How We’re Advancing Equity for Underserved Workers
Date Posted: April 14, 2022
Posted In: Discussion, Workforce,
From US DOL: On his first day in office, President Biden issued a historic charge to all federal agencies: First, assess how well government programs are reaching historically underserved communities — including people of color and others who have been underserved, marginalized, and affected by persistent poverty and inequality. And then, change our programs so that we are delivering resources and benefits more equitably to all. As Secretary of Labor, I have made advancing equity a priority in everything our department does for workers — morning, noon and night.
For far too long, our economy has left far too many workers behind. I see this every month in our jobs report, which regularly shows how unemployment rates for workers of color remain stubbornly high. I see this in enforcement data, which shows how immigrants, workers of color and women are more vulnerable to wage and hour violations. And I see it in the department’s data on occupational segregation, which shows how workers of color, workers with disabilities and women are all too frequently excluded from good-paying jobs that offer upward mobility.
For these reasons, we’ve been working since the start of the administration to improve our reach into underserved communities. This will not just help those marginalized, underserved or disadvantaged workers. It will help all of us, by unlocking more economic potential and growth for everyone.
Today, I’m releasing the Department of Labor’s Equity Action Plan, which summarizes some of the important work we’ve done over the past year to advance equity for all workers and sets out our next steps in several key programs, including our enforcement of wage and hour laws, access to unemployment insurance benefits, the design of our apprenticeship and training programs, and our ability to serve workers in more languages.
Some of the early work that is already making a difference includes:
- Making grants more equitable. We’re hanging how we design, promote, and administer grants to target new grantees, especially small, new, or emerging community-based organizations, and encouraging grantees to serve hard-to-reach and historically underserved communities. You can read more about these efforts on our new grants website.