STM Blog
Less Than Half of U.S. Workers Have Quality Jobs, Landmark Study Reveals
Last Updated on October 23, 2025 by Daily News Staff
New research exposes a hidden crisis in America’s workforce—and what it means for businesses and workers alike
Less Than Half of U.S. Workers Have Quality Jobs, Landmark Study Reveals
When we talk about the health of the economy, we usually focus on unemployment rates and wage growth. But a groundbreaking new study suggests we’ve been missing the bigger picture—and the reality is more troubling than the headlines suggest.
The American Job Quality Study (AJQS), a collaboration between Jobs for the Future, The Families & Workers Fund, W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research, and Gallup, surveyed more than 18,000 workers across the country. The findings paint a stark picture: only four in 10 U.S. workers have jobs that meet basic standards of quality.
What Makes a “Quality Job”?
The study defines a quality job as one that meets minimum thresholds in at least three of five critical dimensions:
- Financial well-being – earning enough to live comfortably
- Workplace culture and safety – feeling respected and secure
- Growth and development opportunities – access to training and advancement
- Agency and voice – having input on decisions that affect your work
- Work structure and autonomy – control over how and when you work
These aren’t luxuries. They’re the fundamentals that research shows drive both employee satisfaction and business success.
The Numbers Tell a Troubling Story
The study’s findings reveal deep inequities and widespread challenges:
Financial Strain Is Real
Nearly three in 10 employees say they’re “just getting by” or “finding it difficult to get by.” Another 43% are merely “doing okay.” Only 27% report living comfortably. Perhaps most striking: half of all employees earn at or below 300% of the federal poverty line for a family of two.
The Quality Gap Isn’t Equal
Access to quality jobs varies dramatically across demographics and geography. Men are significantly more likely than women to hold quality jobs (45% vs. 34%). Regional differences are notable too—44% of workers in the West have quality jobs, compared to just 36% in the Midwest.
Interestingly, non-W-2 workers—independent contractors, self-employed individuals, and informal workers—fare slightly better than traditional employees, with 46% in quality jobs compared to 39% of W-2 employees.
Respect Without Voice
While 83% of workers feel respected by colleagues and customers, there’s a disconnect when it comes to having a say in their work lives. Nearly seven in 10 employees believe they have less influence than they should over their pay and benefits. More than half want more input on technology adoption, and nearly half feel they lack sufficient say over their working conditions.
Schedule Instability Creates Stress
Most workers (71%) report having autonomy over how they do their work. But more than half lack control over whenthey work, dealing with unpredictable and unstable schedules—a major driver of stress and disengagement.
Training Gaps Persist
Only about half of employees participated in on-the-job training or education programs in the past year. Those with more formal education and those at larger organizations are most likely to receive development opportunities, widening the gap for workers who might benefit most.
Why This Matters—For Everyone
“Traditional labor statistics track how many people are employed and what they earn—but they don’t capture the aspects of work that drive employee and business success,” said Maria Flynn, President and CEO of Jobs for the Future.
The consequences of low job quality ripple outward. Workers in quality jobs report dramatically higher job satisfaction (58% vs. 23% for those in lower-quality jobs), better health, and greater overall life satisfaction. For businesses, this translates to lower turnover, higher productivity, and stronger performance.
“Companies that invest in quality jobs tend to experience increased employee retention, productivity, and innovation,” noted Rachel Korberg, Executive Director and Co-Founder of the Families and Workers Fund.
A New Way to Measure What Matters
Former U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Commissioner Erica Groshen, now a Research Fellow at the Upjohn Institute, emphasized the importance of looking beyond traditional metrics: “The gap between what labor market data tells us and what workers are experiencing has only become clearer in recent years. The American Job Quality Study represents an effort to close that gap.”
Stephanie Marken, Senior Partner at Gallup, put it simply: “Counting jobs is no longer enough. Workers in quality jobs aren’t just more satisfied, they’re also healthier, more engaged, and more productive. Improving job quality isn’t only the right thing for workers; it’s a smart investment in stronger businesses and a more resilient economy.”
What Comes Next
The study’s data set and methodology are now publicly available, offering researchers, policymakers, and business leaders a new tool to understand and improve working conditions across America.
For business leaders, the message is clear: job quality isn’t a nice-to-have—it’s a competitive advantage. For policymakers, the data provides a roadmap for targeted interventions that can strengthen communities and drive inclusive economic growth.
And for workers? This study validates what millions already know from experience: having a job isn’t the same as having a good job. The question now is whether we’re ready to do something about it.
The full findings from the American Job Quality Study are available at gallup.com/analytics/691241/american-job-quality-study.aspx.
SOURCE JFF
https://stmdailynews.com/%f0%9f%93%9c-who-created-blogging-a-look-back-at-the-birth-of-the-blog/
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Nature
What a bear attack in a remote valley in Nepal tells us about the problem of aging rural communities
A 71-year-old in Nepal’s Nubri valley survives repeated bear attacks as youth outmigration and rapid population aging leave fewer people to protect crops and homes—pushing bears closer to villages and raising urgent questions about safety, conservation rules, and rural resilience.
Geoff Childs, Washington University in St. Louis
Dorje Dundul recently had his foot gnawed by a brown bear – a member of the species Ursus thibetanus, to be precise.
It wasn’t his first such encounter. Recounting the first of three such violent experiences over the past five years, Dorje told our research team: “My wife came home one evening and reported that a bear had eaten a lot of corn from the maize field behind our house. So, we decided to shoo it away. While my wife was setting up camp, I went to see how much the bear had eaten. The bear was just sitting there; it attacked me.”
Dorje dropped to the ground, but the bear ripped open his shirt and tore at his shoulder. “I started shouting and the bear ran away. My wife came, thinking I was messing with her, but when she saw the wounds, she knew what had happened.”
Researchers Dolma Choekyi Lama, Tsering Tinley and I spoke with Dorje – a 71-year-old resident of Nubri, a Buddhist enclave in the Nepalese highlands – as part of a three-year study of aging and migration.
Now, you may be forgiven for asking what a bear attack on a septuagenarian has to do with demographic change in Nepal. The answer, however, is everything.
In recent years, people across Nepal have witnessed an increase in bear attacks, a phenomenon recorded in news reports and academic studies.
Inhabitants of Nubri are at the forefront of this trend – and one of the main reasons is outmigration. People, especially young people, are leaving for education and employment opportunities elsewhere. It is depleting household labor forces, so much so that over 75% of those who were born in the valley and are now ages 5 to 19 have left and now live outside of Nubri.
It means that many older people, like Dorje and his wife, Tsewang, are left alone in their homes. Two of their daughters live abroad and one is in the capital, Kathmandu. Their only son runs a trekking lodge in another village.
Scarcity of ‘scarebears’
Until recently, when the corn was ripening, parents dispatched young people to the fields to light bonfires and bang pots all night to ward off bears. The lack of young people acting as deterrents, alongside the abandonment of outlying fields, is tempting bears to forage closer to human residences.
Outmigration in Nubri and similar villages is due in large part to a lack of educational and employment opportunities. The problems caused by the removal of younger people have been exacerbated by two other factors driving a rapidly aging population: People are living longer due to improvements in health care and sanitation; and fertility has declined since the early 2000s, from more than six to less than three births per woman.
These demographic forces have been accelerating population aging for some time, as illustrated by the population pyramid constructed from our 2012 household surveys in Nubri and neighboring Tsum.
A not-so-big surprise, anymore
Nepal is not alone in this phenomenon; similar dynamics are at play elsewhere in Asia. The New York Times reported in November 2025 that bear attacks are on the rise in Japan, too, partly driven by demographic trends. Farms there used to serve as a buffer zone, shielding urban residents from ursine intruders. However, rural depopulation is allowing bears to encroach on more densely populated areas, bringing safety concerns in conflict with conservation efforts.
Dorje can attest to those concerns. When we met him in 2023 he showed us deep claw marks running down his shoulder and arm, and he vowed to refrain from chasing away bears at night.
So in October 2025, Dorje and Tsewang harvested a field before marauding bears could get to it and hauled the corn to their courtyard for safekeeping. The courtyard is surrounded by stone walls piled high with firewood – not a fail-safe barrier but at least a deterrent. They covered the corn with a plastic tarp, and for extra measure Dorje decided to sleep on the veranda.
He described what happened next:
“I woke to a noise that sounded like ‘sharak, sharak.’ I thought it must be a bear rummaging under the plastic. Before I could do anything, the bear came up the stairs. When I shouted, it got frightened, roared and yanked at my mattress. Suddenly my foot was being pulled and I felt pain.”
Dorje suffered deep lacerations to his foot. Trained in traditional Tibetan medicine, he staunched the bleeding using, ironically, a tonic that contained bear liver.
Yet his life was still in danger due to the risk of infection. It took three days and an enormous expense by village standards – equivalent to roughly US$2,000 – before they could charter a helicopter to Kathmandu for further medical attention.
And Dorje is not the only victim. An elderly woman from another village bumped into a bear during a nocturnal excursion to her outhouse. It left her with a horrific slash from forehead to chin – and her son scrambling to find funds for her evacuation and treatment.
So how should Nepal’s highlanders respond to the increase in bear attacks?
Dorje explained that in the past they set lethal traps when bear encroachments became too dangerous. That option vanished with the creation of Manaslu Conservation Area Project, or MCAP, in the 1990s, a federal initiative to manage natural resources that strictly prohibits the killing of wild animals.
Learning to grin and bear it?
Dorje reasons that if MCAP temporarily relaxed the regulation, villagers could band together to cull the more hostile bears. He informed us that MCAP officials will hear nothing of that option, yet their solutions, such as solar-powered electric fencing, haven’t worked.
Dorje is reflective about the options he faces as young people leave the village, leaving older folk to battle the bears alone.
“At first, I felt that we should kill the bear. But the other side of my heart says, perhaps I did bad deeds in my past life, which is why the bear bit me. The bear came to eat corn, not to attack me. Killing it would just be another sinful act, creating a new cycle of cause and effect. So, why get angry about it?”
It remains to be seen how Nubri’s residents will respond to the mounting threats bears pose to their lives and livelihoods. But one thing is clear: For those who remain behind, the outmigration of younger residents is making the perils more imminent and the solutions more challenging.
Dolma Choekyi Lama and Tsering Tinley made significant contributions to this article. Both are research team members on the author’s project on population in an age of migration.
Geoff Childs, Professor of Sociocultural Anthropology, Washington University in St. Louis
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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Urbanism
The Building That Proved Los Angeles Could Go Vertical
Los Angeles once banned skyscrapers, yet City Hall broke the height limit and proved high-rise buildings could be engineered safely in an earthquake zone.
How City Hall Quietly Undermined LA’s Own Height Limits
The Knowledge Series | STM Daily News
For more than half a century, Los Angeles enforced one of the strictest building height limits in the United States. Beginning in 1905, most buildings were capped at 150 feet, shaping a city that grew outward rather than upward.
The goal was clear: avoid the congestion, shadows, and fire dangers associated with dense Eastern cities. Los Angeles sold itself as open, sunlit, and horizontal — a place where growth spread across land, not into the sky.
And yet, in 1928, Los Angeles City Hall rose to 454 feet, towering over the city like a contradiction in concrete.
It wasn’t built to spark a commercial skyscraper boom.
But it ended up proving that Los Angeles could safely build one.
A Rule Designed to Prevent a Manhattan-Style City
The original height restriction was rooted in early 20th-century fears:
- Limited firefighting capabilities
- Concerns over blocked sunlight and airflow
- Anxiety about congestion and overcrowding
- A strong desire not to resemble New York or Chicago
Los Angeles wanted prosperity — just not vertical density.
The height cap reinforced a development model where:
- Office districts stayed low-rise
- Growth moved outward
- Automobiles became essential
- Downtown never consolidated into a dense core
This philosophy held firm even as other American cities raced upward.
Why City Hall Was Never Meant to Change the Rules
City Hall was intentionally exempt from the height limit because the law applied primarily to private commercial buildings, not civic monuments.
But city leaders were explicit about one thing:
City Hall was not a precedent.
It was designed to:
- Serve as a symbolic seat of government
- Stand alone as a civic landmark
- Represent stability, authority, and modern governance
- Avoid competing with private office buildings
In effect, Los Angeles wanted a skyline icon — without a skyline.
Innovation Hidden in Plain Sight
What made City Hall truly significant wasn’t just its height — it was how it was built.
At a time when seismic science was still developing, City Hall incorporated advanced structural ideas for its era:
- A steel-frame skeleton designed for flexibility
- Reinforced concrete shear walls for lateral strength
- A tapered tower to reduce wind and seismic stress
- Thick structural cores that distributed force instead of resisting it rigidly
These choices weren’t about aesthetics — they were about survival.
The Earthquake That Changed the Conversation
In 1933, the Long Beach earthquake struck Southern California, causing widespread damage and reshaping building codes statewide.
Los Angeles City Hall survived with minimal structural damage.
This moment quietly reshaped the debate:
- A tall building had endured a major earthquake
- Structural engineering had proven effective
- Height alone was no longer the enemy — poor design was
City Hall didn’t just survive — it validated a new approach to vertical construction in seismic regions.
Proof Without Permission
Despite this success, Los Angeles did not rush to repeal its height limits.
Cultural resistance to density remained strong, and developers continued to build outward rather than upward. But the technical argument had already been settled.
City Hall stood as living proof that:
- High-rise buildings could be engineered safely in Los Angeles
- Earthquakes were a challenge, not a barrier
- Fire, structural, and seismic risks could be managed
The height restriction was no longer about safety — it was about philosophy.
The Ironic Legacy
When Los Angeles finally lifted its height limit in 1957, the city did not suddenly erupt into skyscrapers. The habit of building outward was already deeply entrenched.
The result:
- A skyline that arrived decades late
- Uneven density across the region
- Multiple business centers instead of one core
- Housing and transit challenges baked into the city’s growth pattern
City Hall never triggered a skyscraper boom — but it quietly made one possible.
Why This Still Matters
Today, Los Angeles continues to wrestle with:
- Housing shortages
- Transit-oriented development debates
- Height and zoning battles near rail corridors
- Resistance to density in a growing city
These debates didn’t begin recently.
They trace back to a single contradiction: a city that banned tall buildings — while proving they could be built safely all along.
Los Angeles City Hall wasn’t just a monument.
It was a test case — and it passed.
Further Reading & Sources
- Los Angeles Department of City Planning – History of Urban Planning in LA
- Los Angeles Conservancy – History & Architecture of LA City Hall
- Water and Power Associates – Early Los Angeles Buildings & Height Limits
- USGS – How Buildings Are Designed to Withstand Earthquakes
- Los Angeles Department of Building and Safety – Building Code History
More from The Knowledge Series on STM Daily News
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small business
When TV Talks About Gentrification and Shopping Local — and Where It Gets It Right (and Wrong)
A closer look at how the TV show The Neighborhood tackles gentrification and shopping local—and where the reality of online sales and small business survival is more complex.
In our continuing look at how entertainment—television, movies, and streaming shows—grapples with real-world issues, this time we turn our attention to gentrification and the often-repeated call to “shop local.” Once again, we examine how popular culture frames these conversations, this time through the CBS sitcom The Neighborhood and the episode “Welcome Back to What Used to Be the Neighborhood.”
A Familiar Story: When the Neighborhood Changes
In the episode, Calvin’s favorite longtime restaurant closes its doors and is replaced by a flashy new pet spa. To Calvin, the change symbolizes something much bigger than a single business closing—it represents the slow erosion of the neighborhood he knows and loves. In response, he launches a campaign urging friends and neighbors to buy local in order to protect small businesses from disappearing.
Emotionally, the episode hits home. Many communities across the country have watched beloved neighborhood institutions vanish, replaced by businesses that feel disconnected from the area’s history and culture. In that sense, The Neighborhood gets something very right: gentrification often shows up one storefront at a time.
Where Television Simplifies a Complicated Reality
But, as is often the case with television, the episode also simplifies a much more complex economic reality.
The show frames “shopping local” as a direct alternative to shopping online, subtly suggesting that online platforms are inherently harmful to small businesses. In real life, however, the line between “local” and “online” is no longer so clear.
Many local and small businesses now survive precisely because they sell online—through their own websites, through Amazon, or through other platforms that support independent sellers. For some, online sales are not a threat to local commerce; they are a lifeline.
Why Brick-and-Mortar Isn’t Always Sustainable
Rising costs are a major factor driving these changes. Commercial leases, insurance premiums, utilities, staffing costs, and local fees have all increased dramatically in many cities. For small business owners, keeping a physical storefront open can become financially impossible—even when customer support remains strong.
As a result, some businesses choose to close their brick-and-mortar locations while continuing to operate online. Others scale back to pop-ups, shared spaces, or hybrid models. These businesses may no longer have a traditional storefront, but they are still local—employing local workers, paying local taxes, and serving their communities in new ways.
The Real Issue Behind “Shop Local”
Where The Neighborhood succeeds is in capturing the emotional truth of gentrification: the sense of loss, displacement, and cultural change that comes with rising rents and shifting demographics.
Where it misses the mark is in suggesting that consumer choices alone—simply avoiding online shopping—can solve the problem.
The real challenges facing local and small businesses go far beyond individual buying habits. They include zoning policies, commercial rent practices, corporate consolidation, and economic systems that increasingly favor scale over community presence.
A Conversation Worth Having—Even If TV Can’t Finish It
The Neighborhood deserves credit for bringing these issues into mainstream conversation. It sparks discussion, even if it wraps a complicated topic in a sitcom-friendly moral lesson.
The reality is messier. Supporting local businesses today often means rethinking what “local” looks like in a digital economy—and recognizing that survival sometimes requires adaptation, not nostalgia.
Further Reading & External Resources
- U.S. Small Business Administration: Marketing & Online Sales for Small Businesses
Explains how small businesses use websites, marketplaces, and digital tools to survive and grow. - Brookings Institution: Understanding Gentrification
A research-based overview of gentrification, its causes, and its impact on local communities. - National Main Street Center: Supporting Local Small Businesses
Resources focused on preserving local businesses while adapting to economic change. - SCORE: Why Going Online Is Critical for Small Business Survival
Mentorship-backed guidance on how digital sales help small businesses remain competitive. - Harvard Business Review: How Small Businesses Can Compete in an Online Economy
An analysis of how independent businesses adapt to large online platforms without losing identity.
At STM Daily News, our Local and Small Business coverage continues to explore these real-world dynamics beyond the TV screen, highlighting the challenges, innovations, and resilience of the businesses that keep communities alive—whether their doors are on Main Street or their storefronts live online.
📍 Read more Local and Small Business coverage at: STM Daily News
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