Winning Jobs Narrative: A working people-centered narrative architecture

Winning Jobs Narrative set out to develop effective messaging around progressive economic policies. In order to do this, they commissioned HIT to conduct eight focus groups with workers of all races. HIT used those focus groups to identify: 

1) Workers’ shared economic values 

2) Workers’ top economic concerns 

3) Workers’ conceptions of the individual’s role in the economy 

4) Workers’ conception of the government’s role in the economy 

Using these values, concerns, and conceptions, HIT provided recommendations on how to message progressive policies—namely the Biden administration’s economic agenda—in a way that would resonate with workers. 

Values: Hard work 

Top Economic Concern: barriers (ex: high cost of living) scrambling link between hard work success  

Role of the individual: workers build the economy from the middle out 

Role of the government: supporting workers so their hard work translates into success 

These four findings inform progressive economic messaging that resonates with workers. Such messaging must: 

1) Center the value of hard work. 

2) Acknowledge that factors like pandemic-era inflation prevent hard workers from thriving. 

3) Workers are the backbone of the economy. 

4) The government’s role is to ensure the worker gets what they deserve.