By: Van Ton-Quinlivan
McKinsey & Company's research on economic mobility offers a useful way to think about how workers advance from low-wage roles into well-paying, resilient careers. The framework identifies three types of jobs: Gateway Jobs, Origin Jobs, and Destination Jobs.
Since our launch, Futuro Health has focused on Gateway Jobs: roles like medical assistant, pharmacy technician, and peer support specialist that require a credential and, often, clinical hours to get started. To date, we have supported more than 12,000 adults across nine states enter these roles - debt-free. Our results reflect a comprehensive approach: wraparound learner supports, a curated ecosystem of quality education partners, attention to both essential and technical skills, and the data and technology infrastructure that holds it all together. Our recent completion rate is nearly 90 percent, our job placement rate hovers around 73 percent, and our Net Promoter Score of 96 is world class.
Destination Jobs, such as registered nursing, respiratory therapy, and diagnostic medical sonography, are in demand, offer higher pay and greater stability, and typically require either a degree, post-secondary education, or specialized training.
Origin Jobs present the toughest challenge from a workforce development lens. Personal care and home health aides are needed in enormous numbers – in the millions - to serve our growing aging population. Yet these jobs pay little and see turnover of 60 to 80 percent, which puts continuity and quality of care at risk.
So, we asked ourselves a harder question: What would it take to move workers in Origin Jobs from wage earners to asset owners? It's a strategy to make these jobs more economically attractive and more sticky.
That question flows directly from our mission: to grow the health and wealth of communities by building the largest network of allied health workers in the nation. We are now extraordinarily effective at enabling people to earn credentials and qualifications with strong outcomes. But solving for Origin Jobs will require something more: economic development tools borrowed from other sectors.
Over the coming months, you'll hear more about our journey to explore a concept we call the Care Enterprise Network. We will host three roundtables with leaders across sectors – healthcare, impact investing, housing, philanthropy and more - to help shape a model for economic mobility in the care economy.
The idea is simple. Help community-based care providers move from working in the care economy to owning a stake in it. That means connecting them with training, shared services, infrastructure, and capital so they can build sustainable care enterprises in their own communities.
Robert Espinoza, founder and CEO of CareWorks Project, has been an important thought partner as we explore this opportunity. As he puts it: "We spend so much time talking about recruitment, wages, and retention that we rarely ask what it would take to help caregivers build businesses, create wealth, and strengthen care in their own communities. That's a powerful idea that deserves as much attention as possible."Stay tuned.
