The 2023 American Opportunity Index—a partnership between the Burning Glass Institute, Harvard Business School’s Project on Managing the Future of Work, and the Schultz Family Foundation—follows the career trajectories of 4.72 million employees across 396 of America’s largest companies. Through this work, we have gained unprecedented visibility into the question at the heart of the economic mobility equation: how workers rise.

The Index represents a revolutionary departure from other job quality metrics, which typically focus on corporate policies and rely on self-reported data or surveys. Instead, we observe real-world outcomes directly, as gleaned from analysis of millions of career histories – drawn from how workers report changes at work history of social media platforms, online resumes, etc. – as well as comprehensive salary and job posting data. We believe job quality is best measured by what actual workers experience.

Our analysis focuses on workers who don’t necessarily hold college degrees – and therefore don’t have the assurance of mobility that a degree was long assumed to represent. In many respects, these workers are a bellwether for how likely the majority of Americans are to achieve economic progress. Through this analysis, we hope to widen a lens that often focuses on access to jobs, but loses sight of what happens once employees get in the door.