Nearly three-quarters (73 percent) of enrollments in America’s major public benefits programs are from working families. But many of them work in jobs that pay wages so low that their paychecks do not generate enough income to provide for life’s basic necessities.
This pamphlet was commissioned by the California Speaker’s Commission on Labor Education and produced by the UC Berkeley Labor Center, and answers basic questions about unions and the labor movement. An informative, readable and attractive resource for unions, schools, community groups and others.
There’s a major crisis building as baby boomers envision golden years that shine the way their parents’ did. One big problem: They don’t have the financial resources or huge generational cohort behind them to support their retirement dreams.
Stan Druckenmiller makes an unlikely class warrior. He’s a member of the 1%—make that the 0.001%—one of the most successful money managers of all time, and 60 years old to boot. But lately he has been touring college campuses promoting a message of income redistribution you don’t hear out of Washington. It’s how federal entitlements like Medicare and Social Security are letting Mr. Druckenmiller’s generation rip off all those doting Barack Obama voters in Generation X, Y and Z.
It has been well documented that the share of the working-age population employed in “middle-skill” occupations has been falling for some time, while the share in lower- and higher-skill jobs has been rising–i.e. “polarization” of the labor market (e.g. Autor 2010). However, the dynamics and related mechanism behind these employment trends are not fully understood; nor is it well understood what happens to workers who are displaced from middle-skill jobs.
State personal incomes grew 1.0 percent on average in the second quarter of 2013 after falling 1.3 percent in the first quarter, according to estimates released today by the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis. Personal income growth ranged from 1.5 percent in Florida and Arizona to -0.7 percent in Nebraska. The national price index for personal consumption expenditures was unchanged in the second quarter after rising 0.3 percent in the first quarter.
A new way of measuring poverty in California shows that 22 percent of residents lived in poor families in 2011. It also underscores the importance of the social safety net for many families in the state. The safety net’s impact on children is especially dramatic—without the need-based programs included in the new measure, 39 percent (or 3.6 million California children) would be considered poor. A companion report released by the Stanford Center on Poverty and Inequality examines regional and demographic differences in poverty.
About two-thirds of Californians with assets of $1 million or more actually feel better off now than before the 2008 financial crisis, a report from BMO Private Bank said. And roughly the same portion say they expect the economy to continue its recovery in the next year.
New research from the Federal Reserve indicates the share of middle-skill jobs in the workforce has dropped from 25% in 1985 to just above 15% today, part of the hollowing-out effect that David Autor of MIT has documented. And as our chart above shows, middle-wage jobs — those that pay between $13.84 and $21.13 per hour, as defined by the National Employment Law Project — sustained much deeper cuts during the 2008-2009 recession than high- and low-wage jobs.
The rich and educated are more likely to marry, to marry each other, and to produce rich and educated children. But this virtual cycle turns vicious for the poor.
“The Census Bureau reported recently that 15 percent of California’s 38 million residents were living in poverty last year, the 20th highest rate in the nation.
However, an experimental Census Bureau method of gauging poverty, which includes a cost-of-living factor, puts California’s rate at more than 23 percent, the nation’s highest.”
“Los Angeles has the highest poverty rate among California counties, according to a new analysis announced Monday that upends traditional views of rural and urban hardship by adding factors such as the soaring price of city housing.
The measurement, developed by researchers with the Public Policy Institute of California and the Stanford Center on Poverty and Inequality, found that 2.6 million, or 27%, of Los Angeles County residents lived in poverty in 2011. The official poverty rate for the county, based on the U.S. Census’ 2011 American Community Survey, is 18%.”
Even as the economy shows signs of improvement and poverty levels off, new U.S. census data suggests the gains are halting and uneven. Depending on education, race, income and even marriage, not all segments of the population are seeing an economic turnaround. In 45 states and the District of Columbia, poverty rates remained steady at high levels. Mississippi, the poorest state in the nation, was one of just three states posting increases, from 22.6 percent to 24.2 percent. California and New Hampshire were the others.
Poverty continued creeping upward in the Los Angeles area last year, long after the declared end of the recession, new estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau show. The numbers are another sign of continued suffering after the economic downturn: More than 17% of people in the Los Angeles, Long Beach and Santa Ana metropolitan area lived below the poverty line last year. That number rose year by year since 2007, when roughly 13% lived in poverty. . . . “What is significant and new is that poverty is not rising and falling with the rest of the economy, it is just continuing to rise,” wrote Bill Parent, associate dean of the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs. “This is a terrible ‘new normal.’ The rising tide isn’t lifting all the boats.”
Part-time work spiked during the recent recession and has stayed stubbornly high, raising concerns that elevated part-time employment represents a “new normal” in the labor market. However, recent movements and current levels of part-time work are largely within historical norms, despite increases for selected demographic groups, such as prime-age workers with a high-school degree or less. In that respect, the continued high incidence of part-time work likely reflects a slow labor market recovery and does not portend permanent changes in the proportion of part-time jobs.