The Economic Opportunity Lab works with newsrooms to translate cutting-edge research on economic mobility and opportunity into community stories that inform, engage, and drive change.
Powering Local Journalism That Opens Doors to OPPORTUNITY
Amplifying Education to Lift Mobility
Keeping the American Dream from Fading
Neighborhoods Make a Difference
There’s still room to rebuild the promise of upward mobility
Education is a foundation for growth, empowerment, and lifelong success.
Location matters: from income to health to innovation
The Economic Opportunity Lab unites 48 local newsrooms and 10 NBC/Telemundo stations in five metros — Chicago, Miami, Philadelphia, the Bay Area, and D.C. — to report on how place and policy shape access to opportunity and to inspire action that drives economic mobility.
Economic opportunity and mobility matters
View all the work and explore the broader conversation.
PARTICIPANTS
SPONSORS
Opportunity Insights (OI), a research-to-policy lab at Harvard University, works to identify barriers to economic opportunity and inform scalable solutions to expand opportunity and improve economic mobility for people throughout the U.S.
OI is partnering with the lab to support local reporters in using data and research to explore how factors such as neighborhoods, schools, housing, and other local conditions shape access to opportunity.
Comcast NBCUniversal is the founding partner of the Economic Opportunity Lab, part of its $1 billion Project UP initiative to connect people to the internet, create digital opportunity, and build a future of unlimited possibilities.
Through Project UP, Comcast invests in local journalism that connects data with powerful storytelling, informing, inspiring action, and spotlighting the people and policies driving change in communities nationwide.
The Local Media Association manages the lab, supporting participating newsrooms in reporting stories about economic mobility and opportunity. LMA brings together more than 3,000 local newspapers, TV and radio stations, digital sites, and media partners.
LMA focuses on building sustainable business models through programs centered on revenue growth, engagement, branded content, and philanthropy-supported journalism.
The Playbook
Most economic mobility research never reaches the communities it describes. This playbook documents how the Lab connected 48 newsrooms across five markets with researchers at Opportunity Insights — what we built, what we learned, and a step-by-step framework for doing it yourself.