• New Big Bet on America's workers is part of $300 million commitment to America's future, made since 2023, to help communities and workers thrive amid technological and economic change.
  
  
• Scalable national jobs model aims to benefit up to 20 million people across 250 distressed communities nationwide.

NEW YORK, April 21, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- The Rockefeller Foundation today launched a new three-year, $100 million commitment to help communities across the country connect more people to good jobs and adapt to rapid economic and technological change. This Big Bet on Good Jobs for America will focus on places where too many people are out of work — or at risk of falling out of the labor market — including communities vulnerable to disruption from artificial intelligence and other structural shifts in the economy. Over time, the strategy aims to enable the creation of approximately 1.6 million additional good jobs nationally and lift up roughly one-quarter of America's most distressed communities, about 250 places, and benefit 10 to 20 million people nationwide through stronger local economies, more stable employment, and renewed confidence in the future.

For millions of Americans, the path to opportunity begins with access to stable, dignified work. But headline job numbers obscure a hard truth: over the past 25 years, job growth has become increasingly concentrated in a small number of places, deepening regional economic inequality and leaving many communities without viable paths to opportunity. As a result, more than 50 million Americans today live in distressed communities, where employment of workers aged 25-54 lags the national average. Workers are increasingly skeptical that they can realize the American Dream for themselves and their families. In fact, according to a recent Gallup poll, U.S. workers' job optimism dropped sharply to 28% in late 2025, down from 46% a year earlier.

"America isn't working for everyone because too few Americans are working," said Dr. Rajiv J. Shah, President of The Rockefeller Foundation. "Our new strategy seeks to solve that problem at its root. Working with states, communities, and anyone who wants to help advance the dignity of work at a time of disruption, we will build an economy that works for everyone."

The strategy will focus on sectors where demand for workers is strong and where the foundation has deep expertise, including healthcare and the care economy, energy transition, food systems, and AI-enabled industries. The Rockefeller Foundation will collaborate with employers and public, private, and philanthropic funders to leverage more in aligned capital. Today's announcement is part of the 113-year-old philanthropic organization's broader $300 million commitment since 2023 to America's future.

Disruption and the Human Cost of Inaction
Today, rapid advances in AI and other technologies risk leaving more people behind if workforce and economic systems do not adapt. A recent MIT study found current AI models could already replace 11.7 percent of the U.S. workforce, with entry-level and task-dense roles most at risk. These positions are the most prevalent in already-distressed communities. Some estimates project that 30 percent of workers could see AI disrupt as much as half their workloads.

Research shows that when people cannot access good work, the negative consequences extend far beyond individual paychecks. Low prime-age employment has been linked to worse health outcomes, higher crime rates, lower social mobility, weaker tax bases, and eroding trust in public institutions.

"I come from a community that worked hard, played by the rules, but still struggled to stay afloat—and I spent 12 years in Congress fighting for those communities," said Derek Kilmer, Senior Vice President for U.S. Program and Policy at The Rockefeller Foundation. "The Rockefeller Foundation's new strategy focuses on bringing opportunity back to places that haven't seen the benefits of technological progress. By working with unlikely partners around the country and harnessing new innovations, we can help people stay connected to good work, even as the economy changes."

Betting Big on America's Workers
More than a single national program, the Rockefeller Foundation's Big Bet on Good Jobs for America will work with partners to test practical solutions in communities, learn what works, and then scale successful approaches through policy, financing, and institutional adoption.  This includes:

• Testing real‑world solutions in communities, including approaches that expand access to jobs, strengthen workforce pathways, and remove barriers like childcare and credentialing.
  
  
• Replicating proven approaches in more places and adapting them to different local conditions to determine what can work broadly.
  
  
• Embedding successful models into public policy, financing tools, and employer practices, so they can reach millions of people without relying on permanent philanthropic support.

Announced during The Rockefeller Foundation's Big Bets for America – Baltimore event, which brought together more than 250 policymakers and business leaders, the new strategy will be built around four sectors where the Foundation has deep programmatic expertise and where job growth is expected to be strongest over the next decade: healthcare and the care economy; energy transition; food systems; and AI-enabled industries. The new Good Jobs strategy will test practical solutions in communities, learn what works, and then scale successful approaches through policy, financing, and institutional adoption.

Building on Decades of U.S. Work
Since its inception, The Rockefeller Foundation has worked to help make American communities healthier, more resilient, and more prosperous. In the early 20^th century, the Foundation worked to eradicate hookworm from the American South, hoping to get students back to school, improve overall health outcomes, and generate economic opportunity for communities that were lagging other areas of the country. That work reflected a simple idea: when systems work, people and communities can thrive. Ultimately, this effort turned into a century-long commitment to the health and economic wellbeing of Americans.

Over the past two decades, The Rockefeller Foundation has dedicated more than $3 billion in the United States, across every state in the nation, including more than $300 million since 2023. It also builds upon recent, hard-won lessons from Rockefeller Foundation initiatives, including Invest in Our Future, a pooled fund the Foundation helped launch that has now unlocked over $27 billion in federal clean energy funding across 45+ states; the Economic Opportunity Coalition; Rockefeller Opportunity Collective; and tax policy work that reached more than 8 million Americans in 2025.

About The Rockefeller Foundation
Investing $30 billion over the last 113 years to promote the well-being of humanity, The Rockefeller Foundation is a pioneering philanthropy built on unlikely partnerships and innovative solutions that deliver measurable results for people in the United States and around the world. We leverage scientific breakthroughs, artificial intelligence, and new technologies to make big bets across energy, food, health, and finance, including with our public charity, RF Catalytic Capital (RFCC). For more information, sign up for our newsletter at www.rockefellerfoundation.org/subscribe and follow us on X @RockefellerFdn, Instagram @rockefellerfdn, and LinkedIn @the-rockefeller-foundation.

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SOURCE The Rockefeller Foundation