News

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.

This summary report provides statistics from the revised 2011 estimates for the employment of nearly 90,000 state and local governments in the United States. It shows statistics on the number of state and local government civilian employees and their gross payrolls for the month of March 2011. Statistics include government functions such as education, fire protection and police protection. Statistics are available for the nation and individual states.

This report provides statistics on revenues, expenditures, financial assets and membership information for public employee retirement systems. Statistics are shown for retirement systems at the national, state and local government level. This publication presents data on public pension systems based on information collected from the 2011 Annual Survey of Public Pensions: State- and Locally-Administered Defined Benefit Data.

This report is the successor to Help Wanted: Projections of Jobs and Education Demand through 2018, in which we examined the connections between educational attainment and educational demand in the labor market.

This report provides an updated and expanded view of charter school performance in the United States.

Governors have updated their economic development strategies and launched new initiatives to further spur economic growth and provide high wage jobs, according to a report released by the National Governors Association (NGA).

The insurance industry has provided over 210,00 jobs in 2010 and provided a payroll that totaled $14.9 billion, just in California!

Executive Summary: This is an extremely dynamic time in the California energy industry. Electricity providers are facing new generation, transmission, and distribution infrastructure needs, aggressive renewable energy and emissions goals, and increasingly complex, multifaceted, and multi-jurisdictional policies and regulations, all while striving to maintain reliable and affordable service. Additionally, transportation fuel providers will have to meet stringent carbon intensity limits. As the goals and objectives of these policies and regulations mature from legislation to implementation, they are beginning to introduce additional and potentially substantial costs to the California energy industry.

My Congressional District, allows anyone to access information about a Congressional district at the click of a button. With all fifty states and every district represented, it is easy to compare information. Users can view statistics about population, jobs, housing, economic status, and education. An information base of this size helps provide useful knowledge and a critical understanding of how a district is doing compared to others, and serves as a useful research tool.

. . . tracks the performance of state-owned highway systems of the United States from 1984 to 2009. Eleven indicators make up each state’s overall rating, including highway expenditures, interstate and primary road pavement condition, bridge condition, urban interstate congestion, fatality rates and narrow rural lanes. The study is based on spending and performance data submitted by the state highway agencies to the federal government. –

As the real estate market conƟnues to improve, or, more specifically, as homes conƟnue to appreciate, homeowners with underwater mortgages will reap the benefits. However, naƟonal policies stemming from the federal Dodd-Frank Act may temper growth as the changing standards for what defines a convenƟonal mortgage will make qualifying more difficult. These standards may serve a greater purpose in the long term, but their short-term effects are currently hurƟng potenƟal homebuyers.

Within five years, higher manufacturing exports due to a widening cost advantage over China and other major economies could add $20 billion to $60 billion in output to Mexico’s economy annually. And thanks to the North America Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), U.S. manufacturers of components for everything from automobiles to computers assembled in Mexico also stand to benefit, according to new research by The Boston Consulting Group (BCG).

The rapid replacement of coal by cheaper and cleaner natural gas has helped drive emissions down in the United States more than any other country in the world in recent years. Cheap nautral gas is crushing domestic demand for coal and is the main reason for the rapid decline in US carbon emissions. The gas revolution offers a way for the United States and other nations to replace coal burning while accelerating the transition to zero-carbon energy.

Underlying these national trends are wide differences in state economic activity. This monitor documents trends at the state level, noting particular differences in state economies. This first brief focuses on employment, state government finances, housing, and economic growth

We scored all 50 states on 51 measures of competitiveness developed with input from business groups including the National Association of Manufacturers and the Council on Competitiveness.