Digital Planet > IDEA 2030 > Uneven State of the Union

Digital Planet > IDEA 2030 > Uneven State of the Union

Related Research on Uneven State of the Union

Pride and Prejudice - Jahangir-01

Pride and Prejudice

For Pride Month, Digital Planet investigates the degree to which LGBTQ+ community finds solidarity among STEM fields. Analysis reveals the share of workers who express their identity as or affiliation with the LGBTQ+ community on their resumes is smaller among STEM graduates than college graduates overall. Women in STEM were twice as likely as men to profess an affiliation with the gay community on their resumes. Younger STEM candidates display a higher rate of LGBTQ+ affiliation than their older colleagues but still significantly trailed younger college graduates overall.

SeekOut Memo - Scatter Fi-02

The Shifting Geography of Talent

Given the pandemic induced changes in the way companies are recruiting talent and organizing around remote and hybrid work and the movement of talent away from the traditional major hubs, how can we seize this moment as an unprecedented opportunity to improve the representation of under-represented talent (e.g. Black, Hispanic, female) in the high skilled workforce sought after by tech and bio-medical companies? How can organizations locate these diverse talent pools in the major metro areas across the United States?

Tech-work opportunities in major metro cities 170822

Big Tech’s Opportunity for Inclusive Growth

Pandemic-induced work-from-home policies—now slated to be in place for most of 2021, if not indefinitely—could serve as a catalyst for the tech industry to narrow its growing regional and demographic disparity; allowing more cities and demographics to contribute to and prosper from the industry’s economic growth potential. We examined this issue using metrics such as digital readiness, cost of living, and diversity of tech talent pools for a group of states and major cities in the US to assess whether pandemic-induced work-from-home policies could offer the industry an inclusive growth path forward.

TFS - Gig Economy - State Workforce Comparison 170822-02

A Tale of Two Digital Economies: Gig Workers and Remote Workers

The pandemic’s evolution and states’ varying policy responses have shown that digitally ready states benefited from both a labor force that could socially distance and work from home, as well as one that could support the delivery of essential services in such a scenario through the availability of gig workers. These past months have demonstrated the gig economy’s increasing importance in providing essential services to communities, while also highlighting the inherent disparities and vulnerabilities experienced by gig workers.

Misinformation

The Misinformation Maelstrom: A Mapping of Vulnerability Across America

The two major political parties in the United States are in an all-out sprint leading up to the presidential election. Neither has had a shortage of digital mediums to amplify their views to the public. The American public’s increased reliance on social media as a source of news is worrisome because of the propensity of these platforms to spread misinformation. The COVID-19 pandemic has only exacerbated this trend, tethering people ever more to their personal electronic devices and fostering a boom of both digital crime and misinformation.

TFS - Gender Lens - Pay Gap Light 170822-03

The State of the Gender Pay Gap: Earning Disparities Widen as Women Bear the Brunt of the Pandemic

In the US, women make 82¢ for every man’s $1––a significant disparity that is exacerbated by factors like race and education. As the pandemic rages on, women are bearing the brunt if it on multiple levels: 1) as essential workers on the frontlines; 2) being over-represented in occupations that are not conducive to working from home, and losing jobs crucial to their economic stability; and 3) being under-represented in jobs that could shift to a digital medium, and all this while paying the price of chronic pay gaps and an unequal division of household labor.

TFS - Hex States - Unemployment Claims - 170822

Color of Disparity: Addressing extant racial gaps in digital and economic capital key to ensuring an inclusive recovery

Pre-existing racial disparities in unemployment, digital access, and financial resilience have been exacerbated in COVID-19’s wake. Black communities have been disproportionately impacted––in mortality, morbidity, unemployment, and financial losses. As governments and businesses prepare to navigate the economic and public health repercussions of the pandemic, it is crucial to account for these extant inequalities to ensure inclusive recovery.

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TFS - Hex States

How Digital Disparities Across the US Disproportionately Hurt Black and Latinx Communities

The COVID-19 pandemic has laid bare longstanding and systemic issues of inequality in the United States. Certain marginalized races and ethnicities (Black or African American and Hispanic or Latinx households) are over-represented in less-flexible, low-tech, and “high-touch” occupations and under-represented in the information economy and “high-tech” occupations; an outcome of decades of disparity in access to critical digital services like stable and affordable internet and computers.

TFS - Top 50 Hotspots in the States 24.08.20-01

Uneven State of the Union: Spread of COVID-19 Hotspots across Rural America

Even as COVID-19 cases continue to increase in the United States, reaching over 1.67 million cases and nearly 100,000 deaths as of May 26, 2020, many states are now beginning to ease social distancing and stay-at-home mandates. Each state is taking its own unique approach to lifting stay at home orders, allowing businesses to open, and loosening social distancing regulations, due in no small part to a lack of direction from the federal government.

TFS - Uneven States - WFH or Out of Work 01

Work From Home or Out of Work?

Digitally ready states were able to implement strict social distancing policies in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, with relatively less impact on their employment numbers. While all states experienced economic hardship and a drastic increase in unemployment, those states which were least digitally ready and instituted stricter social distancing measures experienced the most painful unemployment levels, with a higher percentage of their workforce falling out of work.

Other Research
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African Leapfrog Index: Getting Lions to Leapfrog

The African Leapfrog Index (ALI) is a novel framework that draws upon the primary levers that facilitate the translation of digital technologies into development and inclusive growth. The framework evaluates six African countries against a continent-wide “best-performance” benchmark to identify strengths to build upon and the opportunities to close gaps.

Public Services during COVID19

Which governments are best equipped to deliver public services online during a lockdown?

The delivery of public services online requires two necessary conditions: the infrastructure — hardware and software — for governments to deliver public services digitally, and the availability of affordable internet access. We scored and arrayed 42 countries on these two aspects: (1) digital public services and (2) inclusive and affordable internet. Additionally, we wove in a snapshot of government lockdown and social distancing mandates into this analysis.

COVID 19 lockdown

COVID Lockdown: How prepared are countries around the world to enter and exit Lockdowns

How prepared are countries to work in socially distant modes and lift lockdown orders during the COVID-19 pandemic? We examined this question by evaluating 42 countries that are significant in the global economy and have enacted social distancing measures. Some countries that were missing key data were not included. We scored the “social distance readiness” of their economies using three indices developed with our team