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Report: Almost 2 in 5 workers say their jobs are of ‘low’ or ‘medium’ quality

A new survey from Jobs for the Future (JFF) indicates 'an apparent resource and opportunity gap between high and low-medium quality job holders'
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A recent survey finds 38% consider their jobs to be of low or medium quality. And those workers are less likely than those in high-quality jobs (64% to 86%) to feel they have access to resources to find better employment.

More than one in four workers (28%) has considered leaving their job every month for the last year. The survey says, “Black workers, workers with less experience, low-medium quality job holders, and unvalued employees attest to considering leaving their current jobs most often.”

The survey of 2,199 adults was commissioned earlier this month by Jobs for the Future (JFF). The data are weighted to “approximate a target sample of adults based on age, gender, race, educational attainment, region, gender by age, and race by educational attainment.”

Findings indicate workers in high-quality jobs are consistently more likely to feel productive, content, energized, happy, and optimistic. Workers in high-quality jobs (43%) feel their “education and career pathway helped me achieve a quality job” – versus 15% of workers in low-medium quality jobs.

Those working in high-quality jobs are more likely than those in low-medium quality jobs to feel they have equitable opportunity for good jobs, know how to move into quality jobs, and have the needed skills to advance into those jobs.

Thirty percent of adults say higher wages would positively impact job quality, but 70% also note a combination of non-wage conditions that would make their jobs better. These include “better work-life balance, flexible scheduling, more paid time off, a safer workplace, and the option to work from home.”

Read more about JFF’s 2023 Quality Jobs Survey Highlights.

Dana Beth Ardi

Executive Committee

Dana Beth Ardi, PhD, Executive Committee, is a thought leader and expert in the fields of executive search, talent management, organizational design, assessment, leadership and coaching. As an innovator in the human capital movement, Ardi creates enhanced value in companies by matching the most sought after talent with the best opportunities. Ardi coaches boards and investors on the art and science of building high caliber management teams. She provides them with the necessary skills to seek out and attract top-level management, to design the ideal organizational architectures and to deploy people against strategy. Ardi unearths the way a business works and the most effective way for people to work in them.

Ardi is an experienced business executive and senior consultant who leverages business organizational transformation through talent strategies. She uses her knowledge and experience to develop talent strategies to enhance revenue and profit contributions. She has a deep expertise in change management and organizational effectiveness and has designed and built high performance cultures. Ardi has significant experience in mergers, acquisitions, divestitures, IPO’s and turnarounds.

Ardi is an expert on the multi-generational workforce. She understands the four intersecting generations of workers coming together in contemporary companies, each with their own mindsets, leadership and communications styles, values and motivations. Ardi is sought after to assist companies manage and thrive by bringing the generations together. Her book, Fall of the Alphas: How Beta Leaders Win Through Connection, Collaboration and Influence, will be published by St. Martin’s Press. The book reflects Ardi’s deep expertise in understanding organizations and our changing society. It focuses on building a winning culture, how companies must grow and evolve, and how talent influences and shapes communities of work. This is what she has coined “Corporate Anthropology.” It is a playbook on how modern companies must meet challenges – culturally, globally, digitally, across genders and generations.

Ardi is currently the Managing Director and Founder of Corporate Anthropology Advisors, LLC, a consulting company that provides human capital advisory and innovative solutions to companies building value through people. Corporate Anthropology works with organizations, their cultures, the way they grow and develop, and the people who are responsible for forming their communities of work.

Prior to her position at Corporate Anthropology Advisors, Ardi served as a Partner/Managing Director at the private equity firms CCMP Capital and JPMorgan Partners. She was a partner at Flatiron Partners, a venture capital firm working with early state companies where she pioneered the human capital role within an investment portfolio.

Ardi holds a BS from the State University of New York at Buffalo as well as a Masters degree and PhD from Boston College. She started her career as professor at the Graduate Center at Fordham University in New York.