Future of Work investigation complicated by pandemic's length
Photo | MassDevelopment
A rendering of an office building at Red Tail Heights in Devens. Office vacancies have increased since remote working rose in popularity during the pandemic.
As it enters the homestretch of its months-long investigation of the changing nature of work in Massachusetts and prepares to draft its report, the Future of Work Commission had an important question to settle Tuesday: just exactly when is "the future?"
The 17-member Future of Work Commission is aiming to have its final report and legislative recommendations finalized by the end of March and held its sixth meeting Tuesday for what co-chair Sen. Eric Lesser called a "brain dump," a chance for the commission members to bat around ideas and highlight some of the important points they took away from hours of testimony and scores of submitted documents.
The group's discussion Tuesday touched upon each of the seven areas of focus specifically included in the commission's enabling law, including access to health care and employment benefits, talent and skill development, preparing young people for jobs that are expected to be in high demand when they reach the workforce, and dealing with professional credentialing.
"As we talk through all of these issue areas, I heard certainly so many comments throughout this conversation that is very relevant for the future -- the acceleration of technology, the disruption, the automation and such -- but I've also heard some challenges that we're facing today that probably will continue to grow in the future," Lauren Jones, executive vice president at the Massachusetts Business Roundtable, said, sparking a discussion of how the forthcoming report should define the future.
The commissioners who weighed in on the question generally favored an eight- to 10-year outlook for the report, including Secretary of Labor and Workforce Development Rosalin Acosta.
"I just think we should ground it on a lot of the work that's already been done and a lot of research that's already been done," she said.
In July, Acosta and Gov. Charlie Baker released the report the administration hired McKinsey & Co. to produce after studying the future of work in the Bay State. The 82-page report found that the changing ways of working could move the "center of gravity" in Massachusetts away from its urban core, that high costs of living and doing business here create a risk of future job growth moving out-of-state, and that 300,000 to 400,000 workers could need to transition to different fields over the next decade if the pandemic-accelerated trends around automation, e-commerce and digitization continue.
"This isn't some distant, academic question that will need to be solved by future generations," Acosta said in July. "By 2025 to 2030, the ability to successfully reskill approximately 30,000 to 40,000 people per year could lead to a vibrant commonwealth in which new opportunities outpace workforce growth."
As the Future of Work Commission prepares to write its report, it will be drawing on the testimony it received at the hearings it held around the state since June and a host of reports, memos and slideshows submitted to the group. All of the commission's materials are posted on its website.
How different the state economy will be on the other side of the COVID-19 pandemic and what Beacon Hill should do to prepare for the changes has been a popular topic of discussion since early 2021, when the promise of vaccines led many to believe the post-pandemic future was closer at hand than it has proven to be.
Baker made it a central theme to his 2021 State of the Commonwealth address, telling Bay Staters last January that "[a]s we come out of the pandemic, one issue we need to get right is the future of work."
Aside from the Future of Work Commission, discrete groups are delving into other issues the pandemic has highlighted as being in need of attention, like the unemployment insurance system and the child care sector. The Legislature has also created its own panels to look at and beyond the pandemic, like the Senate Committee on Reimagining Massachusetts Post-Pandemic Resiliency.
The Future of Work Commission was created by the 2020 jobs bill signed by Baker last January, and it was tasked with studying the impact of automation, artificial intelligence, global trade, access to new forms of data and the internet of things on workers, employers and the economy.
Lesser, who co-chairs the commission alongside Rep. Josh Cutler, said Tuesday that the deadline for commission members and others to submit testimony is this Friday, Jan. 21. He said he would circulate a rough draft of the commission's report and recommendations to members the week of Feb. 28 and will give them at least one week and one weekend to offer their feedback.
A meeting planned for March 15 will either be held to vote to accept the final report or to tie up any loose ends that remain, Lesser said.
"It'll be a busy January, February, March," he said. "Our hope is that by the end of March, that we'll be done."
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