Parents can’t return to jobs without fresh child care financing — and unlikely political bedfellows are enthused over child care vouchers. Conservatives celebrate the choice-empowering fungibility of these portable chits. Anti-poverty advocates view them as efficient cash transfers to parents, bringing additional income to close kin and caring neighbors.
jobs
It’s time to raise wages for care workers
If you have children, you have likely struggled to find affordable quality childcare. Many of us face the same struggle seeking home care for a loved one or ourselves. In both cases costs to consumers are often out of reach while wages for workers are too low to retain a trained, stable workforce. Ballot initiatives this year … Continue reading »
Canada should welcome America’s ‘dreamers’
By Irene Bloemraad and Ratna Omidvar This commentary is reposted from The Globe and Mail in Canada, where it originally appeared in February 2017. We are now witnessing the casualties of new United States policies arriving at Canadian borders. More might soon follow as those who lack residence documents face a grim future and the … Continue reading »
Overtime: Finally, a break for the middle class
The U.S. Department of Labor just proposed raising the overtime threshold – what you can be paid and still qualify to be paid “time-and-a-half” beyond 40 hours per week – from $23,600 a year to $50,400. This is a big deal. Some 5 million workers will get a raise (see video). Business lobbies are already hollering this … Continue reading »
Keystone XL, energy policy and the job-creation shuffle
Renewable energy proponents and advocates of the Keystone pipeline finally agree on something: that the right way to count “job creation” is to focus narrowly on the jobs in the industry they want to boost and ignore the overall impact on employment. Unfortunately, researchers who actually study employment are not on board. The “green jobs” … Continue reading »
Today’s jobs report and the Supreme Court’s McCutcheon debacle
What does the Supreme Court’s McCutcheon decision this week have to do with today’s jobs report, showing 192,000 new jobs for March? Connect the dots. More than five years after Wall Street’s near meltdown the number of full-time workers is still 4 million less than it was in December 2007, yet the working-age population of the … Continue reading »
Fear is why workers in red states vote against their economic self-interest
Last week’s massive spill of the toxic chemical MCHM into West Virginia’s Elk River illustrates another benefit to the business class of high unemployment, economic insecurity, and a safety-net shot through with holes. Not only are employees eager to accept whatever job they can get. They are also also unwilling to demand healthy and safe … Continue reading »
Trimmings for Labor Day
The good news this Labor Day: Jobs are returning. The bad news this Labor Day: Most of them pay lousy wages and low if non-existent benefits. The trend toward lousy wages began before the Great Recession. According to a new report from the Economic Policy Institute, weak wage growth between 2000 and 2007, combined with … Continue reading »
Going green and growing jobs, the right way
It’s time for California, long a leader in green energy investment, to take another big step forward on the environment and job creation. When Californians passed Proposition 39 last year, they voted for more carbon reduction, school improvements and jobs – all through a five-year, $2.5 billion program using revenues from newly closed tax loopholes … Continue reading »
Why we should stop obsessing about the federal budget deficit
I wish President Obama and the Democrats would explain to the nation that the federal budget deficit isn’t the nation’s major economic problem and deficit reduction shouldn’t be our major goal. Our problem is lack of good jobs and sufficient growth, and our goal must be to revive both. Deficit reduction leads us in the … Continue reading »
The most important political news this week
The biggest political news this week won’t be the Democratic convention. It will be Friday’s unemployment report. If the trend is good — if the rate of unemployment drops and the number of payroll jobs is as good if not better than it was in July — President Obama’s claim we’re on the right track … Continue reading »
Outsourcing is not the problem
President Obama is slamming Mitt Romney for heading companies that were “pioneers in outsourcing U.S. jobs,” while Romney is accusing Obama of being “the real outsourcer-in-chief.” These are the dog days of summer and the silly season of presidential campaigns. But can we get real, please? The American economy has moved way beyond outsourcing abroad … Continue reading »
America’s jobs deficit, and why it’s still more important than the budget deficit
The most significant aspect of January’s jobs report is political. The fact that America’s labor market continues to improve is good news for the White House. But as a practical matter the improvement is less significant for the American work force. President Obama’s only chance for rebutting Republican claims that he’s responsible for a bad … Continue reading »
The biggest risk to the economy in 2012, and what’s the economy for anyway?
Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos a few days ago, said the “critical risks” facing the American economy this year were a worsening of Europe’s chronic sovereign debt crisis and a rise in tensions with Iran that could stoke global oil prices. What about jobs and wages here at … Continue reading »
The most important economic speech of his presidency
The President’s speech today in Osawatomie, Kansas — where Teddy Roosevelt gave his “New Nationalism” speech in 1910 — is the most important economic speech of his presidency in terms of connecting the dots, laying out the reasons behind our economic and political crises, and asserting a willingness to take on the powerful and the privileged … Continue reading »
The jobs report: Don’t break out the champagne
In brief: The Bureau of Labor Statistics’ household survey shows unemployment at 8.6 percent, and the payroll survey shows 120,000 new jobs in November (140,000 from the private sector, and a loss of 20,000 in the public sector). BLS also revised upward its job numbers for September and October. What does it mean? We’re not … Continue reading »
Restore the basic bargain
For most of the last century, the basic bargain at the heart of the American economy was that employers paid their workers enough to buy what American employers were selling. That basic bargain created a virtuous cycle of higher living standards, more jobs, and better wages. Back in 1914, Henry Ford announced he was paying … Continue reading »
No (or at least little) net loss of jobs from regulation
We keep hearing the phrase “job-killing regulations” from the Republican side of the aisle, with environmental regulations generally at the top of their lists. Yet there has never been much evidence for the claim that government regulation is systematically bad for employment or the economy. To the contrary, scholars, this blog, think tanks (notably the … Continue reading »
The seven biggest economic lies
The President’s Jobs Bill doesn’t have a chance in Congress — and the Occupiers on Wall Street and elsewhere can’t become a national movement for a more equitable society – unless more Americans know the truth about the economy. Here’s a short (2 minute 30 second) effort to rebut the seven biggest whoppers now being … Continue reading »
The American jobs Depression — and how to get out of it
The Reverend Al Sharpton and various labor unions have announced a March for Jobs. But I’m afraid we’ll need more than marches to get jobs back. Since the start of the Great Recession at the end of 2007, America’s potential labor force – that is, working-age people who want jobs – has grown by over … Continue reading »