The Must-Read Articles for Talent Professionals This Week

As reported in a recent article in The New York Times, economic mobility has been declining in the U.S. for decades — especially for workers without four-year college degrees.

“There are many paths to a better life,” Jean Eddy, CEO of American Student Assistance, told the Times, “and most young people don’t know how to find them. We’ve got to do a better job.”

In a report that she coauthored with researchers from the Burning Glass Institute, Jean found that just one in five U.S. workers with only a high school diploma bucked the trend of declining mobility. “But those workers,” writes the Times, “earned more than $70,000 a year — above the median income of college graduates — by the age of 40.”

One thing that those workers had in common? Many began their careers with one of the 73 “launchpad jobs” that the report identifies, ranging from bank tellers and pharmacy aides to restaurant hosts and flight attendants. “Starting well,” says Matt Sigelman, president of The Burning Glass Institute and a coauthor of the report, “gives you a set of skills and experiences you can build on. The real power of a launchpad job is what it can lead to, the next job and the one after that.”

To learn more about these launchpad jobs — and why recruiters hiring for these positions should take a skills-first approach — be sure to check out the Times’s piece at the top of our list below of must-read articles for talent professionals. And further down our list, you can also find out how L&D pros can better work with difficult stakeholders; why people analytics could also find its place on a launchpad with the help of AI; and why industry leader John Vlastelica believes its time for talent leaders to “bring the pain” when it comes to what he calls “TA taxes.”