Good Jobs Research
At Pacific Community Ventures, we believe that quality jobs are the foundation of thriving communities. Our Good Jobs Innovation Lab explores what makes a job truly “good,” including living wages, stable schedules, opportunities for advancement and dignity in the workplace, and how to ensure Good Jobs are accessible to small businesses and their workers. By combining data, worker insights, and employer practices, we help businesses and policymakers create jobs that support economic mobility.
From Worker Voice to Workplace Culture & Wealth-Building
What does meaningful workforce investment actually look like at the small business scale? To help answer that question, Pacific Community Ventures convened a year-long national Good Jobs Community of Practice with small business owners across 14 states and 14 industries, throughout 2024 into 2025. Using AIKKA, PCV’s AI-enabled worker voice tool, we gathered insights from more than 60 business owners and 300 workers on what meaningful job quality looks like in practice.
Impact Investing: A Framework for Policy Design and Analysis
Our intent has been to unlock more capital for companies, funds and other vehicles that generate positive social and/or environmental outcomes—such as high-quality jobs, healthcare, education and affordable housing, cleaner and more efficient energy—in addition to financial return.
Public Policy and Investments in Good Quality Jobs
We are excited to release our second report on job quality, called Public Policy and Investments in Quality Jobs, which explores the potential for smart, targeted public policies to encourage private sector investments in quality job creation.
The Impact Due Diligence Guide
Pacific Community Ventures has developed the Impact Due Diligence Initiative to identify emerging best practices in impact due diligence and offer practical tips and guidance to help investors more systematically examine impact in the same manner that they would financial risk and return prior to making an investment.
Defining and Measuring The Creation of Quality Jobs
Through a better understanding of what defines a quality job and a set of practical methods for measuring the quality of jobs created, we believe CDFIs and others in the impact investing community will be better positioned to make more effective investments that support good jobs for workers, businesses, and communities.
Good Jobs Journey
Small business owners express deep commitment and motivations behind creating quality jobs, despite facing barriers related to accessing capital and maintaining profitability due to inflation-shifts. The report calls upon CDFIs, philanthropy, and business serving organizations to lean into impact investing, restorative capital, and technical assistance to support businesses along their good jobs journeys.
Anchor Research
Oakland Fund Playbook
This playbook demonstrates how PCV used their place-based Oakland Restorative Loan Fund to deploy catalytic capital, providing 0% interest no-fee loans to businesses in underserved neighborhoods. It identifies a tested, and replicable, investment model built around capital structuring, community engagement, and impact optimization.
