty Ven­tures explores recent pro­gram devel­op­ments and plans for expan­sion, and dis­cuss­es key dri­vers nec­es­sary to cre­ate sim­i­lar pro­grams in oth­er states.
   
• Job oppor­tu­ni­ties that will expand as a result of Afford­able Care Act imple­men­ta­tion. The health care indus­try in the Unit­ed States account­ed for $2.7 tril­lion in spend­ing in 2011. There are many career fields in health care for indi­vid­u­als of all skill lev­els, and the sec­tor has low unem­ploy­ment rates com­pared with the rest of the econ­o­my. A big idea from researchers at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia, San Fran­cis­co, George Wash­ing­ton Uni­ver­si­ty and the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia, Berke­ley, focus­es on the new entry-lev­el and low-skill job oppor­tu­ni­ties result­ing from Afford­able Care Act imple­men­ta­tion — and how, with the right edu­ca­tion pro­grams, work­ers could be pre­pared to fill them.
   
• Job growth by reduc­ing or elim­i­nat­ing over­ly bur­den­some licens­ing reg­u­la­tions. Entre­pre­neurs around the coun­try are pio­neer­ing new busi­ness­es that are stim­u­lat­ing job growth from the ground up. But all too often, bur­den­some gov­ern­ment reg­u­la­tions squelch such entre­pre­neur­ship, which in turn lim­its local job growth. A big idea from the Insti­tute for Jus­tice iden­ti­fies four fea­tures of busi­ness licens­ing laws that often inhib­it job cre­ation and eco­nom­ic growth — with real-life examples.
   
• How non­prof­its can cre­ate job oppor­tu­ni­ties with waste diver­sion strate­gies. Job cre­ation is pos­si­ble through waste diver­sion strate­gies that result in reuse, recy­cling and reman­u­fac­tur­ing, accord­ing to a big idea from the Geor­gia Insti­tute of Tech­nol­o­gy. Non­prof­its in par­tic­u­lar can play a sig­nif­i­cant role in gar­ner­ing a share of this growth, but growth will only hap­pen with the wide­spread adop­tion of more sup­port­ive pub­lic poli­cies at all lev­els of gov­ern­ment, such as tech­ni­cal and finan­cial assis­tance, career paths and appren­tice­ships and eco­nom­ic devel­op­ment incentives.