Celebrating America’s Changing Workforce on Labor Day at Steady
On this Labor Day in the year 2018, it is time to celebrate America’s workforce and specifically the resiliency of tens of millions of low to moderate income (LMI) and middle income Americans who have had to work harder than ever over the past year to keep themselves and their families afloat in a rapidly changing work paradigm.
It is easy to look at the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ July unemployment figure of 3.9% and believe that American households are doing better financially than ever before. However, what we realized at Steady, and why we are so passionate about our mission to serve as the leading advocate to America’s workforce, is that on a normalized basis median real household income in the U.S. has grown at only 1% since 2000 while median new home sales prices, mean 4-year college costs and mean employee healthcare premiums have increased by 31%, 69% and 102% during this same period.
The result of this income stagnation being drastically outpaced by rising costs of living is that Americans are having to pull together multiple forms of income, now often working more than one job and often working substantially more hours than was required in the past in order to make ends meet and achieve their financial goals.
At Steady, we often hear from workers participating in our user discovery sessions refer to 30–40 hour week jobs, which make up only a portion of their overall income, as ‘part-time’ due to their total work weeks totaling 60+ hours. In addition to the stress that these work schedules cause on an individual and their families, income volatility and a correlation to a lack of qualifying for sustainable financial services (items I will discuss in future writing) compound these already stressful lives.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TM_zAQjVgVA
Steady recently publicly released the first version of its product and announced an $9 million Series A financing led by Propel Venture Partners, significant participation from Omidyar Network and additional participation from Clocktower Technology Ventures, Commerce Ventures and 25Madison, following over a year of Seed Financing provided by Michael Loeb’s Loeb Enterprises.
This financing is allowing us to substantially enhance our recently released mobile application and web tool with additional personalized income-generating opportunities and financial tools to help improve the financial lives of America’s LMI and medium income workforce.
We at Steady salute America’s workforce on Labor Day 2018 and are fortunate to have received the support of such wonderful investors and partners who believe in our thesis that America’s workforce is in drastic need of an advocate and we take our mission very seriously in building a platform that will make Labor Day 2019 better for our users than Labor Day 2018.
