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1. A US Infrastructure Plan: Building for the Long Haul

Author:
Committee for Economic Development of the Conference Board
Publication Date:
02-2021
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
The Conference Board
Abstract:
Addressing America’s severe infrastructure needs—finally—must be at the top of the nation’s agenda. Improving infrastructure is one of the few issues that enjoys strong bipartisan support among the American public. Eighty percent of Americans support rebuilding our nation’s infrastructure—more than almost any other top issue facing the nation—and roughly two-thirds of Americans rate their own local roads as in fair or poor condition.1 A similar proportion say that the country is not doing enough to meet infrastructure needs.2 Modern, effective infrastructure is essential for virtually all US commerce and, therefore, for growth and prosperity that is widely shared among all Americans. Transportation and other forms of infrastructure must remake themselves to remain productive as the economy changes around them. But the devastating impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the US economy makes improving our infrastructure, keeping America competitive, and getting Americans back to work that much more urgent. The pandemic has forced an accelerated integration of technology into the work, school and personal lives of many Americans. But that has revealed inequities in access to reliable, high-speed internet. This experience is one more example of how our nation’s deficient infrastructure slows our economic growth generally. Around 24 million US households lack access to reliable, affordable, high-speed internet. If not addressed, weak infrastructure can deprive many Americans of equal access to opportunity. And at the same time, climate change threatens the foundations of our economy.
Topic:
Climate Change, Infrastructure, Economy, Transportation, Sustainability, and COVID-19
Political Geography:
North America and United States of America

2. Broadband Access - Connecting America

Author:
Committee for Economic Development of the Conference Board
Publication Date:
03-2021
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
The Conference Board
Abstract:
With most Americans dependent on reliable, high-quality, high-speed internet services to work, train, consult with doctors, or attend school from home, the COVID-19 pandemic vividly demonstrates that affordability and access barriers leave too many families behind. As America’s leaders in business and policy work toward a postpandemic economic recovery that delivers increasing prosperity for American families and preserves our nation’s economic leadership, they must also build toward a vision of a fully wired nation that meets the internet needs of all its citizens. Innovation and competition in information technology have been essential to delivering a higher quality of life and modern commerce, and they will be integral to lasting solutions that close two stubborn gaps that leave a minority of Americans behind. First, millions of Americans—particularly in the least densely populated areas—lack access to reliable high-quality internet services that could connect them to essential educational, employment, and entrepreneurial opportunities. Second, large numbers of low-income Americans with physical access to such services cannot afford them at current market prices, leaving them “underserved,” with less economic opportunity than their higher-income peers. In too many areas, a lack of competition among providers contributes to underservice. As needed internet speeds and associated hardware and technologies have advanced, closing these high-speed internet service gaps—increasing economic opportunity and strengthening businesses and communities—is essential. Policymakers must leverage the dynamism and innovation of the private market, increase competition in the provision of services, and invest wisely to close the gaps, boost deployment and affordability, and meet the universal service and critical technologies goals that have motivated nearly a century of federal telecommunications law.
Topic:
Science and Technology, Communications, Infrastructure, Internet, Economy, and Business
Political Geography:
North America and United States of America

3. A US Workforce Training Plan for the Postpandemic Economy

Author:
Committee for Economic Development of the Conference Board
Publication Date:
04-2021
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
The Conference Board
Abstract:
Though the US economy is expected to recover to its prepandemic level of production (gross domestic product or GDP) by the second quarter of 2021, the postpandemic economy will be different in many important ways. The pandemic’s acceleration of trends toward remote work, digital transformation, and automation could permanently reduce demand for low-skill jobs. To build a large and fully competitive US workforce and reduce inequality, aggressive reskilling will be needed. Even before the global pandemic’s onslaught, preparing the future workforce to drive rapidly advancing technology in an increasingly competitive global economy—and minimize the adverse fallout from these trends—was one of the nation’s greatest challenges. COVID-19 has made this challenge more urgent. Now, an estimated 40 percent of workers will need short-term training and reskilling by 2025.1 American leadership, prosperity, and competitiveness will hinge on maximizing the skills of our nation’s workers. The pandemic has disproportionately displaced minority workers, women, youth, and workers with lower educational attainment, many of whom are among the near-record 40-plus percent of the jobless who have been unemployed more than six months. Such displaced workers, or the “long-term unemployed,” typically find it hard to get a new job the longer they are without one. For many of them, securing a new job will require training for skills that are in demand.
Topic:
Partnerships, Economy, Business, Training, COVID-19, and Workforce
Political Geography:
North America and United States of America

4. Containing the Pandemic Public Debt

Author:
Committee for Economic Development of the Conference Board
Publication Date:
05-2021
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
The Conference Board
Abstract:
In early 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic presented the entire world with its worst public health threat in at least a century. The precise seriousness of the pandemic, of course, could not be known at the outset; and in fact, the pandemic is not yet vanquished as this statement is written. The extent of the damage the virus and its mutations will ultimately cause is not yet fully known. But the near-miraculous efforts to develop vaccines, contain the infection, and treat the infected provide much-needed hope that a return to “normal” is not out of reach. The pandemic had economic consequences as well. And like the public health impact, the shock to the economy was large but impossible to assess accurately at its outset. And like the damage to public health, the economic fallout is still impossible to assess today with complete accuracy. For the first time in 100 years, stay-at-home orders to protect the public health spurred an economic downturn and dramatic job losses—leaving a wide swath of businesses in hospitality, travel, leisure, dining, and retail nearly shut down, with entire occupations, such as personal service workers, facing extended layoffs or even permanent job loss. The fates of these businesses and workers are unpredictable, depending on the uncertain course of the pandemic itself. Another similarity between the public health and the economic threats is that prudent public policy required strong and immediate responses. With the ultimate extent of the damage unknown but potentially catastrophic, executive and congressional policymakers deemed it essential that government react swiftly and robustly. Policymakers and commentators repeated often that the nation should err on the side of action—that it would be better to do too much rather than too little.
Topic:
Debt, Economy, Public Health, Pandemic, and COVID-19
Political Geography:
North America and United States of America

5. Global Supply Chains: Compete, Don’t Retreat

Author:
Committee for Economic Development of the Conference Board
Publication Date:
07-2021
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
The Conference Board
Abstract:
For decades, global supply chains have become increasingly integral to the US economy and have been embraced by business and successive US Administrations because they increase efficiency and US competitiveness. But over the past several years, criticism has grown beyond the argument that US jobs are being exported to include concern about a more hostile and competitive global landscape.1 Then the COVID-19 pandemic struck, and lockdowns were imposed. Production in general was disrupted, shutting down suppliers and interrupting transportation channels; foreign governments closed their borders or hoarded crucial supplies for their own peoples.2 Prominently, lifesaving supplies—including personal protective equipment (PPE) and pharmaceutical production commodities, often sourced from abroad—were in short supply, putting frontline health care workers at even greater risk and complicating vaccine distribution.3 And then, as the pandemic began to ease and demand for goods increased, the enormous container ship Ever Given was grounded in the Suez Canal for six days, bringing much of goods transport around the world to a grinding halt and raising fears of even greater supply chain bottlenecks and commercial chaos.4 This truly unprecedented turn of events has exposed challenges to US reliance on global supply chains. Critics of the “offshoring” of jobs have assigned much of the economic and even the human pain of the pandemic to unwise and excessive dependence on global supply chains that include countries with “command” economies rather than free-market ones, or hostile nations that are unreliable sources of essential goods. The pandemic has also raised national security concerns about the reliability and resiliency of global supply chains, and businesses have been forced into workarounds of their own practices. Given the size of China’s economy, its extensive role in global supply chains, its growing military strength, and the growing tensions in its bilateral US relationship, China is at the nexus of these major concerns about supply chain resilience. The new administration has responded to this turmoil with a series of policy directives,5 studies on the subject,6 and legislative proposals under active consideration in Congress covering both short-term and medium-term responses, including a twenty-first century industrial strategy—which would be a major change of US policy direction. Global trade in materials, tools, components, and services deserves an immediate assessment of both security and economic needs for the long term.7 Security with prosperity must be the goal, and the nation must fully comprehend the bigger picture to achieve that outcome. This brief will put the role of global supply chains in the US and the world economy in perspective. It will offer recommendations to manage the economic and security challenges of global supply chains in the postpandemic economy to ensure that the US remains an innovative and competitive global leader.
Topic:
Economy, Trade, Strategic Competition, COVID-19, Commerce, and Supply Chains
Political Geography:
North America, Global Focus, and United States of America

6. New York City: Rebuilding a Future-Focused Economy

Author:
Committee for Economic Development of the Conference Board
Publication Date:
08-2021
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
The Conference Board
Abstract:
Major shifts are expected in how New Yorkers work in the postpandemic economy—remotely or in the office. But the COVID-19 pandemic has also dramatically accelerated a shift in the sectoral landscape of New York City and the industries in which New Yorkers will work. Restoring the city’s economic dynamism and creating a postpandemic, locally prosperous, and globally competitive economy will hinge on leveraging the city’s growth sectors and ensuring that New Yorkers have the skills they need to rebuild a thriving, future-focused NYC economy. The city lost almost 900,000 jobs during the initial months of the pandemic and had recovered just over half of those jobs by June 2021. Many of these job losses are in sectors that had seen relative weakness prior to the pandemic, including the city’s historically important finance & insurance and real estate sectors. The recovery in NYC has so far been an unbalanced one, lagging behind other major US city centers. Much of NYC’s ongoing economic recovery has been concentrated in health care, life sciences, and the growing tech industry, sectors that were strengthening prior to the pandemic. Indeed, tech jobs were already driving much of the employment growth in NYC before the pandemic. And while office and residential buildings emptied out during the crisis, Big Tech companies—including Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google—have increasingly moved in, expanding their office and warehouse spaces and accelerating hiring.
Topic:
International Trade and Finance, Finance, Economy, and COVID-19
Political Geography:
New York, North America, and United States of America

7. The China Trade Challenge: Phase II

Author:
Committee for Economic Development of the Conference Board
Publication Date:
07-2020
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
The Conference Board
Abstract:
China’s fast-paced economic rise and defiance of globally accepted market rules—along with the growing and yet unknown economic impact of the coronavirus (COVID-19)—are driving the next phase of US-China trade negations to the top of the nation’s post-election agenda. While the Phase I US-China trade deal has eased tension, it also set the stage for discussions on other important economic disputes, including forced technology transfer, cyber theft of intellectual property (IP), industrial policies, state subsidies, and new technology, according to a new Solutions Brief, The China Trade Challenge: Phase II, by the Committee for Economic Development of The Conference Board (CED).
Topic:
Bilateral Relations, Global Markets, Economy, Global Political Economy, and Trade
Political Geography:
China, Asia, North America, and United States of America

8. K-12: COVID-19 Disruption Must Lead To Overdue Reform

Author:
Committee for Economic Development of the Conference Board
Publication Date:
07-2020
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
The Conference Board
Abstract:
High quality education is a critical pathway to career success and economic mobility, particularly for students from low-income backgrounds.1 An education system that invests in children beginning at the earliest ages and supports their development as both citizens and skilled workforce entrants of the future—with both in-demand cutting-edge abilities and knowledge and the tools to continue to upgrade their education and training across the course of their career—is a necessity to ensuring that US employers remain globally competitive and that all Americans share in broad-based and growing prosperity in the 21st century. Pre-pandemic, even with low measured unemployment, there were reasons to be worried that US education was failing to live up to its full potential to better serve many students. Employers remained worried about the preparedness of the workforce, with nearly 40 percent of employers reporting that they couldn’t attract workers with the skills they needed, even for entry-level jobs.2 Despite the lure of higher average wages and employment rates for college graduates, a third of recent high school graduates did not enroll in college in October of 2019, and based on past studies, only about forty percent of students who do enroll in college will complete a degree within six years.3 In 2018, nearly a quarter of full-time workers aged 25 to 64 were earning less than $15 per hour and the labor force participation of American workers between the ages of 25 and 54 remained stubbornly low.4 Policymakers, educators, and business leaders were already faced with the task of improving the status quo; as outlined in Early Education and Child Care: The Essential Sector and Developing the Future Workforce: Revitalizing Postsecondary Education and Training After COVID-19, the COVID-19 pandemic has upended the nation’s education and training at every level. Elementary and secondary education is no exception. The disruption to date has already set back student learning, widened existing educational disparities, and placed K-12 schools under enormous pressure to chart a viable path forward through the end of the pandemic even as local conditions remain subject to rapid change.
Topic:
Education, Reform, Economy, Economic Mobility, and COVID-19
Political Geography:
North America and United States of America

9. Meeting the Upskilling Challenge: Training in the Time of COVID-19

Author:
Committee for Economic Development of the Conference Board
Publication Date:
07-2020
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
The Conference Board
Abstract:
COVID-19 has left tens of millions of Americans out of work or uncertain about the future of their current jobs, and thousands of firms urgently reassessing their own viability and path forward. Much remains unknown about the economy that will follow COVID-19. But clearly the pandemic’s whirlwind destruction has, first and foremost, hurt less-educated workers the most, with most of the job losses occurring in manual services, and has accelerated the innovative use of technology in the workplace. These two trends threaten to deepen inequality and add to the urgency of the upskilling and training challenge. Even before the pandemic led to the highest national unemployment rate since the Great Depression, American businesses and workers were anxious about how emerging technologies could potentially change which skills are in demand, and challenge workers to navigate careers requiring continual learning and adaptation.1 Both public policy and private sector leaders must prioritize support for building a US workforce with the necessary skills to outmaneuver this disruption. During pandemic-induced mass unemployment, the first task of policy is to restore as many Americans as possible to gainful employment as soon as the public health emergency allows. But after what is clearly the US’ second sizable economic downturn in barely a decade, workers cannot afford a slow recovery or one that leaves them just as vulnerable as they were before COVID-19 to technological innovation and job displacement. With innovative programs, this current crisis that has idled so many workers can be turned into an opportunity to meet this training and upskilling challenge.
Topic:
Employment, Economy, Training, COVID-19, Workforce, and Skills
Political Geography:
North America and United States of America

10. 2020 Election: Achieving a Safe, Accessible, and Credible Election during COVID-19

Author:
Committee for Economic Development of the Conference Board
Publication Date:
09-2020
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
The Conference Board
Abstract:
The 2020 general election is already underway, with absentee ballots being mailed out and collected in some states. And what seemed worryingly possible in the spring is now inevitable: the COVID-19 pandemic will be an important factor in the conduct of this fall’s election. Every community must address the public health threat and facilitate safe participation. Policymakers, election officials, and business leaders must ensure that voters need not choose between exercising their franchise and protecting their health, and that the election itself does not further spread COVID-19.1 The Committee for Economic Development of The Conference Board (CED) strongly believes that transparent, fair, and accessible elections are fundamental to the confidence of US citizens in their government and its leadership, and to the long-term health of the US economy. In May, June, and July, CED called on Congress to provide states with funding to conduct a safe, accessible, and credible election in the midst of a pandemic. With the election in progress, and Election Day less than two months away, the states and local communities, with or without federal support—including leaders in the business community—must act to meet those goals. As explained in this Solutions Brief, there is still time to protect voters and poll workers and maintain trust in the conduct and outcome of elections. Fortunately, effective measures are already in force in pockets of the country, with states and election officials needing only to replicate the best preparations and practices nationwide. This brief outlines recommendations policymakers should adopt to improve operations in their jurisdictions. Given the public health challenges involved, business leaders will also play a critical role in protecting their employees, customers, and communities during a successful election. To the extent possible, business leaders should take the concrete steps outlined in the brief to assist in the election effort.
Topic:
Elections, Economy, Business, Domestic Politics, and COVID-19
Political Geography:
North America and United States of America