Host Rachel Unruh talks with National Skills Coalition CEO Andy Van Kleunen about the state of our workforce, the lessons we've learned from the recessions of our distant - and not-so-distant - past, and how National Skills Coalition envisions an inclusive economic recovery that benefits every worker and every industry in the post-pandemic economy.

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Learn more about Skills for an Inclusive Economic Recovery: https://www.nationalskillscoalition.org/covid19

Juliet Ellis of SFPUC and Elizabeth Toups of JVS join us to talk about their efforts – which started long before the pandemic hit – to rethink the water utility workforce in the San Francisco Bay Area and how they're reshaping the workforce pipeline into a staple of the communities they serve. 

Success with containing Covid-19 has been linked to investments in contact tracing in countries around the world.

With the more than 33 million workers that have filed new unemployment claims in the past two months – and millions more that were out of the labor market before the pandemic – investing in contact tracing capacity is not only essential to respond to our current crisis, but also an opportunity to get people back to into the workforce.

In an episode recorded as part of a virtual briefing for Congressional staffers, host Rachel Unruh talked to Rep. Andy Levin (D-MI 09) about the contact tracing proposal he and Sen. Elizabeth Warren devised that was incorporated into the House version of the HEROES Act. She then spoke to a panel of workforce experts - Diane Factor of California's Worker Education and Resource Center, Steve Jurch of the Community College of Baltimore County, and Luann Dunsford of Michigan Works! Association - about how to make contact tracer training effective while addressing the racially inequitable impacts of Covid-19.