This month, the National Council of La Raza’s (NCLR) Monthly Latino Unemployment Report focuses on the important issue of underemployment. “Underemployment,” as The State of Working America states, is “a more comprehensive measure of slack in the labor market than unemployment.”

The book goes on:

Underemployment includes workers who meet the official definition of unemployment as well as: 1) those who are working part time but want and are available to work full time (“involuntary” part timers), and 2) those who want and are available to work and have looked for work in the last year but have given up actively seeking work (“marginally attached” workers). While this is the most comprehensive measure of labor underutilization available from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, it does not include workers who are underemployed in a “skills or experience” sense (as in, say, a mechanical engineer working as a barista).

African Americans generally have the highest rates of underemployment among the major racial and ethnic groups. However, for much of 2009, Latinos had a slightly higher rate. This year, the Latino underemployment rate has averaged about 20 percent, while the black rate has averaged about 23 percent, and the white rate about 12 percent.

NCLR’s report also pulls apart the underemployment rate to examine the rate of involuntary part-time work. The share of workers who want full-time work but only have part-time work out of all workers is another important measure of hardship. Many of these individuals are struggling to make ends meet.

If one examines this involuntary-part-time rate from Nov. 2011 to Oct. 2012, Latinos have the highest rate. The share of Latino workers who only have part-time work but desire full-time work is 10.3 percent. For blacks, it is 7.7 percent, and for whites it is 5 percent. We need much stronger job creation to put these part-time workers in full-time jobs.

Here’s some of the interesting content that EPI’s research team browsed through today:

• “The Forgotten Millions” (Paul Krugman)
• “Bills Placing Limits on Unions Advance in Michigan Legislature” (New York Times)
• “Underemployment: The Real Jobs Crisis: Monthly Latino Employment Report” (National Council of La Raza)
• “Degree Inflation? Jobs That Newly Require B.A.’s” (Economix)
• “The Effects of Health Reform on Small Businesses and Their Workers” (Urban Institute)
• “Taxing Businesses Through the Individual Income Tax” (Congressional Budget Office)
• “The Gospel of Wealth Fails the Inequity Test in Primates” (Scientific American)

Among the U.S.-born, black women had the strongest birth-rate decline from 1990 to 2010, according to a recent report from Pew Social and Demographic Trends. The birth rate—the number of births per 1,000 women aged 15 to 44—declined 29 percent for blacks, 25 percent for Asians, 21 percent for Hispanics, but only 5 percent for whites.

In 1990, the black birth rate was 26.1 points higher than the white rate. In 2010, it was only 4 points higher. If this trend continues, the black birth rate will soon equal the white rate.

Michigan’s Republican-controlled House and Senate forced through “right-to-work” legislation on Thursday, making the Great Lakes State the latest battleground over worker rights. The move, of course, comes after recent GOP-led anti-union measures were passed in Wisconsin and Indiana. Michigan stands to join 23 other states with RTW laws, which make it illegal for collective bargaining agreements to require nonunion employees to pay fees (even though these nonunion employees get all of the same benefits as their unionized peers under negotiated contracts). Since the actual effect of RTW laws is to restrict workers’ rights—by making it illegal for them to enter voluntary contracts with unions to collect union dues—the name is misleading. Even more misleading, however, are claims that these laws boost a state’s economy.

RIGHT-TO-WORK 101: Why These Laws Hurt Our Economy, Our Society, and Our Democracy

Union members and their supporters are well aware of RTW’s consequences, which is why Read more

A vital goal of economic policy should be to raise the living standards of the millions of American households who have seen their wages and living standards stagnate or decline over the last few decades. Fundamental to this is an economy that produces good, well-paying jobs. The biggest obstacle to this, currently, is the jobs crisis driven by a shortfall in aggregate demand. Additional factors though, written into our current policies, mean that even when the economy does recover, there is no reason to believe that the jobs it produces will actually be well-paying jobs.

The New York Times business section ran a story yesterday on low-wage workers and declining unionization rates, making the key points that:

1. We are neither building an economy in which most workers earn enough to adequately support their families nor are we sufficiently using government tools to help subsidize the lower class
2. The decline in unionization rates is adding to the woes of low-wage workers Read more

It’s true that the fiscal cliff poses a significant threat to the economy if left completely unaddressed deep into 2013. But although the two most well-known components of the cliff (which is better described as a “fiscal obstacle course”) are the expiration of the Bush tax cuts and the sequestration cuts, neither scheduled change poses nearly as large a danger to the economy in the immediate future as a failure to raise the debt ceiling.

Last year, President Obama allowed congressional Republicans to hold the economy hostage by refusing to raise the debt ceiling until their demands to cut spending were met. Obama eventually agreed to cut roughly $2 trillion in spending, including $800 billion from the discretionary spending caps and $1.2 trillion from the sequester (which includes discretionary and some mandatory spending). This set a dangerous precedent that the minority party could use the debt ceiling to extract policy concessions from the majority.

FULL ANALYSIS FROM EPI: Budget battles in the lame duck and beyond

Appearing to recognize this dangerous precedent, the president has now proposed defusing the debt ceiling by allowing any president to raise the debt ceiling, with only a two-thirds vote in Congress able to prevent the increase. This is a positive development, as are Read more

The American public wants Congress to get the economy moving and create jobs. Rightly so, given 7.9 percent unemployment and 23 million workers underemployed. So why is Speaker of the House John Boehner focused on something else? Why, for example, does he support continuing the Bush tax cuts for the very rich, which do almost nothing to boost the economy, and oppose continuing Emergency Unemployment Compensation for the long-term unemployed, which is a proven job creator, in addition to being financial life support for millions of families?

Extending just the upper-income Bush tax cuts would boost GDP growth by 0.1 percentage point, increasing nonfarm payroll employment in 2013 by only 102,000 jobs—far less than one-tenth the impact of continuing the temporary ad hoc stimulus measures. Continuing EUC would do three times as much in terms of GDP growth and support 300,000 to 400,000 jobs. In terms of jobs created per dollar of budget deficit, EUC is more than five times as effective as the Bush income tax cuts for the wealthy. Combine them with the Bush estate tax cuts and they are one-seventh as effective as EUC. Read more

Business groups and their allies, including New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and various non-profit advocacy organizations, have been arguing for years—without real evidence—that the United States is losing a race to attract the world’s best and brightest young scientists, engineers, computer techies and mathematicians. In a report entitled, Immigration of Foreign Nationals with Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) Degrees, Ruth Wasem of the Congressional Research Service (CRS) recently reviewed the statistics regarding these highly skilled migrants and concluded: “The United States remains the leading host country for international students in science, technology, engineering, or mathematics (STEM) fields.” The United States has been and continues to be extraordinarily welcoming to foreign students, and especially to those in the STEM fields. CRS reports that the number of foreign graduate students in the STEM fields increased by 50 percent since 1990:

“The number of full-time graduate students in science, engineering, and health fields who were foreign students (largely on F-1 nonimmigrant visas) grew from 91,150 in 1990 to 148,923 in 2009, with most of the increase occurring after 1999. Read more

Here’s some reading material for you from items EPI’s research team skimmed through today:

• “Why sane bargaining looks strange” (Washington Post)
• “As Companies Seek Tax Deals, Governments Pay High Price” (New York Times)
• “Lines Blur as Texas Gives Industries a Bonanza” (New York Times)
• “No more false equivalence. Both sides are not equally to blame.” (Washington Post)
• “Understanding The Fiscal Cliff (in 2 minutes, 30 seconds)” (Robert Reich)
• “Everyone’s talking about tax reform. But no one really knows what it would do.” (Washington Post)

Here’s some good content that EPI’s research team browsed through today:

• “Tax Burden Is Lower for Most Americans Than in the 1980s” (New York Times)
• “No, Dems don’t need to compromise up front” (Washington Post)
• “In rare strike, NYC fast-food workers walk out” (Salon.com)
• “Putting pollution controls on Mill Creek power plant to create hundreds of jobs” (Louisville Courier-Journal)
• “Will Tim Geithner Lead Us Over or Around the Fiscal Cliff?” (Robert Reich)