Economic Opportunity in a Volatile Economy

Project Overview

Research Team

Acknowledgements

What's in this Report?

Why Silicon Valley and Milwaukee?

Project Data and Method Overview

Market Meeters vs. Market Makers

Major Findings

Recommendations for Practice and Policy

Building on our Work

Interested in more details?

See the PDF file of our Final Report

See other project documents

Our emphasis throughout the research was on examining the impact of labor market intermediaries on employment opportunities for disadvantaged workers in each region. In this context, we found it useful to distinguish between "market-meeting" and "market-making" activities of intermediaries. Market-meeting activities, including some significant job placement and training efforts that can have a major impact on individual workers' lives, still implicitly take the available jobs, and the wages and benefits attached to them, as a given. At a time when job quality itself is on the decline, this strategy has inherent limitations in improving worker welfare. In contrast, in both positive and negative ways, market-making intermediaries are active agents in altering job structure and quality. On the positive side, these concerted actions can raise the skill levels and wages of the jobs themselves. Positive market-making strategies also aim at changing the amount of higher-quality jobs by increasing the basic standards required for employment. On the negative side, market-making LMIs may actually promote the decline of job quality or standards, as is the case when employers outsource entire functions to staffing service firms.