How Did Reskilling During the COVID-19 Pandemic Relate to Entrepreneurship and Optimism? Barriers, Opportunities, and Implications for Equity

Jason Jabbari (), Haotian Zheng, Stephen Roll, Daniel Auguste and Oren Heller
Additional contact information
Jason Jabbari: Washington University in St. Louis
Haotian Zheng: Washington University in St. Louis
Stephen Roll: Washington University in St. Louis
Daniel Auguste: Florida Atlantic University
Oren Heller: Washington University in St. Louis

Journal of Family and Economic Issues, 2024, vol. 45, issue 2, No 13, 410-429

Abstract: Abstract With shorter durations and fewer barriers to entry, reskilling programs may serve as vehicles for social mobility and equity, as well as tools for creating a more adaptive workforce and inclusive economy. Nevertheless, much of the limited large-scale research on these types of programs was conducted prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. Thus, given the social and economic disruptions spurred by the pandemic, our ability to understand the impact of these types of programs in recent labor market conditions is limited. We fill this gap by leveraging three waves of a longitudinal household financial survey collected across all 50 US states during the pandemic. Through descriptive and inferential methods, we explore the sociodemographic characteristics related to reskilling and associated motivations, facilitators, and barriers, as well as the relationships between reskilling and measures of social mobility. We find that reskilling is positively related to entrepreneurship and, for Black respondents, to optimism. Moreover, we find that reskilling is not merely a tool for upward social mobility, but also economic stability. However, our results demonstrate that reskilling opportunities are stratified across race/ethnicity, gender, and socioeconomic status through both formal and informal mechanisms. We close with a discussion of implications for policy and practice.

Keywords: Reskilling; COVID-19; Stratification; Entrepreneurship; Optimism (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10834-023-09906-y Abstract (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:kap:jfamec:v:45:y:2024:i:2:d:10.1007_s10834-023-09906-y

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... es/journal/10834/PS2

DOI: 10.1007/s10834-023-09906-y

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Family and Economic Issues is currently edited by Joyce Serido

More articles in Journal of Family and Economic Issues from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().