Gov. Jerry Brown warned this week that public agencies in California are on a track to “fiscal oblivion” if they’re barred from adjusting retirement benefits for their employees. He issued the warning in an interview with The Sacramento Bee three weeks after his attorneys defended his 2012 pension law at the California Supreme Court against […]
The latest California craziness to make national news is the Public Utilities Commission’s plan to vote next month on a tax on cellphone text messaging to help fund phone programs for the poor. It is the latest example of our state’s undying commitment to taxing virtually anything we do. The state general fund has $15 […]
Quirky as airtime sounds, it’s the edge of a much larger issue on protecting pension rights embodied in the so-called California Rule. For decades, the courts have sided with arguments that pensions can’t be altered without compensation, an approached adopted by a dozen other states. . . . The political backdrop makes a court decision […]
Employment rates of older men and women in the U.S. have been rising for the past several decades. Over the same period, there have been significant changes in Social Security and private pensions, which may have contributed to this trend. In this study, we examine how the financial incentive to work at older ages has […]
Ultimately the gig economy, even as it uses the latest technology, represents something of a devolution of labor. Although widely associated as “progressive,” the arbiters of the gig economy are, perhaps unconsciously, recreating the conditions that led to the impoverishment of the peasants and mechanics — replaced by slaves — at the end of the […]
From New York to California, the nation’s agricultural workers are aging. They are also in short supply, as fewer immigrants are arriving to replace those who retire, and younger generations are finding less physically taxing work. In a 2017 survey of farmers by the California Farm Bureau Federation, 55 percent reported labor shortages, and the […]
In 2009, mired in the depths of recession, Ohio’s unemployment trust fund went broke, prompting the state to borrow $2.6 billion from the federal government so it could keep sending checks to unemployed workers. Now, with the state unemployment rate down to 4.4%, the debt has been repaid and the trust fund has started to […]
A new report shows a third of local governments in CalPERS will have police and firefighter employer rates next fiscal year that are at least 50 percent of pay, a level that a former CalPERS chief actuary believed a decade ago would be “unsustainable.” At the high end, the number of local governments with rates […]
Nine out of every 10 Silicon Valley jobs pays less now than when Netflix first launched in 1997, despite one of the nation’s strongest economic booms and a historically low unemployment rate that outpaces the national average. While tech workers have thrived, employees in the middle of Silicon Valley’s income ladder have been hit hardest […]
Four years after the state Legislature passed a bailout of the California State Teachers’ Retirement System that will nearly double annual direct contributions to the giant pension fund, a newly released internal report raises the prospect that the infusion of extra dollars may not protect CalSTRS from future disaster. The 2014 changes in funding required […]
Even in a unionized environment, where work tasks are similar, hourly wages are identical, and tenure dictates promotions, female workers earn $0.89 on the male-worker dollar (weekly earnings). We use confidential administrative data on bus and train operators from the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA) to show that the weekly earnings gap can be explained […]
A new study of Seattle’s minimum wage is being presented in some corners as a progressive vindication. But the details are pretty much what any Econ 101 student would predict: bad news for young, unskilled workers trying to gain a foothold in the economy. In 2015-16, Seattle phased in a wage floor of $13 an […]
The issue of economic inequality is all the rage these days. It encompasses numerous arguments about a wide range of topics. Let us review and rebut several common ones.
Compensation for U.S. workers grew at an accelerating rate in the third quarter, a sign a historically tight labor market is yielding better pay for employees. The employment-cost index, a measure of wages and benefits for civilian workers, rose a seasonally adjusted 0.8% in July through September, the Labor Department said Wednesday. The gain was […]
Despite strong economic growth and historically low unemployment, a government report released Thursday pointed to an important missing ingredient so far in the U.S. expansion: worker-productivity improvements. Output per hour for workers in nonfarm businesses rose 1.3% in the third quarter from a year earlier, marking the 32nd straight quarter of yearly growth below 2%, […]