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My dad spent 40 years operating heavy machinery on construction sites around Chicago. He was proud of his work and of his union card, but I wouldn\u2019t call what he had a quality job. No one listened to him. He didn\u2019t feel respected. He could never get ahead financially. Around the dinner table, he\u2019d tell stories about fighting over wages or whether the lunch hour was paid or unpaid. What stayed with me wasn\u2019t just the frustration; it was how obviously bad that dynamic was for everyone involved. I remember wondering why work had to feel like a fight.<\/p>\n
Decades later, I see those same tensions playing out across the U.S. economy. The new American Job Quality Study, conducted by Gallup and developed by Jobs for the Future, The Families & Workers Fund, and the W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research, aims to measure what makes a job \u201cgood.\u201d It looks at five things: financial security, safety and respect, opportunities to grow, a voice in decisions, and a manageable schedule. By that definition, only around 40 percent of American workers have quality jobs.<\/p>\n
As an investor, I evaluate hundreds of companies every year, and this data squares with what we see on the ground.\u00a0 Many companies don\u2019t even measure employee engagement or quit rates.\u00a0 And what isn\u2019t measured certainly isn\u2019t managed. We routinely see companies that have such high turnover that they rehire their entire frontline every few years.\u00a0 Inevitably, the impact of all this churn spills into other areas like safety, given that less experienced workers are far more likely to get hurt.\u00a0 In one particularly ironic case, a safety equipment manufacturer had injury rates that were triple the OSHA benchmark.<\/p>\n
For workers, the consequences are obvious. People in quality jobs are healthier, happier, and more satisfied with their lives. But it matters just as much for companies. Every \u201chuman\u201d statistic has a business consequence. When you\u2019re replacing your entire frontline every few years, you\u2019re wasting resources on recruiting, training, and onboarding.\u00a0 If you have a safety problem, that\u2019s clearly horrible for workers, but you\u2019re also wasting money on workers\u2019 comp and missed days of work.\u00a0 And if safety is poor, product quality usually is too because both are the direct result of weak processes and disengaged colleagues.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
This new study puts all these elements together in one clear, data-driven picture.\u00a0 And it shines a light on reality: we\u2019re stuck in a perilous cycle.\u00a0 High turnover discourages investment in people \u2013 things like upskilling, cross-training, and career development. Workers sense that and give the bare minimum in return. Leaders start to see employees as \u201cheads\u201d \u2013 interchangeable units of labor.\u00a0 Empathy erodes. Companies focus their attention on the next quarter, and workers keep their eyes open for a better offer. Everyone gets trapped in short-termism.<\/p>\n
How to break the cycle?\u00a0 Change the way companies operate; empower workers to think and act like owners.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s why my work as an investor has increasingly focused on broad-based employee ownership as a tool to both lift up workers and shift corporate cultures. Over the past fifteen years at KKR, we\u2019ve partnered with more than eighty companies to give equity ownership to about 180,000 frontline employees. When done well, it changes everything.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve seen factory workers start tracking quality yields with the intensity of CFOs.\u00a0 Engagement scores rise, quit rates fall, and productivity climbs because people finally feel respected, trusted, and included. They have a stake and a voice. They can see how the business works, and how their effort moves the numbers.<\/p>\n
Just last month, we completed our investment in an insurance services company called Integrated Specialty Coverages.\u00a0 Employees who had been there at least three years earned stock worth 100 percent of their annual income \u2013 a reward that didn\u2019t replace any of their regular pay.\u00a0 More tenured workers did even better, some earning three years of wages.\u00a0 In addition to significantly enhancing its growth rate and profitability, the company was rewarded with engagement scores reaching the top decile of its peer group and quit rates dropping by more than half.<\/p>\n
Sharing equity isn\u2019t a magic wand. Employee ownership only works when paired with education, transparent communication, financial literacy training, and worker voice. It\u2019s also not a replacement for wages or other benefits \u2013 and it\u2019s not charity.\u00a0 It\u2019s a tool for cultural alignment and improved performance. And it\u2019s one of the few structural levers we have to shift incentives away from short-termism and toward shared success.<\/p>\n
The American Job Quality Study matters because it gives us a data-backed picture of what too many Americans already know from experience: most jobs don\u2019t offer dignity, stability, or a path forward \u2013 and we all reap the consequences. Let\u2019s take the lessons from this study and apply them.\u00a0 It\u2019s time to start rethinking how value is shared, so that the people creating it can share in it. I\u2019ve seen what happens when they do. My dad would\u2019ve called that a quality job.<\/p>\n
The opinions expressed in Fortune.com commentary pieces are solely the views of their authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and beliefs of\u00a0<\/em>Fortune.<\/em><\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n #leader #private #equity #simple #fix #Americas #jobquality #crisis #give #workers #piece #business<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" My dad spent 40 years operatin… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2026,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2],"tags":[2046,266,359,327,863,87,2047,522,2044,2045,2048,1868,1569,202,342],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2025"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2025"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2025\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2026"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2025"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2025"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2025"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}