About the Market Scan

The U.S. workforce is growing increasingly diverse. It’s estimated that by 2045, half of the adults living in the United States will be individuals who identify as people of color, with 13% of adults identifying as Black. For the country to remain economically competitive, people of all backgrounds must have opportunities to make significant contributions to the evolving labor market. The gains could be substantial: The U.S. Chamber of Commerce estimates that closing the racial equity gap could generate $8 trillion in U.S. GDP growth by 2050.   

But that won’t happen if things don’t change. Currently, millions of people aren’t able to fully participate and succeed in education, training, and well-paid employment opportunities in part because they lack access to foundational resources such as housing, health care, child care, and transportation.  

Employers can play a pivotal role in ensuring that workers have opportunities to harness all of their talents and thrive at work if they connect employees to a comprehensive array of wraparound supports that enable them to manage challenges that prevent them from succeeding on the job and advancing in their careers.  

Key Findings 

These are the most powerful insights that emerged from our research:

1. Employers need to understand the factors such as lack of access to health care, child care, and transportation that limit Black workers’ access to quality jobs and economic advancement opportunities. 
2. Employers can position themselves for sustained success by offering programs and services that enable employees to manage the circumstances and challenges that limit their ability to succeed at work. These efforts can lead to improvements in employee retention and productivity rates and yield valuable returns over time. 
3. Existing and emerging technologies are enabling new and innovative ways to provide wraparound supports that deliver personalized benefits for workers but can be scaled to serve entire organizations or broader populations. 
4. Organizations that want to promote long-term career advancement opportunities for Black workers should offer supports that facilitate skill-building and networking, which can expand people’s professional social capital. 

Understanding the Landscape

The Black worker experience is a diverse and complicated interplay of factors, including socioeconomic disparities, systemic barriers to career success, and ongoing efforts to address racial inequities in the workplace. Despite recent improvements in upward mobility, Black workers must still overcome numerous challenges in order to fully participate and succeed in today’s labor market. This illustrates how important it is for employers to take the time to understand the complex and varied circumstances every one of their employees experiences in the workforce. Only then will they be able to identify the wraparound support solutions that will give Black workers and others who face systemic barriers the best chances of success.  

Market Segments

Through our research, we gained clearer insights into how offering wraparound supports, or connecting workers to them via partnerships with community organizations, enables employers to improve their talent management practices and expand economic advancement opportunities for their employees. Based on what we learned, we divided the market into three key categories related to the stages of a worker’s career journey: recruitment, retention, and advancement.    

As we reviewed the array of products, services, and resources in this marketplace, we assigned the offerings to categories based on the way they support workers and drive improvements in business outcomes for employers. In some cases, solutions could fall into more than one category.   

Within the segments of recruitment, retention, and advancement, we identified sub-segments that address aspects of a worker’s experience, both inside and outside of work, that significantly impact their engagement and performance on the job. 

Trends

1. There’s a greater emphasis on offering wraparound supports that promote opportunities to build professional social capital because they have a positive impact on the long-term career advancement prospects of Black workers.
2. Using AI-driven tools responsibly and ethically has the potential to help organizations create more dynamic, adaptive, and supportive work environments.
3. The need for cloud-based systems and mobile applications will grow.
4. As the number of solutions designed to promote worker well-being grows, employers will be looking for tools that help employees navigate their support options as a way to maximize the value of the benefits for workers.
5. As providers strive to offer comprehensive solutions that streamline HR operations and address the evolving needs of workers, we expect to see increases in both provider consolidation and integration of disparate systems.
6. Employers say it’s difficult to recruit Black talent to fill entry-level jobs without diverse management teams, and it’s difficult to diversify at higher levels without many Black workers in entry-level positions. 

Innovators to Watch

Thousands of organizations offer technologies and solutions that help expand workers’ opportunities to pursue high-wage jobs in high-growth industries by eliminating disparities in access to basic services that people rely on in their daily lives. After a careful scan of that broad marketplace, we selected nine cutting-edge organizations as Innovators to Watch. You can read about them in this special JFF report.

Our Opportunity

Employers play a crucial role in shaping the experiences of Black people as they enter the workforce and pursue careers. In a rapidly evolving economy and a rapidly diversifying workforce, it’s essential for employers to support Black workers as whole individuals and ensure that they have access to wraparound supports that enable them to manage and overcome challenges and succeed on the job. 

Employers must consider how factors like lack of access to transportation, child care, elder care, health care, mental health services, and more can affect every worker’s ability to both arrive at the workplace and thrive in their careers.  

Black workers represent an untapped pool of talent that can drive innovation in the workplace and help employers develop products and services that reflect the needs and interests of an evolving customer base.  

Companies that provide all employees with supports to ensure that they have access to the services and resources they need to succeed at work can have a positive impact on the worker, the company, and the economy.  

KEY PARTNER

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