A Letter From Our CEO

In 2024, more people than ever turned to Empower Work for immediate, confidential work support. We reached a milestone of supporting more than 432,000 workers since 2018, using our human-centered, high-impact model to provide wraparound services that meet people where they are. 

Every day, we hear from people navigating some of the hardest moments in their work lives—being laid off, stuck in an unhealthy workplace, or struggling to make ends meet while job searching. These moments are not just about employment. They’re about identity, stability, and agency—all of which impact our economic well-being and mental health.

Notably, we saw an immense surge in text line conversations about job loss and prolonged job searches—more than doubling from 22% in 2023 to 54%. The sharp shift led us to dig more deeply into understanding the story beyond just the data.  Each job loss and job search can have a profound personal cost. 

In our report, The Hidden Realities of Job Searching in 2024, we highlighted new insights. Four out of five workers—over 78%—are actively looking for work because they are dissatisfied, underemployed, or unemployed and that job searches are taking nearly half a year. 

The learnings through the job search report, text line data, and other programmatic insights informed how we’ve risen to the need. We created new job loss and job search content, launched fresh training materials, as well as explored additional ways to meet practical needs given the longevity of searches. We saw a record 20% increase in our text line usage, while we also saw a dip in content usage due to changes in Google’s search algorithm. We’ve doubled down in areas that are working for our text line and actively adjusting our outreach strategies in 2025 to reach people when and where they need work support whether that’s in communities like Reddit or generative AI search.

At Empower Work, we listen deeply to what’s most important to people. We keep a human-centered approach throughout all our programs from data and policy, to our AI roadmap, and our coaching model. In moments of stress, shame, and overwhelm, connection and support can be transformational. On the text line, trained peer counselors provide space to reflect, access critical resources, and find a way forward. Our online resources support people through a variety of work issues—from job searches to workplace stress to a bad work environment. The impact is clear:

“I was feeling trapped; it has been impacting my health [...] My EW counselor inspired, shared, educated, offered resources, heard […] I feel hopeful and inspired to move forward and out of a toxic work environment with confidence and a plan without the fears that were partially paralyzing me about my tenure, worth, resume, the workforce, etc. Lifesaving—literally. Thank you.” - Empower Work help seeker

More than 94% of people who reached out reported improved mental health and 77% reported improved economic well-being. In 2024, we measured our economic impact more deeply, listening to all the ways that help seekers account for economic gains - from wage increases to transportation or childcare lessening. On average, help seekers saw a 25% increase in economic gain from those who engaged with our text line. 

This impact could not have been made without you—our incredible community. To our volunteers, champions, donors, board, and team: thank you. You are making a difference in the lives of workers, families, and communities across the country.

Our 2024 Impact report offers a window into what workers are experiencing—and how Empower Work continues to meet people’s needs with empathy, innovation, and action. 

Together, we can continue to grow this impact. 

Onward, 

Jaime-Alexis Fowler
CEO and Founder, Empower Work

In 2024, we focused on strengthening support across all of our programs—especially around job loss, job search, and career success. 

Each part of our model—direct service through our text line, skill-building and community through volunteering and training, and driving policy and practice change through data and worker voice—plays a role in reshaping the workplace and helping people thrive at work. 

As challenges in the workplace continue to evolve and arise, we scaled our work to meet the moment. Here’s how:

Innovative Workforce Partnerships

In fall 2024, Empower Work launched innovative partnerships with five leading workforce organizations—Memorial Assistance Ministries, NPower, Per Scholas, SkillUp Coalition, and Year Up United. With generous support from the Truist Foundation and GitLab Foundation, this initiative integrates Empower Work’s confidential, text-based coaching into the career journeys of workforce program alumni, extending support. 

Each year, hundreds of thousands of people across the United States graduate from training, skilling, re-skilling, and other job programs equipped with new tools for success, connections, and apprenticeships, internships, or jobs that provide the foundation for strong economic advancement. However, beyond these programs, people often encounter systemic barriers and ongoing workplace adversity which can deeply affect their lives and stymie opportunity. 

This text-based approach for community and alumni support builds on lessons learned in wraparound services during programs, creating a scalable structure for growing learning and alumni communities that ensures people thrive in their careers and life. In this pilot, the team will learn more about the needs of community and alumni at scale, and the best ways to address these needs with the goal of growing to many more partnerships in the future.

Connection Protection

We launched the Connection Protection program in 2023—a partnership between Visible and Empower Work that supports people who are experiencing a job loss, had their hours cut, or are between jobs. In 2024, this program saw exponential growth—a 244% increase from 2023, with over 14,000 applicants. 

Within three months of participating in Connection Protection:

• Nearly 1 in 5 people have accepted a new job, 

• 1 in 4 people have received job offers, and 

• more than 2 in 5 people have had interviews. 

Given the 2024 job market realities that the median unemployment duration in 2024 averaged at nearly 5 months, our participants are achieving substantial progress ahead of national averages. 

Our AI Roadmap 

We believe AI can be a significant tool for scaling and creating efficiencies in our service, yet our work listens deeply to those we serve to ensure we’re applying technology thoughtfully and responsibly. In 2024 we conducted UX research that showed our help seekers wanted to talk to a human, not an AI bot, and this was confirmed with academic research showing people still prefer to talk to a human for empathy-based services and the impact of the service (positive emotion, follow through) is greater when it’s a human. 

In light of that, we started our AI roadmap with tools to help our peer counselors scale their support for our help seekers, keeping the human-connection at the center.

We began with the real felt pain points and needs of our counselors and then iteratively built the technology from there. Together we uncovered three big needs for the assistant: next response guidance, relevant resources look up, and quick summarization. We then built a live prototype, trained on high-quality past conversations and formed an AI Advisory Council of peer counselors to help us regularly review outputs, provide feedback, and refine the assistant through continuous prompt updates.

In summer 2025, we officially launched the assistant across the back end of the text line. Since then, we’ve seen strong adoption and received lots of positive feedback with counselors saying it helps them when they are stuck and has allowed them to much more easily manage multiple conversations at the same time while on the line.