Place, purpose, and the path to economic mobility

Diana Ellsworth (0:00)

You're seeing a big movement towards skills-based hiring. How do we think about that to really broaden who we can bring into the workforce and into what roles? Things like paid training, apprenticeships, things that will be able to help people to again, take on opportunities that might not otherwise immediately seem available to them.

Roberta Fusaro (0:20)

That's McKinsey's senior partner, Diana Ellsworth. She's talking about how business leaders can redesign their policies and their programs to draw fresh talent to their organizations. She joins me and McKinsey partner, JP Julien, to talk about a recent survey conducted by McKinsey's Institute for Economic Mobility. That survey provides a really interesting snapshot of what a better life could look like for most Americans.

This is The McKinsey Podcast, where we help you make sense out of the world's toughest business challenges. I'm Roberta Fusaro, your host for today. JP, thanks so much for joining the podcast today.

Diana Ellsworth (1:00)

Thanks for having me.

Roberta Fusaro (1:02)

And Diana, it's great to see you and I'm glad you could join as well. Thanks for joining.

Diana Ellsworth (1:06)

Absolutely. Delighted to be here.

Roberta Fusaro (1:08)

Americans have more in common than today's public discourse would suggest. Here's what Miguel, 35, from Michigan says would matter most for improving his quality of life.

SPEAKER_4 (1:21)

A better life for me and my family would look like being able to buy a home and being able to afford all the basic necessities, rent, utilities, car, food, health care, as well as being able to have enough leftover to say for the future, for retirement, as well as vacations.

Roberta Fusaro (1:40)

It turns out most Americans are looking for a lot of the same things based on research from McKinsey's Institute for Economic Mobility.

JP, would you say that Miguel's comments pretty much capture the common goals that all Americans share regardless of race, income, geography? What do you think about that?

JP Julien (2:01)

It really does. What was fascinating is that while Miguel's story is deeply personal, many of the themes that he shared resonated widely. One of the things that we did was we asked 30,000 Americans to describe in their own words, what would a better life look like for you and your family over the next three to five years?

Some people wrote paragraphs and some people wrote sentences, and we coded every single response. What you find is that for two-thirds of Americans, greater financial security is the top aspiration that they're striving for. That held, to your point, Roberta, across income, across race, across place, in a way that I think was really interesting.

Roberta Fusaro (2:41)

Yeah. Another interesting point, JP, from the research, something that struck me is that stage of life plays a role in these priorities. Diana, can you talk a little bit to that point?

Diana Ellsworth (2:51)

Yeah, absolutely. Our research found that how Americans experience economic mobility is really shaped by life stage. So we focus in particular on our research on three key life stages. One is young adults who are entering the workforce. One was parents raising a family. Then the third one was those who are preparing for retirement. For young adults, that means they were much more likely to be sort of career and income focused.

And worried about the uncertainty in sort of our labor market today. They were also more likely to cite mental health as a real barrier to their progress. I think twice as much as sort of other respondents on that one. Parents on the other hand, and I will admit this one hits a little bit close to home, were particularly focused on sort of prioritizing how do they create better opportunities for their children.

And as they thought about that, the cost of living really was the top concern. And that was true across income demographics. And so for lower income parents, physical and mental health challenges and sort of unemployment and job security were real sort of concerns and potential barriers. Whereas for higher income parents, time was the biggest thing that they saw as sort of being a barrier to progress. So within life stage, we saw some variance, but the biggest thing really was driven by that life stage. And then I think for that third group, that sort of those nearing retirement, prioritizing saving for the future was not surprisingly the thing that they saw as sort of most important and sort of most front and center as they thought about their own economic mobility.

Roberta Fusaro (4:42)

That all resonates so much Diana, as the mother of two boys and also sort of getting closer to retirement age, although it seems so far away.