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Summary.
One-third of American workers are in jobs for which the median wage is below $15 an hour (or $31,200 a year at 40 hours a week). More than half of retail and food service workers get less than a week’s notice of their schedule. Yet the authors’ extensive experience with top executives has shown us that many genuinely believe they are doing everything they can for their frontline workers and therefore don’t have a bad jobs problem. But they aren’t and they do. How can these data-driven business leaders be so misinformed? This article explores why.Last month, while moderating a CEO panel at a conference in Washington, D.C., one of us asked whether the Business Roundtable’s recent statement on a corporation’s purpose would convince business leaders to improve job quality for hourly workers. The panel argued that CEOs already focus on frontline job quality — much more than people assume.