On Friday, the U.S. Government released its influential, monthly jobs report, which showed that unemployment rose slightly to 3.7%, but remains close to its recent 50-year low. This simple report–which primarily focuses on the unemployment rate–can cause the stock market to rally or drop, spur a company to offer lower or higher wages, and factor into how the Fed sets interest rates. But the report–like much of our workforce data–hasn’t kept up with the changing realities of the job market, like the explosion of gig work, which goes uncounted. And even though it reports on average wages, it still doesn’t tell us much of what Americans say matters most to them about their jobs: whether the pay is enough to achieve a good quality of life for themselves and their families, if the benefits keep them healthy or let them take a day off when their kid is sick, and if they feel respected and have purpose on the job.
If we don’t reimagine U.S. workforce data (and soon), it could leave the country behind the times. We’d be less equipped to handle major trends that have already caught many policy and business leaders flat-footed, such as the “Great Resignation,” where 98.3 million people quit their jobs in a two-year period, or the recent precipitous decline of mothers and caregivers in the workforce. In a U.S. economy dominated by services that maintains its competitive edge thanks to the talent and innovation of our workforce, accurately measuring worker experiences is not a “nice-to-have”–it’s key to global competitiveness.
