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Hello and Namaste. Welcome to Business Daily with me, Divina Gupta. Today my guest is Janelle Jones.

She's currently chief economist and policy director at the Service Employees International Union,

which is one of the largest labor organizations in the U.S. with around 2 million members.

One of our big pushes in this moment is actually responding to the call from workers to get

unions for all. People are clamoring to want to be able to form a union. And before that,

Janelle was the chief economist at the U.S. Labor Department, the first black woman to serve in this role.

I just kept talking about race, and I think the conversation around race and the economy has taken such, such leaps and bounds in the past 10 years.

There's more interest in it. There's more people who want to study it. There's more people who know it is crucial to getting the entire economy to work well for working people.

In this interview, she talks about her background, how she got into economics, and what really makes her take.

Sitting and spending time with the black women who have loved me, have raised me, who teach me about the world, who teach me about

economics, even though they don't mean to. I think that is kind of the practice and core of what I

do. It keeps me saying. It makes me happy. It brings me peace. Business Daily meets Janelle Jones.

Janelle grew up in Ohio. In the American Midwest, Janelle told me she had a really happy childhood, surrounded by a large extended family, and it was seeing her family's relationship with work and money that informed her approach to economic policy.

That was really fundamental, was seeing my mom go from being a fast food worker to a union

worker in manufacturing. I think, you know, it wasn't just that incomes were raised. It was also,

you know, she could come and see me play soccer after school. I was not that good, but she was

able to come see me anyway. You know, we both got braces at the same time because she had really

good dental care. We were able to plan vacations. And so I think all of this was, you know, we both got braces at the same time because she had really good dental care. We were able to plan vacations.

And so I think all of this was, you know, really important to me and how I think about how the economy works and what we can do.

And so that I took up math and I thought, I really love this.

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