she/her
Inclusive Economy
American Jobs Plan; American Rescue Plan; Budget; Build Back Better Agenda; Consumer Protections; Economy; Equal Pay Day; Family Economic Security; Food Insecurity; Affordable Housing; Income Inequality; Jobs; Minimum Wage; Paid Leave; Pensions; Poverty; Racial Wealth Gap; Raising Working Standards; Unions; Wages; Women’s Economic Security; Worker Rights; Workforce Development
Lily Roberts is the acting vice president for Inclusive Economy at American Progress. Her work focuses on raising wages; combating economic inequality linked to race, gender, and geography; and building wealth and stability for American families. She is the former managing director for economic policy and director of economic mobility at American Progress. She has appeared on CNBC, NPR, and Politico to discuss economic justice and the labor market.
Prior to joining American Progress, Roberts worked at Mathematica Policy Research, where she researched federal strategies to support low- and middle-income families.
Roberts received a master’s degree in social work, focusing on community development, from Case Western Reserve University. Her undergraduate degree in military history and English is from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Roberts has served as a case manager at a Washington, D.C., social services nonprofit and was previously an advisory neighborhood commissioner in Shaw.
State and local leaders are poised to build on the foundation of federal investment to address their communities’ economic needs.
Policymakers must prioritize improving housing access and affordability for low-income households through immediate and long-term investments.
Lily Roberts and Rose Khattar outline why, 13 years since the federal minimum wage was last increased, states and cities must take action to ease the economic strain many workers and families face now in light of global inflation.
The Inflation Reduction Act would solve mismatches between supply and demand at work in the U.S. economy, reducing inflation and strengthening the country’s long-term economic outlook.
Although disabled people saw increased employment rates in 2021, their rates continue to lag significantly behind those of their nondisabled counterparts, signaling the urgent need for policy reform across federal and state governments.
Workplaces will need to adapt to significant increases to both the disabled population and disabled workforce, and future labor market analysis must center disability.
President Joe Biden took office one year ago amid one of the worst economies in generations, but the U.S. economy has since made tremendous progress toward recovery, and workers are benefiting.
A net-zero and equitable economy requires the participation and leadership of rural communities, enabled by foundational rural investments in the Build Back Better Act.
To support women’s employment and address the preexisting barriers that keep women out of the workforce—and were exacerbated by the pandemic—Congress must use reconciliation on top of the bipartisan infrastructure framework.
Lily Roberts writes about the policies that will help get Americans back to work.
Half of U.S. states are missing out on an opportunity to maintain connections between employers and workers during economic downturns.
Closing the racial wealth gap is a generational challenge that requires new yet doable policies.
