How trends in American Indian and Alaska Native population growth impact employment data

American Indian and Alaska Native (AIAN) is a broad and diverse Census-defined racial category that includes Indigenous populations with origins in North America and South (including Central) America. Within the United States, American Indian or Native American is also a political identity defined by tribal citizenship. Of the nearly 8 million people who selected the AIAN racial category in the 2020 Census, more than half (4.9 million) did so in combination with another race. The vast majority of those who self-identify as AIAN alone reported American Indian (70.4%) or Latin American Indian (25%) heritage.

Relative to the 2010 Census, total multiple-race AIAN responses in the 2020 Census rose 240.6%, while single-race AIAN responses (AIAN alone) increased 37.2%. According to the Census Bureau, the increase in multiple-race AIAN responses is largely due to redesigned questions for race and ethnicity, which included a write-in option with examples of corresponding national origins for each racial or ethnic category. The agency also made improvements in data processing and coding to provide a more thorough and accurate accounting of the nation’s racial diversity. However, since Census racial categories are self-reported, AIAN population counts differ from official tribal enrollment records.

In 2022, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) began publishing monthly labor force estimates for AIAN workers over age 16, shedding new light on a historically invisible segment of the U.S. labor force. Comparable data are available back to 2003, including monthly unemployment rates, labor force participation rates, and employment-to-population ratios. While these statistics are available from BLS’s website, they are not included in the monthly jobs report and are less publicized than labor market statistics for other demographic groups.

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How Republicans in Congress are trying to quietly privatize SNAP through the back door of disaster relief

The country’s largest and most important government anti-hunger program faces a renewed threat as Congress returns from recess next week: privatization.  

Congress needs to reauthorize the now-expired Farm Bill—the enormous legislative package that includes funding for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, also known as food stamps)—but a privatization scheme was attached to the bill.

Earlier this Congress, Rep. Don Bacon (R, NE-02) introduced the “SNAP Staffing Flexibility Act,” which was also included as a provision in the current version of the Farm Bill. The bill would allow state agencies to hire outside contractors to administer key requirements of the SNAP program under certain conditions, such as in the aftermath of natural disasters or during pandemics and public health emergencies. Rep. Bacon and supporters of this proposal now aim to tack this provision onto the emergency disaster relief package under consideration this year. Make no mistake: this is an attempt to use emergency disaster relief as cover to privatize the SNAP program and workforce, instead of giving the SNAP program enough money to operate effectively.

Privatization is often touted as a solution to bureaucratic red tape or cutting “wasteful” government spending, but in practice, it can mean cutting the experienced public workforce who administer complicated government programs. This can result in prolonged delays, more people wrongly denied benefits, and ultimately worse outcomes for people who need the benefits most.

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The policies that will determine whether Trump’s labor secretary pick supports workers

President-elect Donald Trump recently announced his nomination of Congresswoman Lori Chavez-DeRemer to serve as Secretary of Labor. She is one of only three House Republicans to co-sponsor the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act and one of only eight Republicans to co-sponsor the Public Service Freedom to Negotiate Act. Both bills would help reform our nation’s badly broken system of labor law. While Congresswoman Chavez-DeRemer’s support for these needed reforms is encouraging, if confirmed, she will be Secretary of Labor for a president who steadfastly pursued an ambitious anti-worker agenda during his first term in office.

Chavez-DeRemer has stated that “working-class Americans finally have a lifeline” with President-elect Trump in the White House. If workers truly have an ally in Chavez-DeRemer, she will advance policies that improve workers’ lives. Here are a few policies that will reveal whether the second Trump administration will actually aid working-class Americans or be a continuation of his first administration’s agenda attacking workers’ rights.

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Measuring diversity in construction apprenticeship programs: Data show higher rates of participation of women, Hispanic workers, and workers of color in union-based apprenticeships than nonunion programs

Registered apprenticeship programs represent the lifeblood of the construction industry. These vital workforce development programs—which typically do not require a nickel of student debt or government tax dollars—build worker skills while offering career pathways to good-paying jobs for blue-collar Americans. These programs are also key to the long-run sustainability of the U.S. construction industry, making it critical that apprenticeship programs recruit and retain capable and dedicated apprentices.

In recent years, many industry stakeholders have increasingly focused on recruiting more women and workers of color to construction apprenticeship training. These efforts are designed not only to increase diversity and access to good jobs, but also to expand the pipeline of committed apprentices who will become the next generation of skilled trades workers in the United States.

Assessing diversity outcomes within these registered apprenticeship training programs, however, has long encountered a problem: Data collected by the U.S. Department of Labor from states and programs are often incomplete and notoriously riddled with inaccuracies. However, our new book—The State of Registered Apprenticeship Training in the Construction Tradeshas resolved many of these data issues and offers a comprehensive, first-of-its-kind examination of the U.S. construction industry’s registered apprenticeship training programs.1 Our analysis reveals two broad trends in the area of diversity among construction apprentices:

  • Women, Hispanic workers, and workers of color have higher participation and completion rates in union-based registered apprenticeship programs compared with nonunion programs.
  • Across the entire industry, the share of women and Hispanic workers in registered apprenticeship programs grew from 2015 through 2021, though the share of apprentices of color declined during this period.

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NLRB rules anti-union captive audience meetings an illegal abuse of employer power: States must also continue to broaden protection of workers’ freedom from employer coercion on political, religious matters

U.S. employers have tremendous power over worker conduct. For decades, federal law has allowed employers to require workers to attend “captive audience” meetings—and force employees to listen to political, religious, or anti-union employer views—on work time

Last week, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) ruled that anti-union captive audience meetings in particular are illegal because they interfere with workers’ right to freely choose whether to form or join a union.

The NLRB ruling is game changing because while workers’ right to organize without employer interference is spelled out clearly in federal labor law, employers have long used captive audience meetings and other tactics to violate these rights in practice. Analysis of NLRB elections documents shows that 89% of all employers conduct captive audience meetings in response to unionization efforts. Employers spend over $400 million per year on “union-avoidance” consultants, who specialize in using captive audience meetings to intimidate, threaten, and instill fear in workers for the purpose of coercing them to oppose unionization. The NLRB ruling makes these egregious, widespread abuses of employer power illegal in the context of worker organizing.

Meanwhile, a growing number of states have enacted legislation to protect workers broadly from the overarching threat of employer coercion, banning mandatory captive audience meetings on political or religious matters (including, but not limited to, employer opinions on unionization). Importantly, these state policies (like the NLRB ruling) do not limit employer rights to express opinions or even to invite employees to political or religious meetings during work time. Instead, this legislation is designed to prohibit employers from threatening, disciplining, firing, or retaliating against workers who choose to not attend mandatory workplace meetings focused on political or religious matters that are unrelated to an employee’s job duties.

Both because the NLRB has ability only to address captive audience meetings focused on anti-union speech, and because the new ruling will be at risk of reversal by a future labor board, it remains equally important for states to protect workers’ freedom of choice and conscience on a broad range of political and religious matters.

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The school bus driver shortage remains severe, and bus driver pay is getting worse

Key takeaways: 

  • Despite improving slightly in the past year, the bus driver shortage remains severe. As of September 2024, there were 12.2% fewer school bus drivers on the road than in September 2019. 
  • The key issue fueling bus driver shortages today is low pay. In 2023, the median school bus driver earned 43% less than the median weekly wage for all workers. And bus drivers’ pay is falling further behind: Weekly earnings for bus drivers have fallen 2.8% since 2019.  
  • The current bus driver shortage is a result of more than a decade of disinvestment in these workers and reflects a broader trend of underfunding public schools. School districts need adequate funding to raise pay for drivers and reverse the shortage.  

As the school year got underway in August and September, school districts throughout the country once again faced a daunting challenge: severe bus driver shortages. For instance, the St. Louis Public School District had to cobble together a transportation plan that included Metro bus rides and private cab companies after the district’s primary bus driver vendor declined to renew its contract due to insufficient pay. Meanwhile, a city in Ohio responded to the shortages by eliminating bus routes for students living within a two-mile radius of its school, forcing many elementary and middle school students to walk to class.

We documented this problem last year, describing how excessively low pay and the particularly acute health risks facing this disproportionately older workforce during the pandemic have led to massive declines in bus driver employment. Unfortunately, since last fall, the situation has hardly improved. Some aspects of the problem, such as pay for drivers, have become even more dire.

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A review of key 2024 ballot measures: Voters backed progressive policy measures

By the numbers: 

  • Voters approved minimum wage increases to $15 per hour in two states (Alaska and Missouri).  
  • Voters expanded workers’ ability to earn paid sick leave in three states (Alaska, Missouri, and Nebraska).  
  • Voters approved a state constitutional right to abortion in seven states (Arizona, Colorado, Maryland, Missouri, Montana, Nevada, and New York).  
  • Voters rejected school vouchers in three states (Colorado, Kentucky, and Nebraska).  

In this year’s election, voters given the opportunity to weigh in directly on questions of economic justice showed policy preferences far more progressive than those reflected in many national and state election outcomes. Across the country, voters seized opportunities to approve state or local ballot measures increasing the minimum wage, expanding paid leave, strengthening workers’ rights to unionize, preserving public education, and protecting access to abortion. These ballot measure outcomes reflect a clear ongoing trend of strong voter support for policies that prioritize worker, racial, and gender justice—and illustrate how state and local governments can continue to play important roles in enacting such policies. 

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Top-line job growth number distorted by hurricanes and strikes: All other data point to a historically strong labor market

Below, EPI economists offer their insights on the jobs report released this morning for October. 

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Five things to consider on Election Day if you care about economic and racial justice

Days before one of the most consequential elections in recent history, it’s a good time to consider what’s at stake when it comes to racial and gender economic equality and worker empowerment.

You’ve heard the political rhetoric, but here’s a reality check.

Here are five things to keep in mind before you enter the voting booth:

  • Immigration bolsters our economic well-being. Immigrants are an integral part of the U.S. economy. Immigration has led to better wages and work opportunities for U.S.-born workers and increased economic growth and human capital contributions across occupations and industries.
  • Unions lift up workers. Unions have been important for promoting economic equality, building worker power, and improving working conditions. Unions have been critical to narrowing the pay gap between critical public-sector jobs (like local government workers and school staff) and the private sector.
  • Abortion restrictions undercut women’s economic freedoms. States with more abortion restrictions have lower wages, weaker labor standards, and higher levels of incarceration.
  • The U.S. economy is doing well. The economy today is extraordinarily strong by nearly every historical benchmark, including relative to the years immediately preceding the pandemic. Inflation-adjusted wages have reached a record high and have grown more rapidly since 2022 than before the pandemic.
  • Public education is the bedrock of our children’s success. Since the early 2000s, many states have introduced harmful voucher programs to provide public financing for private school education. These voucher programs are deeply damaging to efforts to offer an excellent public education for all U.S. children. Public education is one of the most important achievements in our country’s history and is crucial for the social and economic welfare of future generations.

Hurricanes’ impact will distort Friday’s jobs report, but there’s no reason to be spooked about the labor market

The broader sweep of economic evidence—including yesterday’s extremely strong reading on gross domestic product (GDP) growth for the third quarter of 2024—tells a clear story: The U.S. economy and labor market is extraordinarily strong relative to any historical benchmark. For example, private-sector job growth and inflation-adjusted wages have grown noticeably faster since the end of 2022 than they had over the full pre-pandemic business cycle (2007–2019) and even since the peak of that expansion (2017–2019). The table at the end of this post highlights several other economic indicators that have performed extraordinarily well over the past two years.

This Friday will see the last significant piece of economic data released before the election—the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) will release the monthly report on how many jobs were created and what the unemployment rate was in October. The timing of the report will tempt some into exaggerating what it tells us about the U.S. labor market going into next week. We’d remind people of the following when they read through Friday’s data:

  • Any monthly jobs report carries limited information about the underlying strength or weakness of the labor market—monthly data are volatile, and new trends should only be taken seriously when they recur for a number of months.
  • This Friday’s report is going to be much more volatile and less informative than most because of the hurricanes (Milton and Helene) impacting the U.S. in October when the data were collected, as well as a large number of workers on strike during the October reference week. This will make it entirely unreliable as any signal of the underlying strength of the labor market.
    • The hurricanes will likely significantly depress job growth for the month (most estimates are that it will depress growth by roughly 50,000 jobs but leave open the possibility of a significantly larger effect).
    • These jobs will likely rebound quickly and add to job growth numbers in coming months.
    • The hurricanes will also likely change average weekly hours worked due to job losses being concentrated in particular sectors (construction, for example). The change in weekly hours will mechanically affect calculated hourly wages, which are just weekly wages divided by total hours worked.
    • The BLS reported that 44,000 workers were on strike as well during the October reference week, which will further depress job growth for the month. Again, these temporary payroll losses will be nearly guaranteed to rebound and add to growth in coming months.

In short, unlike the last election, whoever wins the presidency next week is highly likely to inherit an extremely strong economy.

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