In 2013, the official U.S. poverty rate was 14.5%, compared to 15.0% in 2012, and marked the first statistically significant drop in the rate since 2006. In 2013, 45.3 million persons were estimated as having income below the official poverty line, a number statistically unchanged from the estimated 46.5 million poor in 2012. (See Figure … Continue reading
Pharmacy programs usually take six years — two years of undergraduate work at a university or community college and four years of professional training — at the end of which most students earn a doctorate of pharmacy (Pharm.D.) degree. The average pharmacy school student borrows $130,000, according to a 2013 survey of graduates by the … Continue reading
It’s a pretty impressive story of how job creation in just one state – Texas – has made such a significant contribution to the 1.169 million net increase in total US employment (+1,444,290 Texas jobs minus the 275,290 non-Texas job loss) in the seven year period between the start of the Great Recession in December … Continue reading
What are the true economic effects of paid leave? Real-life experiments are underway in three states that already have operational paid leave programs: California, New Jersey and Rhode Island. Their experiences — particularly California’s, where the policy is a decade old — offer some answers. (New Jersey’s started in 2009 and Rhode Island’s last year.) … Continue reading
Advanced industries represent a sizable economic anchor for the U.S. economy and have led the post-recession employment recovery Modest in size, the sector packs a massive economic punch: As an employer and source of economic activity the advanced industry sector plays a major role in the U.S. economy. as of 2013, the nation’s 50 advanced industries … Continue reading
Economic inequality is, at long last, commanding attention from policymakers, the media, and everyday citizens. There is growing recognition that we need an inclusive economy that works for everyone—not just for those at the top. While there are plentiful data examining the fortunes of the top 1 percent at the national level, this report uses … Continue reading
This paper examines the extent to which public-sector employment has been relatively recessionproof in the past, whether previous patterns with respect to job displacement held during the Great Recession, and whether the experiences of federal, state, and local government workers have been similar… We use a sample of over 800,000 workers taken from the … Continue reading
Workers were less secure about retaining their jobs in 2010 and 2012 than in 1977 and 1978; they also were less secure about the ease with which they would find a comparable job if they were separated. As might be expected, the two measures of job security track unemployment, although other factors certainly play a … Continue reading
Deere & Co (DE.N), the world’s largest maker of farm equipment, will lay off more than 900 employees at plants in Iowa and Illinois in the latest round of job cuts spurred by a decline in grain prices that is hurting demand for agricultural machinery. The layoffs, which represent about 3 percent of Deere’s workforce … Continue reading
Our objective in this paper is to assess the effect of unemployment benefit extensions on employment. Measuring the magnitude of this effect is manifestly important for understanding the economic consequences of this widely used policy instrument. Yet, the existing literature provides little information on the size, let alone the sign of this effect. In the … Continue reading
Over the past 25 years, the total immigrant population has increased and spread across the country. In 1990, the foreign-born population was 19.7 million or 7.9 percent of the U.S. total, with nearly 3 out of 4 immigrants (73 percent) living in either California, Florida, Illinois, New Jersey, New York, or Texas.2 By 2010, approximately … Continue reading
Over the past few years, there has been a growing movement in the United States to substantially raise the federal minimum wage, which has been fixed at $7.25 per hour since 2009. One widely embraced goal within this movement is to raise the federal minimum to $15 an hour. This would constitute a 107 percent … Continue reading
UNEMPLOYMENT INSURANCE WEEKLY CLAIMS ( seasonally adjusted) In the week ending January 10, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims was 316,000, an increase of 19,000 from the previous week’s revised level. The previous week’s level was revised up by 3,000 from 294,000 to 297,000. The 4-week moving average was 298,000, an increase of 6,750 … Continue reading
Why wages are not growing for the vast majority of workers in the United States and what it will take to get us there. First, the trend of stagnating U.S. wage growth is nothing new. The past three decades of wage growth — save for the late-1990s boom — have given the median U.S. wage … Continue reading
Consistent with the view that much of current unemployment must be structural rather than cyclical in nature, even as unemployment has been slow to fall from its recent high level, a number of reports have cited short- ages of skilled workers as a significant barrier to business expansion. A 2011 report by Deloitte and the … Continue reading