California: The Post-COVID Future of Work

great why don't we get started um welcome everybody and and thank you very much for joining us uh as i said i am david lesher i am the editor at cal matters and for those of you who don't know us we are a non-profit nonpartisan statewide news organization we launched about six years ago to with a mission to raise public awareness about all the major issues facing california so this event is part of a series today that we are hosting with the milken institute about the future of work we did several events last year and we have several more planned this year so please keep an eye out there they're going to be good discussions um today we're going to talk about an economy that's really emerging as we know from pandemic and recession and especially what it means for those communities and people who are most impacted and who may be left behind without proper attention your cal matters host and moderator today will be jackie botts who covers the economy and inequality at cal matters as part of our california divide project which is really an unprecedented media collaboration throughout california where cal matters has embedded reporters at newspapers throughout the state to cover the issues of poverty and inequality we are committed account matters to being a really trusted source of information about all of the all the major issues in california so i'd encourage you to visit us at calmatters.org to subscribe to our daily newsletter and help support this free source of quality information by making a donation so finally i want to thank a tremendous group of panelists i'm really looking forward to a great discussion today jackie will introduce the panel now i want to thank our co-hosts at the milton institute and to introduce our co-host matt horton who's the director of the milken institute's california center matt thanks dave um i'm as dave said i'm matt horton and i'm a director at the milken institute's california center um like uh cal matters the milken institute is a non-partisan non-profit economic policy think tank and we're also really excited to be partnering with cal matters to bring you this series of conversations which aims to explore the opportunities that can enhance equity and opport and and other opportunities in the economy in a post-covered future of work landscape so and you know as dave mentioned even before the pandemic induced a statewide budgetary downturn you know i think we're all kind of familiar with california's economic landscape being kind of far from you know very equitable with some you know fostering some of the poorest census tracts in the nation you know the the covet 19 pandemic has only exacerbated these underlying inequities exposing the the various differences and opportunities afforded among the state's different demographic groups and you know these consequences have had disproportionate effects on on women and underserved black and brown communities affecting their abilities to meet basic needs and acquire protections through the social safety net or simply stay in the workforce and strive for more equitable economic mobility so you know through this work we hope to uh we think we can um you know better figure out how to distribute the state's past economic success in in cultivating more economic um or inclusive economic recovery that aligns investments and coordination that increase access to education housing and result in higher paying opportunities and employment opportunities around the state so um you know we should just get to the conversation and i'd like to introduce uh as dave mentioned jackie botts the economy reporter for cal matters who will introduce our esteemed speakers and panelists for the session and thanks for tuning in hello i'm jackie botts i am a part of cal matters california divide as dave mentioned we cover economic inequality at the local and state level around california and i am so excited about this very timely conversation with our fantastic panelists about the postcovid future of work um i will introduce them in a second and first just want to sort of set the stage for this conversation you know we're at a point a year into the pandemic where it's a really good time for sober reflection on what the pandemic has revealed to us about california's economy the ways that access to resources stable housing space to quarantine in your own home well-paying jobs with benefits and protections employers who look out for your safety an internet connection at home opportunities to go back to school for a new career a personal safety net with your family and communities a government safety net that catches you all of these things have marked the difference between life and death literally over the past year and and we have you know quite painfully watched and experienced in our own communities the way that california's economy was sort of set up to do exactly what it did during the pandemic protect a wealthier class but also leave low-wage workers especially immigrants latinos black californians disproportionately women very vulnerable the pandemic has given us a lot of information you could say and it has accelerated so many long-term forces in our economy job displacement among lower wage workers pressures on working mothers higher unemployment rates among racial and ethnic groups who have been excluded from accessing high quality jobs for decades and centuries and we've seen the ways too that our safety net and our unemployment benefit system our child care systems we're not ready to take on a disaster so in essence we have been shaken to our core but this is also a timely conversation because there's a light at the end of the tunnel businesses are opening back up we have high rates of vaccinations and politicians and advocates are talking a lot these days about an opportunity a big opportunity we have to build a future of work that is far more equitable we happen to be in a situation where we are flat the state of california is flush with cash something none of us might have imagined a year ago at the start of the economic downturn we have a budget surplus that was announced yesterday of 75.7 billion dollars thanks to tax revenue from the incredible gains in wealth and income of our elite class during the past year we have federal dollars in the billions um and we have the chance to do a lot of rebuilding so beyond playing catch-up the question we're gonna be talking today about is how do our government policies and programs education systems our businesses need to change that the future of work is one that makes californians whole every day um lots to talk about i will introduce our incredible panel now first i'd like to highlight assembly member lorena gonzalez a democrat from san diego who chairs the assembly appropriations committee also sits on the labor and employment committee in the judiciary committee she was behind ab5 the state law to classify gig workers as employees which has gone through a lot of litigation and controversy she has been busy this year authoring a slate of bills aimed at protecting low-wage workers as we emerge from the pandemic we have rob lapsley president of the california business roundtable nonpartisan organization comprised of leadership of major employers throughout the state and before this role he had a long career in business policy and business policy as an employer a lobbyist and a policy worker himself we have aleda ramirez an up-and-coming small business owner who currently lives between mexico and concord california in the bay area she worked a number of low-wage jobs before the pandemic wiped those jobs out and she spent the last year finding creative solutions to overcome a very challenging year um playing double duty as a single mother and also sort of a teacher helping her daughter with online school at home you can read more about her story in our staying sheltered series where we profiled renters fighting to stay housed during the pandemic and finally we have sarah bone vice president of research and a senior fellow at the public policy institute of california which brings nonpartisan research to important policy issues in california they are a major source of data for me as a reporter and sarah bone's research focuses on social safety net policy education policy economic mobility um and immigration policy among other things so let's jump into it we're going to sort of cover three different topics we're going to talk briefly about what the conversation about the future of work looked like a year ago before the pandemic where we are now a year into it and then we're going to leave the most time to talk about the future of work going forward and we're going to open up around 1250 for questions from the audience so get your questions ready we're looking forward to answering them and i will start by asking sarah bone to um jump us up by um giving us sort of a picture of what the future the conversations around the economy um and the future of work looked like on the precipice of the pandemic what did the job market look like following the last recession what trends are we seeing in terms of job displacement and inequality thanks for the question jackie and and thanks for hosting this this great conversation um not that long ago though it kind of feels like a long time about a little over a year ago we were talking about our hot economy um and some were worrying that it was overheated we had the lowest unemployment rate in at least 40 years at four percent and a really long historic run of job growth but the reality was at that same time we had persistently high rates of poverty reflecting the fact that jobs were kind of not all providing the kind of economic security you would hope for in a hot economy so in california in 2019 the bottom 20 percent of families earned no more than 40 000 a year that's for a family of four and the top 20 earned 200 000 or more so that's a kind of five times gap which is large by historical standards it had actually narrowed a little bit in the last year or two before the pandemic hit and that's because wages for low income workers finally started to increase um due to the tight labor market but it had taken us like 10 years to get there um and you know circumstances furthermore going to varied a lot across the state um i'd highlight two dimensions the first regionally so bay area families recovered from the great recession a lot more quickly than elsewhere in the state in fact top income families in the bay area took five years to recover from the great recession about a little less than half the time it took middle income families in the central valley to recover so the reality was that kind of many families across the state had barely recovered from the great recession before the pandemic hit this last year the other big divide is demographically so even during the kind of hot economy black and latino families were much more likely to find themselves in that bottom 20 of the income distribution rather than in the top and the opposite was true for white families um so this kind of high level of disparity and poverty was really kind of a persistent feature of the economy kind of pre-covered where the fastest growing jobs were really at either extreme um you know low-wage jobs in personal care and food preparation uh in warehouse kind of material moving and in high wage roles like registered nursing and software developers so i think the question to me back then and still today is you know what is in the control of policy makers individuals and institutions to help us kind of create more equitable and wider access to the kind of higher paying jobs or pathways to them that can provide for a greater economic security broadly across california yeah so we were seeing an economy that had perhaps a great headline and then a lot of uh more complicated and unequal stories underneath that headline right um elena i would love to hear if you wouldn't mind sharing with us what did your life look like before the pandemic what were your financial goals for your family and and what about the economy worked for you and didn't well thank you jackie before kobe the the pandemic i mean i had a full-time job at some point i had two three jobs because it was it was that much need of you know income especially to live around the bay area but we had a stable income at home and we were able to to provide and to save and to you know pretty much have a normal life um once the pandemic hit everything changing from my daughter's school i depended so much from from her time at school to go to work so everything just turned into a different direction so we can we can definitely see our life changing before coveting after clothing how how it was such a big impact on our income especially losing our jobs restaurants were shut down or reduced to business on many of us losing our jobs and you know not not being able to leave as often for work due to having kids at school at home so what sorts of jobs were you working and what were your aims um going forward financially well before pandemic i work at restaurant i manage restaurants and now during the pandemic we came out with this idea of like selling our what we build online and because we're starting this new business is i don't and i have the flexibility to be moving between mexico and california i thinking of going back to be an employee more of like me creating employment for somebody else it's a whole different uh history right now it's it's just it changed my mentality go from from being where i was to now being able to provide an opportunity to somebody else that might benefit from what we're creating here so that change throughout the pandemics absolutely thank you rob lapsley what apologies what did the post-great recession economy look like for the business owners who you represent right before the pandemic hit who were the winners and losers from your point of view so sarah thank you and also milken and to cal matters for the discussion today and for including us in that so you know from the california business roundtable perspective we look at the entire economy so yes we have large employers but we also have medium size and so we track all of these trends and when i first started here in 2011 coming out of the great recession we have spent a lot of time with our sister organization the california center for jobs and economy and being able to show how our economy has changed since 2011 and then where we were today so what happened back in 2011 is we really grew this two-tier economy we grew low-wage jobs as we just talked about sarah did an excellent job at jackie and what we did is we grew high-wage jobs and we've lost this you know and are losing this base in the middle there's no surprise that people are moving out of california there's no surprise we've lost a congressional seat under apportionment because we're losing a middle class who can't afford to stay here under the cost of living but that represents a blue-collar middle sector base of jobs where people could come in didn't have to be college educated had an opportunity to be able to grow with a company to or a private sector job and provide for their family under you know hopefully a cost of living where they can still get a house and provide an education for their kids and that's what our policies right now are impacting and what we're seeing so now you fast forward to the pandemic so that yes everything we've talked about the pandemic has exacerbated that division obviously the low-wage jobs have taken an incredible devastating hit on where we are because of the sectors logistics uh obviously the restaurants being biggest one tourism right all those affiliated lower wage and uh jobs but at the same time our highways jobs have resulted in you know what we see in the growth of silicon valley they've created 40 of the jobs since 2010 they maintained the job space in this state and i think one thing that we can get into today um later on is that we can't mistake a 75 billion dollar surplus for necessarily a healthy economy either it comes from a certain sector there are specific reasons but i'd like to you know talk a little bit about that for what we look at from a longer term policy perspective uh you know and again all this also incorporates the retail jobs you know all these pieces are you know what we have to look at of how they're changing and how we have to look at we're going to bring them back or is that something we have to adjust to long term and then lastly our biggest sector of growth is healthcare obviously that's a more educated workforce and so what we do with education moving forward particularly after what happened with schools is of great concern for us in this discussion too thanks rob um you know before the pandemic happened there was a california california committee called the future of work and there was a lot of hair pulling and research being done and conversations being had about this very thing that we're now talking about a year later with a new perspective and a hard year behind us um assembly member gonzales in the capitol from your perspective where you were sitting how were policymakers lobbyists and activists talking about the future of work you know what were your priorities and and what were the competing agendas that you were seeing at um the capitol so i i'd be happy to talk about my priorities they probably go into the next segment on where we go from here because i think the community i come from um we're facing the inequities that we're seeing just grow under the pandemic so a lot of the things that people are now fretting about we already knew existed we knew there were problems with job security with growth we did some very um good things i think early on in my term um we of course increased the minimum wage that was important we provided paid sick days we did a lot um in particular for women a lot of that led by um former senator hannah beth jackson you know we we took on pay equity kind of at the 30 000 foot level we we talked about paid we extended paid family leave um we we uh talked about women on boards and commissions so we were doing a lot of work and a lot of space um my my focus i think and not always the focus of the the assembly to hold really is on low wage workers the communities i represent the community i come from so um i i think that that was starting but i think the reality kind of what sarah was explaining like the differences between um what the the top 20 low 20 you know that means you know the inequities that i see every day maybe 20 percent of us see those every day right so um it's a little bit of a uh you know it was hard to get some attention obviously because of dynamex we were able to get attention on misclassification which gave us an opportunity to try to to take that on continue to take it on with 85 and to talk about benefits that by the way in a few months we learned how important they were those those benefits that are paid into um on behalf of employees that aren't on behalf of independent contractors so you know a lot of it was um historic work we needed to do um increasing diversity increasing women in the workplace um dealing with with women in the c-suite um you know those are important things uh paid family leave for those who can afford it with a 65 60 wage you know replacement so um we're going from from uh that to the work i guess we can talk about the future the other thing that i liked that we were starting to tackle and i i think we will continue to tackle as this so anytime you talk about job protections we get to two responses from the business community one it's gonna cause robots to come take your job or number two everybody's gonna go to texas right it's the two things that despite studies showing otherwise we get told so we started to focus on um low-wage jobs that we knew couldn't be outsourced and couldn't be um automated so things like child care we gave child care the right to unionize that was huge i mean when mr lafley talks about high-end jobs in the healthcare industry and i think somebody mentioned nurses i think back um 40 50 years ago when my mom started as a nurse it was a pink collar career um two years at community college and and uh you know a very lower middle class job that that was grown into what we see today as a great job because of um the unions that that we that increased density in the space and and helped change the workplace so um you know we were starting to work on that on child care and i think that's something that will continue as well through this thank you all let's talk about where we are now today so we're going to fast forward a year a very challenging year that we've all experienced in many different ways and some of us have been far more exposed to the risks um financial pain and distress than others um we the economy is picking up but you know new data also paints a mixed picture of our recovery the state still has 1.5 million fewer jobs um as of march than it did in february 2020 and the lowest paying jobs are still hit the hardest um high unemployment rates continue to disproportionately affect black and latino californians especially women and as we open up these are trends that could very well um you know accelerate so let's talk about what this past year has looked like um aleytha how has the pandemic affected your life as as a single mom um how has it affected your community members the other um women and single moms who you have worked with over the past year who you have mutually supported over the past year thank you for bringing this up jackie definitely many of us and as i mentioned earlier depending on the school time of the children for us to go out and have a job and bring you know have a steady income the after school programs it was a time where we had to pretty much fit in a full-time job or two part-time jobs with the pandemic having the children at home that entirely changed for us we all were impacted but single moms we were the ones bringing the income we were the ones providing for our home our house food and shelter that pandemic many many single moms that i represent are undocumented women that were in the labor force of the bay area that lost their income but not only that but they also don't have a government help or stimulus check or grants or food stamps of programs that can can help them to to survive during this time so it was for us me as a citizen you i was impacted because now i depended on my daughter's school time in order for me to figure out what can i do and then the after the time after school is being with her uh helping her with homework and getting caught up and adjust adjusting literally to the new way of learning because for for the kids it was also an impact so when it comes to our economy that's when many of us face a really and a tremendous hardship to that the price of the cost of living in the bay area or entirely in california um it's it went triple in the past ten years it has been outrageously horrible um the whole gap between income and cost of living so yeah it was definitely a big impact to many of us i know that you over the past year have um at many different times come up with creative ways to get through this you picked up gig work you um started your own business you started living between mexico and california tell us about these these ways that you um that you found ways to cover the bills so basically throughout the year we depended so much in family and friends support and they encourage each other to literally not go mad with this situation so at the at the end of the year i did an interview where i was able to get some funds from kind people who help us out because we were going through a hardship i pretty much went through all my savings during the first six months of the pandemic and it was a point where we had to decide like what do we do now you know i can't leave my daughter at home and i can't leave her without a roof and um friends were like well why don't we build these decorations and maybe you can sell them online or do something that's how that we started doing the planters and with the help of that i mean i've been in the fact that my daughter is able to take his classes online were able to live here two weeks or a week and a half out of the month and then going back to sell the products that we build here in california just in order for us to save at least some food cost and you know work here and then go back and work in california we have had the talks with my daughter of like moving to mexico but we all love california and she keeps saying yeah it's going to be tough but uh we can't leave home you know there there is an attachment to build this state in a way build the city and and not being part of the ones that run away from from what we've done so in a way my daughter's support and my friends support are the ones helping us to face what we're going through in california right now and pretty much an entire country in the entire nation but um we just pretty much we're creative enough to to build a product that has we know it has a market we believe it has a market and now we're we're focusing on just growing that so elena is calling into this call right now from tijuana um in mexico she's on one of her two or one week stints there and then she'll be coming back to the bay area to sell rob i'm wondering if you can talk to us about what you saw about which businesses were most heavily impacted and what trends in business did the pandemic accelerate from where you sit so clearly tourism and restaurants were the most heavily impacted immediately i mean we we had over 50 percent of the restaurants close uh as you know over 60 percent of the restaurants represent entry-level economic opportunity for somebody from a community of color to be able to get into uh our our economy and be able to create a future for themselves and their family so what that represented you know was not just the one restaurant represented not their workers but most importantly generations for their family and so you know along with that from you know the incredible base hotels tourism conventions all of that literally was turned off overnight and continues to be turned off you know as we wait to see how things progress to june 15th and then beyond you know with vaccinations so still some key pieces to be raised uh in order of trying to recover uh so and with that you know i want to talk about you know some observations that came out of this two things one is that we would hope from a policy maker standpoint there would be you know a huge amount of attention paid on oversight on how to restructure the social safety net when some of these things happen uh certainly edd is part of that there's a lot of work and examination that needs to get done on a good policy basis moving forward and it's time we have lessons learned from this pandemic that should be able to provide really good timely information to make some structural changes on how things can get done different in a positive way it should all be positive work this is not repercussions just good structural oversight number two is for the business community we have a monumental shift in a positive way on obviously telework that really should be the driving force moving forward on how we can modernize some of our labor laws to be able to incentivize telework on a permanent basis and with the telework changes we also get the environmental benefits we should be able to keep 20 percent of all the cars off the road on a given day when people come back to work because employers have now have real life experience and understanding and accepting telework but they will if they're incentivized from you know understanding liability standpoints some you know how our labor laws apply and if those changes are made then you're going to get both employee flexibility you're going to be able to get obviously employee benefits you're going to be able to get environmental benefits and you're going to be able to cut down the wear and tear on our roads and really have a positive change that came out of one of the greatest health threats in our you know in our lifetimes uh so we look forward to that discussion moving forward to be able to accomplish some of those things and of course you know access to telework has been again incredibly unequal over the past year um i want to touch on a point that you made about um uh government safety nets and actually uh take take go back to a late and ask this question because i know that you uh you have had quite the experience trying to take advantage of um grants and aid from the government over the past year leila what has it been like to try to access california's safety net not much luck i personally had issues with edd where until now is still trying to get a hold of somebody over the phone and it takes so long to the point that i decided to give up on many of the government funds and help because if it's not one thing is the other and realizing rather than asking the government who is apparently too busy with millions of people asking for help i'll just make a way to create an income for myself and build the economy in a way so you know some of us just just give up and try to find ways and you know some people are really patient and that in that matter and they really take their time to do it i personally like to have the solutions right away to create the solutions right away because i i asked a single mom yes a mom as a parent one of our priorities is food and shelter for our children and whatever it takes that's what we're gonna do to make it happen so to me sitting down waiting for the government to respond or to help me or to pay my bills or my rent it it doesn't cut it so i my decision was let's build this let's make it happen and in a way we add to the economy we bring you know we create something that it's gonna help us and it's going to help the state in a way now we register the business learning from from scratch how to open up a business so thank you you know i think that the answer that you gave is probably um extremely familiar to assembly member gonzales and also hurts to hear as a policymaker um assemblymember gonzalez what did the pandemic do in terms of shifting the conversation the legislative priorities around economic inequality in the role of government in intervening in inequality um how did it affect your priorities as a legislator you know i think you already mentioned a lot of these were already on your right a lot of these issues were already on your radar well we were working on these issues um you know i remember back to our discussions on ab5 quite honestly and a lot of times we would talk about access to unemployment insurance access to workers compensation access to sdi and it seems like the abstract right when you're talking about something that maybe people need once in a while and then the pandemic hit and i think a lot of legislators realize wait a minute if we don't have people paying into unemployment insurance which we didn't then we have to rely on this federal um basically gift from the federal government taxpayer dollars um funding what employers should have been funding the entire time we we of course owe the federal government money now for unemployment insurance that was paid out to to people who never paid into the system um and so there was a lot of i think as legislators right away uh i think folks who might have rolled their eyes a little bit when we'd start listing all these um safety net programs that that people needed access to and quality access to once a pandemic hit i think edd in itself has been a problem um i i want to i i want to plead with mr ramirez if you if you uh if you qualify and didn't get your money please contact our office we'll help with that like it is just heartbreaking to me to hear that story edd is an interesting thing in itself and something we're going to have to deal with in the future but there are a couple things to remember not always reported in the media most not most of most vast majority of the fraud issues in ed came about because of the pua not because our traditional edd system the traditional system in fact works quite well in in safeguard against fraud because the way the employer and the employees both report data into the ui system so a lot of the fraud came from the fact that we don't have information about workers that are working um for companies and could claim it and had to claim it we had to get money out fast they're also log standing issues with edd that were highlighted and we should have fixed right after the last recession we knew that there were it problems of course when it starts being uh a crush on the system we we let go of it it's not sexy to fix anymore it's a huge investment that still needs to be made but a new thing that we're learning now is really um the cost of outsourcing right so when we were talking about getting that help that ms ramirez wanted from edd getting on the phone with somebody um you know we suddenly have this this uh multi-billion dollar you know going out the door to to deloitte um that that subcontractors and then subcontracts and pretty soon you're talking to somebody in georgia who quite frankly doesn't know anything about our edd system and yeah you got somebody pick up the phone but that doesn't do any good we have to talk about um the robust nature of in the attractiveness of public sector jobs like those in edd to ensure that we're we're actually um recruiting and retaining really good a good workforce that sometimes is going to seem excessive right we're going to sometimes say oh you know we should cut back some but if we don't have a stable workforce then when we end up in situations like this when we end up in our next recession we're not going to have the workforce there who are knowledgeable and able to fulfill that system that's what happened here so a lot of the stuff we talked about in the early 2000s and stuff that we got hit with when i was at organized labor about cutting public sector jobs about outsourcing jobs that turned out to not be a very good idea um when we talk about cutting pensions and cutting people's uh pay like that's not a very good idea when you really need those people to come and do a job and be qualified to do that job so i hope we re-examine and those those cannons should be good jobs they should be the future of work should be a good middle-class job with some retirement health care and a living wage that's what we should expect in all sectors so hopefully um the war in the public sector can can be ended and we can invest in um in departments like edd in the future in departments like the labor commissioner's office um in in in these jobs that are crucial in order to protect our lowest wage workers thank you um sarah can you help us understand sort of the larger economic and demographic trends that have become clear um from the data that you sift through which workers and business how businesses have been most affected where are people moving and and to what extent has government helped over the past year sure well i i think a number of people have touched on how kind of the experience economic experience over this past year has exacerbated divides along income education race um things that i talked about initially the other kind of important trend that i want to spend a little more time on is how kind of our experience has shown this past year has shown how modern work relies on kind of people being able to balance work and family care um child care um and this affects women in the workforce more than men because they even in families where there are kind of two adults working women tend to to bear more of the child child care responsibilities but i think as a latest experience shows our economy really runs on women and men working um substantially so this is very different of course from many decades ago but pre-pandemic 60 of adult women and 70 of adult men were working um and the pandemic really changed that um leading to more exits from the workforce for women especially those with school-age children so i think this um really has kind of shown a bright light on kind of the the need for our kind of system and our economy to provide more opportunities for kind of flexible and affordable child care that can um address some of the constraints that women especially but men as well face on their choices in the labor market because they're they're balancing these multiple things um and that's also kind of of course important to watch for the recovery which you know i think maybe contributed to the the less than um expected um good news about the the april jobs report that was out recently on the point about kind of government intervention you know al all of what's been raised about the challenges um of getting these benefits um to families over the past year are so valid but when we look overall kind of the government intervention and the stimulus over the past year has been pretty historic um and has averted poverty for many of course not all but for for many um just thinking about kind of the scale of the stimulus checks that um went out through the through kind of the tax system but for a family of four could be as much as ten thousand dollars over the past year um and you know the unemployment insurance has had it's it's major challenges but i would also want to highlight some of the expansions that have been important that also we might want to think about going forward things like who's eligible for unemployment insurance typically if you don't have much work history if you're part-time or self-employed you would not be eligible um like other workers for unemployment insurance those are some of the that's one of the kind of expansions that we've seen over the past year that has helped reach more people through the unemployment insurance system and of course kind of the generosity of the benefit helped more people who are out of work due to the pandemic make ends meet um you know i don't want to detract from the the challenges of doing that um the same is true with kind of the stimulus checks um even though you know that seems like a broad-based way to get stimulus dollars and financial support to a lot of families pretty quickly um it's not without its challenges also given that not everybody files taxes especially many who are um part of safety net programs and some immigrant groups so um you know those are topics i think for us to kind of think about going forward and building a more robust kind of safety net system that can that can help families make ends meet during crises like these and even in regular times and just kind of the risks of modern work and the need to kind of be able to have that safety net so that you can invest in things like building a new business um going to school to get you know kind of retrained or additional skills for kind of shifting job opportunities yeah this year has sort of piloted so many social safety net programs for the first time ever question is to what extent they will continue will be funded going forward and are necessary um let's talk about on that note what the future of work in california should look like this is the opportunity for panelists to talk about your dreams um i am bringing this up in the context of like i said earlier a lot of federal money coming into the state um a lot of tax revenue at the state's disposal right now though it's one-time funds as as rob pointed out earlier there is a significant opportunity to reform the state's unemployment insurance system as we've already discussed our child care system our tax systems our higher education systems the way that we create opportunities for upskilling and apprenticeship for people to start their own businesses and by the way there has been a major trend of women and people of color starting their own businesses just as elena did during the pandemic because traditional safety net resources didn't cover the gap between their income and their bills um rob i'd like to ask you to expand more on the shift towards telecommuting that you brought up earlier you've also mentioned the need to invest in our education system and i i want you to talk more about the opportunities that lie there but also what is needed to make the shift towards telecommuting much more equitable so right now from all of our discussions with the employer community we had developed a report to the governor and the legislature to be able to frame the issues to give them kind of a road map on what they could look at and trying to be able to stimulate this isn't about money it's about policies uh the foundation for business to grow their telecommunity yes it's about infrastructure yes about broadband but a lot of it comes down to we have to look at how our current labor laws apply to a telecommuting environment and what does that mean in terms of meal and rust for example uh when you're at home as how do your breaks apply all these things that ultimately enter into you know policies that companies have to adapt uh to be able to allow their employees to you know take the telecommuting option or be able to mandate a telecommuting option but have the confidence that it's not going to create a legitimate environment so that they put a lot of other you know obviously company personnel or resources at risk so you know we we actually did that report we submitted it last november uh and so we're hoping to continue that dialogue with them moving forward you know with that we we also so you talked about dreams right jackie that didn't you just mentioned that so just very quickly you know a couple thoughts on the education side you know we would love to see the education component particularly in you know high school be able to provide a different opportunity to teach people and this is where relata she's such a perfect example we should be able to to teach people how to start a business in high school so they understand the fundamentals even on a class project basis maybe it's not not saying two years of classes but a a class where they understand how to access the system what the system does from the secretary of state's office you know through all the different government agencies we should teach them how to access benefits we should teach them what edd is we should teach them you know if they're in a crisis and there is you know a future loss of of a job where do they go what do they do how do they do it uh so that they have a working fundamental knowledge as they get right out of the workforce whether it's you know at a higher education level or whether it's most importantly from a middle class you know blue collar level where they have some foundation to be able to understand this as opposed to having to do it when a crisis strikes so we have a lot of different thoughts and pieces around things like that that again we want to talk about but the foundation for us is we want to take advantage of how to grow telecommuting and again what that means in terms of the overall benefits thanks rob i i think that this is a perfect chance to segue to a layla um because i know that she uh echoes some of your thoughts there aleva in your life what are your goals going forward as a small business owner and what do you need from the state to help you achieve the you know lasting economic stability you want for yourself and for your daughter definitely what he mentioned right now it's so on point children need to learn how to pretty much be resilient to situations like this it will be resourceful and have ideas and creative ideas to how to move forward and build something new and not really depend on it based on my experience i raised three teenagers mine is in my nephews and when they graduated high school they didn't know what doing their income taxes was they didn't know what edd was they didn't know what any of these resources were or what to do next you know and it was it was sad that as teenagers in the us they're 18 years old and they don't know many of these things that they have to do there are other basic things that adults do now my daughter is 11 years old soon to be 12. uh we keep talking with her and based on what she's seen she is more eager to to continue her little business shop selling candies than learning history that at this point it seems like it keeps repeating itself so uh we have conversations with her and she's like why is it point to learn something in the past happened so many years ago when apparently we haven't learned much from it why don't we learn something new so there is a much need to teach kids how to be more resourceful when it comes to creating opportunities for themselves in in case of uh impact like what we went through right now for me personally is the opportunity of learning how to open a new business where to go who to talk to the city without making us feel guilty for not knowing because we have faced many of us and and i'm pretty sure many of the small business that have come up lately have faced the same situation that when we try to ask for the resources uh some sometimes we get the answers that we're like our ignorance is a crime and not knowing how to do it it's it's a bad thing and when realities we don't know how to do it we're just learning as we go because we have the need to create something for our families basically having resources you know in a way that it's you know are easy to understand across the border and not just to to one group of people thank you thank you so much um assemblymember gonzalez i think on that note and um sort of segwaying from the comments that alaila made about history repeating itself i and i i will absolutely give you the chance to talk later about your dreams but right now what's at stake if we allow the pandemic to further cement inequality in our labor market like why why does this matter that we talk about changing the future of work well look coming into the pandemic um there were disparities between women and men there were disparities of people color um and white folks but we i i'm going to point out the the thing that nobody really likes to talk about miss ramirez and i probably can understand in a different way and that's that yes these disparities existed but the disparities for latinas in particular was the largest um when you talk about pay equity you're not talking about 12 cents on the dollar you're talking you know are you know of a difference you're talking latinas are making before the pandemic 44 cents on the dollar of the white male counterpart and that goes for high wage earners like surgeons all the way down to low wage earners like hotel workers so something is wrong there and it's going to need a really calculated approach when we talk about latinas in business you know we opened up to women's on boards right they opened up women on boards and we got great results except when it came to latinas we're 20 of the population in particular and yet we ended up um less than three percent of new women's on women on boards we have a problem in california when it comes to a particular um demographic it's not our problem we're hardworking people who unfortunately had to drop out of the workforce in larger numbers than anybody else to take care of kids to do deal with um issues that they were facing so you know we're uh if we don't address this i'm really interested to see coming out of the pandemic what that wage gap looks like it's either gonna get far worse which is scary if you think about just how far behind we are um we we've made incredible gains in california we are the best in the nation when it comes to the difference between white women and white men however if you look at latinas we are the worst in the nation something is going wrong here what happens now or did so many uh latinas drop out of the workforce you're actually not gonna see even a result that's scary too so um we have to learn from this moving forward we have to learn how much we value child care and child care as an option for people to go into as a career it should be seen as a career it should be have training opportunities it should be high-end both for the child and for the um the child care provider and that's something that we really need to double down on when we talk about leave policies and and when people can take leave when we're talking about a portion of your income all of these are things that were really highlighted and um last but not least when we talk about uh workplace safety something that isn't talked a lot i know i know we want to go to telehealth and and forget the workplace but workplace safety measures in osha you know we found that that that the unsafe working conditions that so many of our our communities were facing really did um it extended to its worst possible outcome right the same places that we had ocean violations we knew there were problems before pandemic ended up causing people's death um so we have some real issues that if we don't i just will only become even larger for community of color back and latina women in particular black and latino communities in general thank you sarah what does the research show about the role of education the safety net the child's care safety net in particular tell us about what is needed for an equitable recovery the risk of um being the most dismal person on the panel i have to start by saying we haven't had an equitable recovery over the past 40 years i just that's kind of like the reality that we need to really think about breaking the mold in a substantial way if we want something different the trajectory of all of the recessions over the past 40 years with the exception of the dot-com bust has been for the slowest recovery among those most impacted which are low low-income families so you know that's just kind of the reality that i i always start from um and you know as we saw from the recovery from the great recession um you know a tight labor market is really the best thing for kind of improving wages at the low end of the spectrum you know without making other major changes you know structural changes that we're talking about here but um it seems like we're a long way off from that so i think you pointed to the right areas where research um is pretty clear that providing um resources like safety net resources things like the earned income tax credit providing child care providing access to education improves especially women's attachment to the labor force and their ability to kind of um uh you know be upwardly mobile over time um the the evidence there i think is pretty clear and we have a lot of policy tools in the safety net space um to provide resources to families i think the past year has kind of provided some new experiments in that front for us to hopefully learn from um you know with the goal of taking some of the risk out of investing in skills investing in kind of entrepreneurship and those kind of things for families um i would just say that you know at the peace education to me is really critical piece and that is obviously a huge investment for the state um and there the evidence can't couldn't be more clear that education in today's economy especially education beyond high school is is strongly associated with upward mobility so i feel like the challenge in that space is how can we make sure that our institutions our educational institutions are identifying skilled needs making that clear to more californians kind of what those opportunities are delivering it effectively flexibly and ultimately connecting with employers um to really kind of build that those kind of workforce skills and opportunities for the future and then i would just end by saying um you know i think there's growing evidence about the connection of all of these things child care um safety baseline kind of resources to meet basic needs in education that these things need to work together because we're talking about not just education for children today but for workers who are trying to build a better future for themselves like soon now um and and that means that we um we need to address the the multiple challenges that families face and the the needs that they have and so some of the the you know the best evidence um are on how those things can work together from job training programs that really do take account of the multiple kind of needs and challenges that adults face in today's economy excellent thank you sarah rob um this is an issue that i know is important to you how have shifts and workers in businesses moving inside california and leaving california sort of affected the landscape as we talk about the future of work and from your perspective what is needed to retain economic opportunity in in california that's a great question you know it's one we track closely so you know we don't take the approach that you know everything is leaving california what we do is we track the data uh we again we have that all documented we watch the trends so what is the regulatory environment what is obviously the tax environment what is what are the issues that impact the decisions you know at the top of the companies of what they're doing so where things stand right now from our research uh we obviously see cost of living number one and that still comes down to housing i mean we talk about the you know a husband and wife or a two or a couple having to both work why a lot of part of that is the housing sector because of you know where we are with the market but where we are with our policies the cost of living when you look across the board are impacting decisions on not just companies leaving here but it's companies coming here and it's ultimately companies who decide to grow how many jobs here so our discussions with companies are all about you know we need you to continue to grow jobs here that's all about jackie as you pointed out that million and a half jobs if we have companies move within california that's a good thing because they don't you know if they can do their work and they don't all have to be down in silicon valley well then ideally that frees things up that's what we want i think that's what the governor wants we'd be able to you know make investments into the central valley we get investments in sacramento people can can go and move and find an affordable place to live good schools but then still be able to do the work and maybe not have to be able to get in that car commute to silicon valley so we are all about trying to look for those kinds of incentives so companies stay within the state keep their jobs here but have that flexibility and we think with telecommuting now that certainly is showing it's providing more of that flexibility uh there's no question some companies are leaving that makes the news uh but we also have we are still maintaining a large portion of our venture capital here so that the key then is the venture capitals here and the companies start here will they stay here uh will they grow here and that's really a big function of you know how california's policies are from a regulatory speed to market you know employment law and all those pieces so very dynamic uh but that's you know those are the pieces that we focus on thanks rob i am seeing the questions are pouring in before we go to questions though i want to make space for to ask um the assembly member and aleda each a question um assembly member gonzalez when you envision the california economy of 2030 what key changes do you see what policy changes would you propose to get there i'll wrap in my dreams for 2030 into it not just um and i do want to point out because i i want to make sure mr lapsley hears me like i think we can work on that education piece about learning how to start a business yes i also think learning how to read a paycheck understanding your rights and um under labor laws something that is is horribly missing in what we teach um i'd also add in the the um how to ride public transit and some other things that could help our economy in general or our future in general that we should be teaching in school um and also opportunities i mean and this goes into 2030 opportunities um that maybe aren't college i think we have um in and it's never it's always a little controversial to say but we focus so highly on um you know the conversations on on a to g and how to get our kids into uc and csu and that's important we need to provide those opportunities for those who want it but as my daughter used to tell her a teacher despite everything she said you know a second year journey person in ibw makes more than my mom with her three degrees so uh let's be honest about what what opportunities are out there um for call first students um let's be ensured that we're providing those kind of apprenticeships and high-end opportunities for good middle-class careers to people who you don't necessarily need to go to college for and i think we've not focused as much as we should on kind of that transition we're going to have construction workers who are aging out of the workforce where are we getting those from and by the way that intersects with the price of housing right if you don't have enough construction workers to do the work we're really going to suffer on on new housing development as well so it's you know it's circular in in the way we approach it i would hope by 2030 that we have a good grasp on the fact that uh look um i i don't think it's useful to pay people not to work um i i think that we can instead provide good meaningful career opportunities um even for service sector work for work that we haven't valued enough um in this nation and that that would be a much better use of our money um than somehow supplementing uh you know i i hear miss ramirez speak and she absolutely um has the spirit of so many in my community that want to provide opportunities for the next generation they're not looking for a handout if you will we need to invest in ensuring that those are good jobs we need to hold companies accountable for for service sector jobs that are going to exist here let's talk about warehouses warehouses are going to exist here amazon cannot um do what they're doing without actually having hubs here what are we demanding as far as um worker safety as far as pay as far as um equity in that sector um delivery sector you know we it's great we have startups but if those startups are creating jobs that are actually devaluating the jobs in that sector and that's what we had of course with the gig economy where where driving and delivery services used to be a middle class career for ups driver now becomes you know a low-wage job well you know that hurts our economy as much as it helps it i get it if you talk to the governor and our our budget surplus this year yes we love the revenue that we got from um making billionaires but come on you know when do we ask those billionaires to share the revenue in fact with the people doing the work um not just uh giving it to government to spend on social service programs so um i i think a rebalancing of that i would much rather have governments or have a yeah companies not be paying into to our budget instead provide the kind of jobs that that are unnecessary to seek those social services in that safety net um people who work 40 hours a week or who work full-time shouldn't have to rely on the government i mean that is that is one of the things that we've uh we've we've we've relied on too long um and i'm not saying take away the social safety net i'm all for having it there until we right-size the economy in a way that the businesses are actually providing livable wage jobs with benefits that keep people um sturdy thank you assembly member i imagine that if we gave you more time you could give us a um a manifesto for the future of 2030. um i have lots of views yes aliba um i'd like to finish the conversation with you um and you have a policy maker here on the um line listening to you and we have a lot of people in the audience um you know watching this conversation i want to know what do you want state policy makers to know about you and your family and your community as they're crafting policies that will shape our economy going forward well the everything needs to be in a way redesign uh education housing benefits tax personally being a single mom housing and was one of the biggest impact for us not only the fact that we couldn't provide for that but the rent increase in the middle of pandemic not everybody was able to fall into the moratorium so we were impacted by a rent increase in the middle of a pandemic so um there are it's still gaps in in loss when it comes to housing and you know low-income families or were being hit pretty bad so that's one of the biggest things that we need support from the state um coming june what is it going to be for all of us who are still late on our rent now coming june what is going to be to all of us they still don't have a steady job you know uh me as a start-up business what's going to happen then you know what opportunities i have there is there's so many topics to talk about what needs to be done in policies when it comes to helping the community we're the one building california and we're the one being impacted directly we are the you know the labor force is the one that got impacted directly um i hear a lot of about tele telework but that doesn't apply to all californians the california is an agricultural and uh developing a state that needs roads buildings uh food and so many other things that cannot be done from home so what what for that class what for that group of people what's gonna happen what the state has for us when it comes to building the economy on that side without being impacted or being homeless in the next 30 days or the next 60 days thank you so much i think it's time uh a little bit late but better now than never to open the conversation to audience questions we are getting a ton of questions um and i'm gonna do my best to sort through them and kick them off to the right person um panelists feel free to jump in if you feel like you have um an answer to provide as well thank you also to our uh participants who have been um keeping up a really lively chat it's awesome to see you listening uh and and talking with each other as well as shooting us questions so keep keep them coming um i think this is a very interesting question one that i report on a lot i want to ask sarah to answer this question this touches the safety net aspect of our conversation um and i'm going to actually combine two questions here someone asks what are solutions that don't put the burden on poor people to have to apply or jump through a bunch of hoops just to get support they talk about the disaster relief assistance for immigrants program which was a 500 aid program distributed through non-profits but funded through the state which um many immigrants spent days calling hundreds of times to try to get through to someone and put their name on the list they talk about state rental assistance and i'm gonna bundle that with another question that talks about the issue that so much of this is online and not everyone has access to the internet um so so as someone who researches safetynet what are better models this is such an important question and i think this past year has kind of been interesting in this respect um as i mentioned i think at some point we um we distributed a lot more aid through the tax system which in general would have fewer kind of hoops and conditions and much of our safety net programs which are you know a number of different programs serving multiple purposes um and with various kind of eligibility requirements and kind of other requirements to keep up the aid so you know it's not without its kind of problems as as i mentioned like not all people file taxes um a lot of immigrants do file taxes with an itin number but not all of them do so that raises some questions about kind of who we may be missing um but nonetheless is um you know potentially a more kind of quick and efficacious way to kind of reach a broad base of californians with kind of safety net support and there in the american rescue plan there are kind of ways that they are trying to make make kind of distributing through the tax system not just an annual thing but monthly or quarterly you know are our options there so i think that's a very um kind of promising route to pursue um you know the state also california in particular expanded aid for kind of immigrant groups um as as the question stated you know not um without its challenges but at least recognizing some of the kind of holes and those who are missed by that kind of support um i would say you know we've seen a little bit less growth in safety net programs during the past year than we expected based on what we saw in the labor market and um the question about accessing online um is you know i think really pertinent because um that seems to be one of the explanations that might have been kind of keeping some families back from accessing the programs that are um available due to kind of how they would they would be able to kind of fill out applications and that kind of thing so these are really ripe areas for us to kind of demonstrate better ways to um to reach the targeted populations by safety net programs thank you thank you so much sarah um here's a very interesting question um i feel like i should have recruited the audience to moderate this panel we have great questions from the audience um rob can you speak and other panelists feel feel free to jump in can you speak to the current debate um that this this audience member describes as the labor shortage slash living wage slash high government assistance current debate so we're talking about the debate that um uh expanded unemployment benefits are actually incentivizing people not to go back to work um can you can you speak to you know how true that is from your perspective um and how that dynamic does or does not affect um jobs post-pandemic especially at the entry level or low-wage jobs so excellent question i don't would never profess to be you know the single voice on that because obviously there's a tremendous amount of analysis going on and intertwined with the politics if you will at the federal level on that issue certainly and i know the others like uh sarah is probably looking at that and many other very smart people but the bottom line from what we see in discussions with the companies is number one yes jobs are going unfilled their companies are starting to reopen you know i think it's it's fair to say during this whole pandemic companies especially small businesses have really worked hard to protect you know their employees and their customers and now they're focused on what it's going to take to reopen and do the same thing and ensure you know that everyone has confidence to be able to come back into the workforce so with that um there we're talking about eight million jobs nationally potentially that are open um there are no there's no question some sectors see that under the current benefits uh that they obviously were they're getting higher benefits than maybe necessarily where they were based on what their hourly wage was based on how many hours they were working all those things that has now put pressure in a positive way on wage growth right just and again i think sarah spoke to this so we're now seeing that happen quickly look at what uh chipotle announced you know uh for obviously from a small business perspective in three years if you join chipotle you can be making you know over a six-figure salary if you move up and that's what this is all about it's about getting started in the workforce at a certain site level and then work your way up to be able to get to the salary levels that ultimately obviously allow us to to have a future for our families so what what we see right now is some some states are pushing hard on obviously wanting to trim back uh on what's happening with the federal benefits on when they expire the companies themselves are not weighing in on that debate at the moment okay we'll see what happens in the next 30 days or so or 60 days but they're there's they're watching they're they're recruiting but they're not asking for a change yet recognizing you know where some of the obviously support has to come from for for individuals to recover but it i expect within maybe after that 60 days or after june 30th that there could be more of a discussion from the business community about that but right now it seems to be more of what's happening with some of the individual states uh and not right here and if i could i just um you know there's so much else that we're not talking about that plays into this that i think to have an honest discussion we need to lay on the table and i don't have the research and sarah might have some of it that that gives us the direct i don't know that there's one answer but look um school is not being opened that is a large reason why people aren't returning to work i'll tell you i i um until school is open on april 12th i couldn't return here i would literally fly up for session and fly back home because i have kids at home what am i going to do i mean it's one thing to leave them one day to try to get on zooms if i leave them for a week they're going to be out the whole i mean it's just not feasible so we have that they're kind of inching back into school but until we have them back full time or we have child care options for them or some sort of hub issue that can't be resolved and that that plays into some of this the other is the the thing that we're seeing the signs that like we need cooks cooks cooks okay let's be honest in california the number one profession for excess deaths were cooked chefs um bakers you know if you combine them you're talking a thousand extra people that died last year because of covid um we assume because hobit obviously excess deaths so so how many um this is morbid and terrible but how many of our low-wage service worked or workforce did we kill off in this past year right the other issue is immigration look a lot of folks working in restaurants weren't necessarily under their own documentation and and some of them chose to go back um to their home country because it wasn't feasible to stay here we had no safety net they couldn't apply for unemployment insurance so so you have a depletion of a workforce that we should talk about how we bring back um we can't function in california without immigrant workers that's just a reality it's time to to to treat those workers like the essential workers that they are and to give them a path to citizenship so we don't end up in this space again um finally we've got to talk about the fact that um low-wage workers were forced to work for low wages because that was what was available so forcing people into dangerous situations where they don't have child care where they don't have the ability to take care of their family for extra low wages that's a problem and discussion we should be having at the national level and here in california in general yes workers will do whatever they have to do to put a house over their head and food on the table for their kids we heard ms ramirez talk about it she's just gonna get done what needs to get done is that something that we should we we should strive for you know having to have three jobs working you know 60 70 80 hours a week that's not good for our kids that's not good for our communities and we've got to have that as an honest open discussion about how where we go in the future right we you know i i obviously come out of organized labor this upsets people but but our slogan was always like one job should be enough you should you should be able to whether you're doing a service sector job or you're doing a high-end um you know c-suite job the the one job should be able to pay enough and give you the foundation that you can um take care of your kids and take care of your family so i i welcome this discussion i i say in solidarity these workers don't get pressured to go back before and lose out on on these essentials for your family taking care of your kids making sure i mean we're going to have huge learning gaps that happen this year and it's only going to be made worse if you tell low-wage workers they have to come back to work um you know in a in a shorter time frame until we get kids back in school so just so many problems that are that are inter mixed in this yeah jackie if i could add could i add one thing on to that because i appreciate what what some woman said but particularly about education so we're coming quickly up on a time where the schools have got to be crystal clear about whether they're going back or not and the governor has worked with them and tried to be flexible with them with the carrot and a stick lots of carrots billions of carrots uh if you will but there's going to have to come a time where they got to have a stick and that means that they have got to stand up and say we're going back in full time because that will send the signal and we need that by june so then to someone gonzalez's point so you know whatever whether it's the mother of the father overseeing the kids you know uh virtual education they know it's time where they can now with confidence go back to the workplace and it's not going to change it's not going to be inconsistent they have a very clear direction to be able to say with confidence that they can start to make decisions and move back and and she's right it is critical and and we are going to need very clear decisive direction for the workplace for people to make those decisions thank you both um i want to ask an excellent question from the audience and i will leave this up to whoever wants to jump in the question is about um the potential in uh enormous amounts of money coming into the state under biden's infrastructure plan um how does his plan um or alternate plans about you know the republicans in congress have their own infrastructure plan that's also massive though half as massive um what can california do from a policy standpoint to make sure that investment in infrastructure in california again is equitable and this is a this is a buzzword of today equitable but it's a really important buzzword that we need to not let lose its meaning right so so what can california do to make sure that that money comes in and actually creates good paying protected jobs well i i'm sorry i just have to give the plug i i know this this will probably make mr lapsey happy but um you know i i did like some of the proacts stuff being put into um some of the language look the fact is um if you want good equitable jobs for people of color they're going to have to be union jobs and and when you look at sectors that have become and i'll go back to the very start when you talk about nurses um and i i grew up with this so the change in in nursing being one of low middle lower middle class to one of upper middle class um all had to do with union density and so quite frankly giving workers a chance to have a voice on the job giving them a chance to make more money is essential for black and brown workers especially in the service sector so we've got to figure out a way that service sector jobs can and will be unionized um as a way and allow collective bargaining to um do it and i i like that that's in the transportation the other thing i would say is is a focus on public transit we've got to invest more on public transit it's not only an environmental imperative um but you know when we're talking about where housing should go and where it should be and what we should do we we really have to look at a lot of that so those are are my two takeaways with uh if i could just jump in i would agree that you know this is tied a lot to union jobs um and and those are good kind of middle income at least um positions um one key pathway to that is through apprenticeship programs and i think you know the community colleges play a role in that but also kind of other um organizations and that's a critical pathway for kind of achieving the equity goals as well making sure that more california's more diverse californians have access to that kind of training program but i would also just want to comment that you know another buzzword that we're dealing with is infrastructure because i think we're kind of piling all kinds of things onto it and it's not wrong you know i think the infrastructure plan that i've seen you know includes child care and other kind of health care roles and those are essential for modern work as we've been talking about today um so thinking about kind of opportunities to improve kind of work options in the child care space as well as address affordability which are sometimes goals that are in conflict um is critical as part of kind of the broader definition of infrastructure that supports our workforce going forward thank you um i'm reading through the chat and seeing all sorts of ideas that people are throwing about out about policies that they want to see in california and then we have um a wonderful and open-ended question someone asks i'd like to hear about some revolutionary solutions more creative and specific ideas for how to address inequality directly this is a very broad question and i want to open it up to anyone who feels they have a revolutionary solution that they want to put on the table for this conversation i'd like to talk about full employment i think we don't talk about it enough quite frankly if we are really committed to full employment that means we redirect some of our social service programs for this is it not a job to stay home with your child for the first few years of life to give them an opportunity we should in fact pay i i don't want to say women but it's usually women but a family member adequate wage stay home with their child that is a bob you can reach full employment through a variety of ways but we we've never explored should we pay people to go to school um should we pay teenagers to stay in school in in underserved communities is that their job can we incentivize so i think there is a way that we could redirect social services um that says you know uh if you're in the trade that's great your apprenticeship is paid there are too many apprenticeships are training opportunities that are unpaid um so i think that we can um extend the workforce and that's good when people are earning money um and that we can go back to a date and give another example um you know that we have you know uh more people to help out in schools you have more opportunities for um direct you know care in school and after school to help students who who are using now that we are a little more honest with ourselves that are using schools as their their full-time child care you know let's let's buffer that up and let's ensure that there's opportunity for communities like mine i think through a full employment kind of model and not just a social service model thank you any other revolutions that panelists want to start if i could just add one thing on to what the summer woman said because her her comments are are interesting and and we all know that she looks at these things in a very you know big picture way uh but what i appreciate about one thing she just said is you know when we do these things it's time to look at the whole system from top to bottom and that again this kind of comes back to the oversight piece if we're if we want to change the policies particularly for like a child care piece then we have let's take the existing resources we have and how can we restructure them to achieve that goal and truly help you know the families and from an equity standpoint we're trying to help it's not about just layering on one thing after another because as we know that ultimately can't get you to where you want to go i you you can't keep adding on costs and then trying to add on taxes if you don't take what you have and redirect it in a policy perspective with the right decisions to be able to get it where it needs to go and that's kind of something we haven't done for a while and we want to go in those directions and i appreciate what the assemblywoman said but if we could all join together all of us joined together every sector joined together in a way that could provide support to the government legislature to have a process where we could honestly look at how we restructure and redirect to then get to some of those goals i think you'd see a massive change in california uh in in addressing some of these equity pieces uh but also set us on a very good policy pack so that that would ultimately be my dream thank you rob aliva please go ahead yes something that mrs gonzalez mentioned paying kids to stay at school well wouldn't it be better to reduce the college tuition fees or university payments that it has been pretty much impossible for young adults lately to get into great universities or colleges because of the high price and they get to go to work and personally like i mentioned earlier i raised three teenagers that now are young adults they can't afford to live on their own they cannot pay for college tuition that are like in in in a way in between so why don't we do something to support these people to or this group um to have a better education compare i'm 42 years old but compared to life 20 years ago i was able to afford a room on my own and be out of the house and work and not literally study but work rather now i have a young adult at home who is 21 years old he's in college he can afford to pay for his own apartment because the gap between the income and the housing costs there are so many many things that we can do to uh change and transition into a new era in california on housing education and like she said paying a family member to stay at home while taking up kids a young age it's so fundamental as a mom it's such a great idea but also helping the young adults on how to enter the adulthood without charging them for a chance to create a new lifestyle for themselves education has come out so high in california that college or universities are nowhere to be rich for many of of californians and me as a single mom trying to get into college right now it's it seems like a joke you know and so there are so many things that we can do to do that thank you so much elena i think that's a perfect place to end this conversation i want to extend um so much gratitude to our panelists for taking the time today offering up their expertise and to our participants for contributing and asking excellent questions i'm going to be saving your chats and mining them for story ideas and questions to ask um policy makers and leaders and researchers and californians later so thank you all thank you to milken institute and cal matters for hosting this event and we're looking forward for you all uh attending our next future work event dave um when's that happening see on it'll be in about two months it'll be in uh uh july all right okay stay tuned thank you everyone thank you thanks

Channel: Milken Institute

Views: 442

Rating: 4.1999998 out of 5

Keywords: Milken, Institute

Id: KmrnLw1BHrA

Length: 89min 49sec (5389 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 09 2021