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A Gen Z Policy Agenda
“We're a
long way from a full recovery," Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell
said this week.
That
checks out. One year into the pandemic, a US economy that’s already
lost nine million jobs since last winter is slowing
again.
“Growing
at November’s pace of 245,000 new jobs, it will take 40 months to
regain jobs lost since the start of the pandemic . . .” Adam S. Hersh
and Roosevelt Fellow Mark Paul wrote for Groundwork Collaborative last month.
Even that pace “would still leave jobless new entrants to the labor
force and those in disguised unemployment.”
And that
was before we learned 140,000
jobs were shed in
December, with Black and Latina women experiencing the steepest
losses.
Entering
the labor market during a pandemic-driven double-dip recession is the
height of bad luck. And as the Great Recession taught
us, graduating
into a recession can harm wealth and earning potential well after an
immediate crisis ends.
To ensure
that bad luck doesn’t follow Gen Z for a lifetime, we must act now. As
Roosevelt Managing Director of Research and Policy Suzanne Kahn
explains in a new report, revamping our social insurance system
can:
- reduce
the long-term effects of recessions on new labor market
entrants;
- increase
these workers’ long-term attachment to the labor market
overall;
- stimulate the economy; and
- address
racial and educational disparities.
Learn how
in Building
Wealth for Generation Z: How Policy Can Help New Labor Market
Entrants.
A
complementary solution: student debt cancellation. For a primer on its
many benefits, read Roosevelt’s new fact sheet: Unburdened:
How Canceling Student Debt Can Boost Growth, Equity, and
Innovation.
Climate-Forward
“Today is climate day in the White
House, which means today is jobs day at the White House,” President
Biden said while unveiling a suite
of climate-focused executive actions on Wednesday.
After years of costly backslide,
these policies—and the explicit linkage of climate change mitigation
and economic gain—are a welcome course correction.
But the magnitude of this moment
demands deeper investment and swifter transformation. Two new
Roosevelt fact sheets capture the economic and human
potential.
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