The American Opportunity Index: A Corporate Scorecard of Worker Advancement is a new effort to give companies and other stakeholders a set of robust tools that measure how well major employers are doing in fostering economic mobility for workers and how they could do better. The Index is a joint project of the Burning Glass Institute, Harvard Business School’s Project on Managing the Future of Work, and the Schultz Family Foundation. The Index assesses America’s 250 largest public companies based on real-world outcomes of their employees in roles open to non-college graduates—not merely their statements on corporate policy. It draws upon a new source of insight: bigdata analysis of career histories, job postings, and salary sources of more than 3 million workers at those firms.

Our analysis of 15 million job postings illuminates the future of work

Discussions about the job market usually focus on jobs created and destroyed. But even in the most tumultuous times, that is not what most workers or most business experience. Jobs do come and go, but even more significantly, jobs change. For the vast majority of workers, their job is much less likely to go away than to evolve into something new…

New, complex dynamics in the U.S. Economy suggest that employment in some industries won’t come back from the pandemic.

New, complex dynamics in the U.S. Economy suggest that employment in some industries won’t come back from the pandemic.

A permanent shake-up of U.S. industries is underway. While the economy sustained massive, near-instantaneous employment loss in the early days of the pandemic, the job market has now returned to 99% of is prior strength after just two years, far faster than the job market recovered from past shocks. But the economy we have returned to usn’t the same as the one we left behind…

Two decades ago, companies began adding degree requirements to job descriptions, even though the jobs themselves hadn’t changed. After the Great Recession, many organizations began trying to back away from those requirements.

To learn how the effort is going, the authors studied more than 50 million recent job announcements. The bottom line: Many companies are moving away from degree requirements and toward skills-based hiring, especially in middle-skill jobs, which good for both workers and employers. But more work remains to be done.

In supply-chain management, you get what you plan for. It’s time for companies to get serious about developing a good supply chain for talent. Here are ideas for how to get started.