Bill Kerr: Headline labor market numbers can mask underlying problems, even in periods of low unemployment, steady job growth, and rising labor force participation. Good jobs remain out of reach for many workers. Rigid degree requirements, underinvestment in training, and gaps in childcare and transportation sideline a lot of talent. Low-wage roles often come with unstable hours, few benefits, and no path forward. And even where demand is high, jobs go unfulfilled—not for lack of workers, but for lack of systems that connect and support them. That raises a harder question. What do we actually mean by a “good job” today? Definitions are shifting as the labor market itself changes faster than many institutions can keep up. Flexibility, purpose, stability, advancement, pay—all of it matters, but not always in the same way to the same people. As technology, demographics and economic shifts reshape work, defining what makes a job good and for whom will only become more challenging.

Welcome to the Managing the Future of Work podcast from Harvard Business School. I’m your host, Bill Kerr. My guest today is Maria Flynn, president and CEO of Jobs for the Future [JFF], an influential nonprofit focusing on workforce development, education, and economic opportunity. A senior labor department official before joining JFF, Maria brings extensive cross-sector experience to an increasingly complex task. We’ll delve into JFF’s diverse portfolio of research, social entrepreneurship, and advocacy. We’ll talk about its ambitious goals to help millions of workers overcome barriers to career-sustaining employment. We’ll consider the upside and challenges of skills-based hiring, finding consensus on diversity, key generational trends in the labor market, and how AI is rewriting just about all of the rules. Maria, welcome to the podcast.

Maria Flynn: Thanks so much, Bill. It’s great to be here with you.

Kerr: Maria, tell us a bit about how you got into labor market policy and workforce development specifically.

Flynn: Sure. So I really grew up around these issues. Growing up in New Jersey, my mother was a school secretary at our local, what we then called our “VocEd” high school, now we would call our “career and technical education” high school. And my father actually worked for the New Jersey Department of Labor focused on workforce issues like apprenticeship and unemployment. So these are kitchen table issues that I very much grew up around. And so my first job after graduating college was actually at the U.S. Department of Labor, and I had a terrific career there. I stayed there 16 years, really moving from an entry-level analyst role up to a senior executive within the department—really enamored and driven by just the issue of work and how it really drives one’s purpose and their dignity, and particularly the intersections between education and workforce, because I think too often these things are talked about in siloed ways. But I’m a big believer that we need to talk about them in an integrated way.

Kerr: I want us to go back to that kitchen table, and a while in the past. And if you had imagined that conversation with your parents and then you understood what the world of work and the world of jobs would look like in 2025, what would’ve been the biggest surprise or what would’ve been the most unexpected aspects?

Flynn: One is the speed of information. I was in college and entered the labor market at really a pivotal point. I’m someone who during those four years of undergrad went from typing term papers on an electric typewriter to using a computer—so right in that transition. And when I started at the U.S. Department of Labor, we had the ability to email each other within the department but not email anyone anywhere else. And literally some of my first roles in Washington, D.C., would be hand-carrying legislative language from the labor department up to the House or the Senate. So I think going from that world where information flowed at a certain pace to where we are now is something that in 1991, when I started at DoL, I certainly wouldn’t have imagined. And then I think even looking back further to that, both my parents took, I would say what we would call now “nontraditional paths” into the labor market. My mother didn’t have any education or training beyond high school. My father got his degrees later in life when he was raising my brothers and me. And I think we are seeing a kind of resurgence in interests and value in those nontraditional pathways again now. I think that’s exciting as well—this opportunity to look at what are the high-value pathways to quality jobs that are adjacent to or parallel to the more traditional four-year-degree path that I myself took.

Kerr: So, Maria, for listeners that aren’t familiar with Jobs for the Future, can you tell us a little bit about the organization? What’s its scope? What are its main priorities? What are some of the key successes that you’ve had?

Flynn: We are a national nonprofit organization that is dedicated to transforming our nation’s education and workforce systems with the goal of having more people achieving equitable economic advancement. To do that, we work across sectors. We work with folks like community college leaders, K–12 leaders, employers, entrepreneurs, and policymakers to redesign systems so that they work for everyone. And we do that by providing a mix of policy and advocacy services, capacity-building efforts, research and evaluation, and supports to entrepreneurs in the field as well. So we do a kind of a broad mix of services with a cross-sector approach that all really ties back up to the importance of quality jobs.

Kerr: So it’s really about being a catalyst in the ecosystem as a whole to help the bridges get made?

Flynn: Yes, exactly. And I like the analogy of bridging a lot, especially when we think about really advancing and transforming our nation’s traditional systems and also actively working with the social entrepreneurs and the disruptors who are working to change systems from the outside.

Kerr: Do they always want to be at the same table?

Flynn: As someone who kind of grew up in the traditional system space, we can be a little insular when it comes to our thinking and our vision. And as I started going to more, you know, Silicon Valley events or events that were more centered on social entrepreneurs, I really found that a lot of times those players weren’t deeply versed in the traditional systems. And the traditional-system players tend to be a little standoffish or even skeptical at times of the new entrants. And so I thought that there was a need in the ecosystem, and one that JFF was well suited to play, to really start engaging folks across these fields in very actionable ways. And so I think a lot of that comes down to simple things like the language that’s used, the mindsets that are taken. But by really focusing on a very tangible issue and kind of North Star around quality jobs, it really helps to rally folks around oh that big vision.

Kerr: I think it’s so important just to have those innovative sparks that are coming, but also the scale of the traditional providers and bringing that group together.

Flynn: Yes.

Kerr: Tell us a bit though about JFF Labs and JFF Ventures. What are their respective kinds of missions?

Flynn: JFF Labs is our innovation engine. We launched it about eight years ago. It both serves as kind of a sandbox for JFF, where we can test out new approaches and new ideas and incubate them to hopefully the part where they can be kind of integrated into the core business. And it’s also where we actively work with entrepreneurs who are working on different aspects of this quality jobs challenge. And then JFF Ventures is our investment arm that makes direct investments in early-stage, mission-aligned start-ups. We have a great portfolio of companies that we’re working with, including folks like Adept ID, that are working in the kind of skills-based talent-matching space, or a company called Making Space, that is a talent platform designed for individuals with disabilities, or Ant Hill, which is a great company that is looking to really drive economic advancement resources to what they call the “deskless workforce.” And then we also have a corporate innovation council that works with the entrepreneurs.

Kerr: That’s really exciting. I know a lot of venture firms have their future-of-work portfolios that they’re developing.

Flynn: Yes.

Kerr: It strikes me, but I’d love to confirm, that this may be one of those things that is also different than those kitchen table conversations with your parents, you know, a long time ago. Like, we didn’t have as much of the private-sector entrepreneurship trying to solve these big challenges.

Flynn: Exactly. I think the rise in the number of entrepreneurs who are taking fresh looks at these issues is, you know, definitely where JFF wants to be at the table with those folks and kind of helping them understand how to navigate these traditional systems and then helping, you know, traditional system leaders really understand how best they can be plugging in these new solutions to advance their missions at a more rapid pace.

Kerr: I want us to move into a little bit of measuring and thinking about impact here. But let’s start with perhaps a definition, which is, what do you see as being a “good quality” job? Not all jobs are necessarily considered to be good jobs, so what are the things that you might think to employers—or again to workforce boards—what constitutes a good job that we’re aiming for in our interventions?

Flynn: Yeah, so this relates to the big North Star that JFF rolled out two years ago, which is that by 2033, we want to see 75 million Americans who face various economic advancement working in quality jobs. And so it’s a big, huge goal that we are hoping to rally the future.

Kerr: Wonderful goal. Huge goal.

Flynn: Obviously it’s huge goal, much, much, much more than JFF will ever tackle on its own. And so we really see this as an economy-wide goal and ambition. And it really stems from the fact that, as you mentioned in your opening, across the country, we are still benefiting from a relatively low unemployment rate. And traditionally, a lot of the conversations around jobs really talks about the quantity of jobs or the numbers of jobs. But we believe that we really need to start digging in more to the quality of jobs. And what is a quality job for me might look different than a quality job for you. So it’s important that we really center workers in this work and really understand what is driving them and their decisions and what they’re valuing. So we are working very closely with the Families and Workers Fund, with Gallup, the Upjohn Institute, and a leading team of economists to survey over 18,000 U.S. workers on five aspects of job quality. So when we think about how to define a quality job, we look at these five things. We look at, does the job pay enough to make ends meet? Does the job enable workers to feel safe and respected? Does the job give workers a say in decisions that affect them? Does it provide workers with opportunities to learn new skills in advance in their career? And then also does it provide workers with some control over their time and their schedule? And again, depending on the individual, they may rank some of those higher than others in terms of what they’re looking for at any given point in their career. But that’s the framework that we’re using with our partners to start to roll out this work.

Kerr: But there are minimum thresholds in all five of those areas …

Flynn: Yes.

Kerr: ... that you aspire to. And so how many people are in a job today, but it’s not considered to be a good job? Because presumably part of your 75 million are people that are in a bad job that we need to get them to a good job.

Flynn: Yes, exactly. So we are looking at four key populations of workers, and obviously there’s some overlap between them, but the four are: workers who do not have four-year college degrees, workers of color, women, and workers who have been impacted by the justice system. And when we first rolled this work out two years ago, our estimate was that only 38 million of workers in those categories were working in quality jobs. In June of this year, we rolled out an updated estimate that now 51 million of those workers who face barriers to advancement are working in quality jobs—so a gain of more than 10 million, which we’re really encouraged by. But at the same time, we also have seen that the size of those four buckets of workers, those populations, has also grown from 130 million to 138 million over the past couple of years. So right now, we’re saying that 63 percent of what we’re calling our “North Star populations” are still not working in quality jobs. So there’s still a lot of work that needs to be done.

Kerr: Great. In terms of your strategy then, do you then say, “Okay, these are the four buckets that we really want to make forward movement with.” Do we go bucket by bucket and try to understand what’s the barrier that’s in the way for better placement into good jobs or what skills need to be imparted? So does it at that point become a very granular emphasis that’s different, for example, with fair chance hiring practices …

Flynn: Yes.

Kerr: ... versus something that’s maybe related to one of the other buckets, like lack of a formal credential?

Flynn: Yep, exactly. I think it’s both. Over the years, we have seen that there are some supports and interventions that are what you would call the “curb cut effect.” So supports that are helpful across populations. And an example of that could be supportive services or wraparound services that get to issues like childcare and transportation that are really universal issues. And then there are others that, as you’re saying, are more targeted. And so how we approach that at JFF is, we have several centers that are really digging into subsets of these populations. So, for example, around fair-chance hiring, we have a Center for Justice and Economic Advancement that is dedicated to looking at issues related to individuals who have been impacted by the justice system, and how we can work both on the supply side and the demand side to break down those barriers. So that means working with employers through our partners with the Business Roundtable and others to change employer practice. And we’re working to really model that behavior at JFF as a fair-chance employer, but also working around career-navigation issues, around federal policy issues, community college issues, that can really make way and make differences on the supply side so that individuals are getting the training and the access that they need as well.

Kerr: That’s great. So as we think about the labor market, which is moving quickly around and rapidly changing, what do you see as the future of career navigation, which is part of this navigating your way to a good job? But even from there, jobs are going to be changing and morphing and technology’s going to come and make some jobs obsolete. And so what do you see as the future of career navigation? What role might JFF play in helping that future be more successful?

Flynn: Yeah, so personally I think a lack of a high-quality, transparent career navigation is probably one of the biggest deficits that we face as a nation. I think if you think about, if you are a student who is going on a traditional path to a four-year college degree, there are a lot of supports out there for you. But if you among the millions of high school students who are interested in a different path, you don’t have that same level of information, of data, of supports available. And if you are a worker in your 40s or 50s who wants to go and get a credential to upskill yourself to a new opportunity, the maze of credentials that are out there are pretty overwhelming. I think the good news is there are a lot of great efforts underway at Strata, at Burning Glass Institute, and others, to really start to look at the issue of the value of different short-term credentials. But at JFF, we are really focused on how do we really build the systems around this, and how do we both really work to change the narrative around high-quality pathways that may be alternatives to traditional four-year degrees. And we are doing this in a deep partnership with our friends at American Student Assistant. So last year, we launched the ASA Center for Career Navigation. The center is really focused on young people, 16 to 24, who are interested in a high-quality pathway that’s an alternative to a traditional four-year degree.

Kerr: That’s great. And I know this particular age group is one where apprenticeships are often a very valuable sort of mechanism into labor market. Are you seeing new gains with that particular form of entry?

Flynn: We are. Registered apprenticeship has a very definitive and dedicated evidence base that shows strong return on investment, both for the individual and the employer. And we have seen several presidential administrations, probably dating back to George W. Bush, really emphasizing the importance of apprenticeships. It’s a very bipartisan issue as well. We’ve seen a lot of growth in apprenticeship outside of the traditional construction and skilled trades, which for many decades really was almost the entirety of apprenticeship programs in our country. In the past 10 years, the apprenticeships are now kind of half those traditional occupations and half in what I would call new occupations. So we have seen tremendous growth in fields like financial services, where there’s actually been a 350 percent increase in apprentices over the decade; technology; energy; agriculture; and more. So I think apprenticeship is moving in a lot of exciting directions, and we are working really closely both with employers and with policymakers to ensure that we can continue to scale apprenticeships at a rapid rate, and really reducing the burden on employers in doing that. So really getting the message down into high schools and young people and ensuring that we have really strong both pre-apprenticeship programs and youth apprenticeship programs is a critical piece to making this scale at the rate that we’d like to see it happen.

Kerr: That’s a real bright spot. And you also mentioned it’s bipartisan. Unfortunately, there are relatively few bipartisan issues at the moment. So I’m just going to kind of maybe as a broad sweep, because you have to spend time with both sides of the political divide, with our current kind of climate, what do you say are the best ways to discuss or think about questions about inequality or overcoming the racial disparities that are a focus for JFF as one of your four groups? How do you message that most effectively?

Flynn: I believe that the issue of quality jobs itself is a very bipartisan issue. So it’s like, I think the availability of these jobs or lack thereof, I think it plays a big part in what is driving the political discourse in our nation right now. So starting with jobs I think is always a good way to enter the conversation. And then I would say starting with the data. So really basing this on a data-driven conversation that is looking at demographic trends and really showing that, in order for us to be succeeding as individuals, as communities, as a nation, we need to be engaging all of our nation’s talent. And I think that is a message that resonates on both sides of the aisle, and really is being felt very acutely by the private sector. Also making the case that this is an economic competitiveness issue, and that we need to be working together to address these disparities, to transform our systems in big and bold ways, and that just kind of tinkering around the edges of changing systems that were designed for a very, very different economy and a very, very different labor market isn’t going to be enough. And so I think that is where we will continue to see bipartisan agreement. I think the details on how we get there are always going to be challenging to navigate, but I think if we really keep focused on these North Stars around competitiveness and job quality, we can move further faster.

Kerr: I know it’s a very forward-looking and uncertain question, but AI is looming heavily on many people’s minds. It’s actually one of the places where you can get the kind of alignment across the political spectrum about its importance, but it’s also brings a lot of worries or risks as to how it’s going to affect the labor market and the stability of jobs and so forth. So as you think about the way you message this to your team, the way you design your mission statement and so forth, where are you with AI right now? What’s the way that you best frame it? And is it something that can maybe even be helpful for the future being brighter?

Flynn: So I would say we are deep in AI right now, and I fully believe that JFF’s big North Star will never be attainable if we don’t factor AI into the equation from the very start, both in terms of how it is impacting individual workers and jobs, but also how it can actually be leveraged in ways that can accelerate progress toward the more quality jobs and economic advancement in general. So two years ago, in June of 2023, we launched a center for artificial intelligence in the future of work to really tackle this head on. And through that center we’re exploring how AI is reshaping work, and we’re developing solutions that help employers integrate AI responsibly and also support workers as they navigate through this period of disruption. We really need to be looking at how our business is going to operate, how are people going to work, how are students going to learn, and how are our economic regions going to compete. So I think we really need to be moving faster to figure this out. And so at JFF, we’re really leaning into how can we be a model of how a nonprofit can be utilizing and leveraging AI in new ways. So my worry is that this isn’t front and center enough in federal policy discussions, kind of at this intersection between learning, work, and AI. So I think we need to be upping the pace there, and that we also need to be driving to action. How can we be moving forward with pilots that can start to really put some of these solutions and ideas to action within communities? I think we spent a lot of time in the academic sphere of talking about exactly which jobs and how many jobs are going to be disrupted, but we need to start making this land in communities in very tangible and actionable ways.

Kerr: We spent a lot of time recently in the conversation about the policy side. Thinking about your bridging role, what are the things that you are hearing from employers that you most want to tell the other side of the bridge, that you feel like it would be very helpful for either the educators or for the policymakers or the up-and-coming social entrepreneurs to be able to hear about?

Flynn: Yeah, so we work with a group of employers that we call our “impact employer network.” We just posted an event with them in June of this year, and we’re hearing a couple things loud and clear. One is that there continues to be frustration in the education and training-system ability to keep pace with what employers need. I think that’s something that we’ve been hearing for decades, but I think it’s being underscored right now because of the AI transformation. So pace and agility, I would say is number one. And in response to that, we’re starting to see employers looking to even build their own solutions. We’re definitely hearing the continued need for skilled workers and an interest in centering a skills-first approach. So I think we see that as a trajectory that will continue to accelerate. So, meaning a willingness to look beyond the traditional degree as that signal to hire, to look more at different types of credentials and skills as both a hiring mechanism and an advancement mechanism. And we’re also seeing that, while the term “DEI” may not be used as much as it was a year ago, we are also hearing that by and large, employers are staying the course and really seeing the need to have robust pools of talent that they can access and to build very inclusive environments. But by and large, I think the pace of change, the need for skilled workers, and navigating business outcomes in a time when they’re also navigating discussions of taxes and tariffs and integration is extremely complex and ever-changing moment.

Kerr: That skills-based hiring is an advancement. It’s one of the places that a lot of people see it as the future, they’re leaning into it, but they’re frustrated. And so I guess a two-part question: Are there some things you’ve seen in employers that really do make it work? Like what had to happen? And then second, if you had a magic wand that you could wave in the policy arena right now to be able to accelerate the skills-based hiring, what would that be? What would be the potential policy answers?

Flynn: On the employer side, I would say by and large, we’re seeing that it can be easier for large corporations to move in this direction than small and medium-sized employers. I think we’ve got great leaders out there—Walmart is certainly one of them—who have made very tangible progress around centering skills to really investing in their front line. I think we are looking at how do we help these smaller, medium-sized enterprises do this as well. I do think this is where AI can play a key role. So we are seeing a lot of AI-driven interventions that can make skills matching and skills alignment easier for employers to do. On the policy side, I think continuing to support approaches like apprenticeship is a big one. I think also looking to see how can we be really paving the way for the adoption and scale of the tech infrastructure that’s needed around LERs or employment records for example, so that folks can really start to move to have digital wallets that can move with them throughout their careers and be able to include skill profiles and other things in ways that we don’t have right now. And then I would also say being able to modernize our workforce system in a way that is more skills first, that is more flexible and responsive to the local labor market needs.

Kerr: Well, Maria, I think we’re coming to the end here. You mentioned earlier a bunch of challenges that employers in the world are working their way through, be it deglobalization or technological change or other pieces here. What are you seeing as the biggest challenges you want to tackle in the coming years? What’s the optimism that you’re going to bring toward JFF’s work?

Flynn: Yeah, so the optimism that keeps me driving forward is the fact that the issue of quality jobs is something that everyone can rally around, and it’s something that is felt in every home across the country. So how can we use this as a unifying message and goal that can help transform our communities and our economy at the same time to ensure that both individuals can have what they need for themselves and their families, and that businesses have the talent that they need to remain economically competitive. We’re going to keep pushing toward our North Star and really encouraging folks to join us in that effort. We have a 75 million network, for example, that over 200 organizations have already signed up for. And then I think the challenges are really the ones that we have covered. How do we continue to move traditional systems forward at a faster pace while leveraging the disruptors and the innovators that are coming alongside of us? How do we leverage AI in a positive and productive and proactive way? And how can we really be changing the narrative across the country in terms of what are the pathways to quality jobs? How can we be building more approaches that truly work for learners and workers that may not look like what we think of as the traditional pathway right now?

Kerr: Well, that’s a very ambitious agenda, so we wish you the best in that bridge-making work. Maria Flynn is the president and CEO of Jobs for the Future. Thanks so much for joining us today.

Flynn: Thank you, Bill. It was great to be here.

Kerr: We hope you enjoy the Managing the Future of Work podcast. If you haven’t already, please subscribe and rate the show wherever you get your podcasts. You can find out more about the Managing the Future of Work Project at our website hbs.edu/managingthefutureofwork. While you’re there, sign up for our newsletter.