Americans need jobs that work. This is how we get them there.
Work is as universal an experience as Americans have left. But whether you have a job that works for you is often the result of thousands of deeply personal decisions and a whole lot of chance. That means everything is workforce and workforce is profoundly human.
Yet many policy discussions about workforce flatten humans into inputs and outputs—or linger on how the machines are coming to eat us all.
Which frankly, I’m glad for our Future Machine Overlords. They’ll have worked pretty hard to get to that point, and I hope I’m worth the wait.
In the meantime, jobs remain for people. That means the policies and systems that get people to jobs have to be built for people too. Many are not.
JOBS THAT WORK is a newsletter about how we do workforce better for humans.
Every week, JOBS THAT WORK will provide expert insight and original reporting on action steps that get people to good jobs and intel that practitioners need to make projects that make a workforce that works for people.
Why you should pay for a subscription.
Aside from supporting a very smart and handsome author, JOBS THAT WORK’s subscription tiers are aimed at arming workforce development organizations with the best information for navigating an uncertain time.
Monthly ($10) and annual subscribers ($70 for early bird subscribers) will get regular listings of available workforce grant funds, expert analysis on funding trends, and subscriber-exclusive content.
Founding subscribers ($150 and up) get all of the above and a 45-minute consulting call on your workforce and funding strategies.
Why you should pay for a subscription for another very good reason.
My mom’s struggles are a big part of why I got into workforce development. That is why 10% of my subscription revenue will go toward The Cindi Beadle Memorial Fund. This fund honors my late mother by helping nontraditional nursing students in North Alabama with the unexpected expenses that can keep them from finishing their degree and filling the area’s nursing shortage.
You can learn more and read the story behind it here.
Why you should listen to this guy about workforce stuff.
Nick Beadle is a writer, attorney, and journalist with more than two decades experience on the problems affecting working people and the people that hire them.
During the Biden-Harris Administration, Nick served as Chief of Staff for Workforce and Communications for the U.S. Department of Labor’s Good Jobs Initiative, a cross-federal initiative that helped harness more than $280 billion to create infrastructure and manufacturing jobs that help workers get ahead. Nick led the Department’s strategy to rethink every grant dollar to get workers into better quality jobs and built innovative resources for employers on topics like skills-based hiring.
Prior to his work with the Good Jobs Initiative, Nick developed a first-of-its-kind grant model using workforce dollars to battle the opioid crisis, later adapted by Congress in the bipartisan SUPPORT Act relief package to address the substance-use disorder epidemic. Before law, he was an award-winning investigative reporter covering misuse of government funds and barriers to economic stability in the American South.
A first-generation college student, he is originally from Greenhill, Alabama, and a graduate of the University of Alabama and the American University Washington College of Law. He has many complex and important feelings about college sports and professional wrestling, which you can read on his BlueSky alongside his policy thoughts.
Nick consults on workforce, grants, and public policy. You can learn more and reach out about work here.
