Thanks for this, Virginia — I really appreciate it. Please feel free to use quotes for your work (which definitely sounds worthwhile). I’ve been thinking about Studs Terkel a lot these days — he was of that rare breed that could see and articulate what most missed about a particular subject, with work/ labor markets being a great example (I have a well-worn copy of “Working” on my bookshelf).
I’ve increasingly felt the conversation around workforce development is far too dominated by economist-types. Journalists, sociologists, psychologists — they all have incredibly important contributions to make in this space. Crucially, all of them typically practice some derivative of ‘human-centered’ research. Unfortunately, most labor economists really don’t do anything that could be described as ‘human-centered.’ Good luck!
