Below, EPI economists offer their initial insights on the jobs report released this morning, which showed 261,000 jobs added in October.

From EPI senior economist, Elise Gould (@eliselgould):

Read the full Twitter thread here. 

In October, there were notable gains in Education and health services, Profession and business services, and Leisure and hospitality. And, finally, finally!, some signs of life in public sector employment. pic.twitter.com/Z7uVFVP55D

— Elise Gould (@eliselgould) November 4, 2022

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There are a great deal of systemic issues plaguing the public education system today that require systemic solutions. To do so, the nation needs to move beyond fake education debates and find ways to address the teacher pay gap, one cause of worsening shortages in education, and the growing stress among students and teachers, which has only been exacerbated by the ongoing pandemic.

That was the consensus among a recent gathering of parent and educator experts, focused on what matters most for student success this school year and into the future.

A recent Economic Policy Institute (EPI) webinar featured Becky Pringle, President, National Education Association; Randi Weingarten, President, the American Federation of Teachers; Ailen Arreaza, Co-Director, ParentsTogether; and Heidi Shierholz, President, EPI. During the virtual discussion, they focused on how we can come together to ensure student success in the classroom and beyond.

Below we include excerpts of their perspectives, including solutions that will drive student success. (You can also view the full webinar here.)

Heidi Shierholz

“How much less do teachers make than their peers? That pay penalty was large in 1979 at 7.1%, but it more than tripled to 23.5% over the following four-plus decades. So young people who may have gone into teaching knowing they would make just 7% less than their peers may understandably be unlikely to go into teaching when they know they will make 23.5% less than their peers.

“This problem is poised to get worse if nothing is changed. There’s been a large drop in the number of people completing teacher preparation programs over the last 15 years.

“What can be done?

• Most immediately, COVID relief and federal relief and recovery funds, which include a substantial amount of aid to states and localities, can and should be used to raise pay for teachers and other education staff so that schools can attract and retain the staff that they need.
• In the longer run, we need to change school funding so that, among other things, teachers and other education staff can be paid fairly.
• Public-sector collective bargaining should be expanded in places where it’s restricted. Unions help bolster job quality for teachers and advocate for adequate school resources so teachers can teach effectively.”

Becky Pringle

“When we talk about a 24% wage gap for teachers, it’s gotten worse but it’s not new. So, as we think about the why, you know the systemic issues around the why, the fact that this is a predominantly overly super majority female profession, we can’t ignore that.

“When we think about the rising costs of higher education and the fact that we’re asking our young people to choose a profession that already has a wage gap and saddle them with all kinds of debt, especially for our Black and brown and indigenous students of color who we know don’t have that generational wealth that would allow them to choose teaching and stay in teaching.

“It’s not one issue with one solution. There are things that we can take steps on right away, but we’ve got to do it from a systemic place and we have to acknowledge that it is our shared responsibility, to make sure when we say every student is excelling, and everyone knows it; every educator is excelling, and everyone knows it; every school is excelling, and everyone knows it.

“That’s the story I would want them to tell so that we work toward those solutions. We know it has to be systemic, and it has to be sustained, and we have to collaborate to do it.”

Randi Weingarten

“There’s a whole bunch of investment things that can be done, but at the root what we need to do right now is reestablish relationships, confidence, and a sense of joy; and I don’t mean going back to a status quo. I mean a sense that people can work together, play together, learn together, want to be in school together, trying to create that hope that is the antidote to anxiety, that hope and transparency, which is the antidote to anxiety and to trauma.

“That’s why we have a mental health crisis right now. We had one before COVID, but the isolation exacerbated it. That’s why really being intentional about relationship building is really important.

“I’ll give you an example of one of the things we’re doing in Medina, Ohio. It’s simple but it’s pretty awesome. A teacher came up with this idea where she has had her students, 7th and 8th graders, read inspirational books. Some of them were about faith, and some of them were about other things. The adult reads the same book, the kids read the same book. They talked to each other.

“What’s happening now is that it has rippled through this whole Medina School District, a rural and pretty conservative school district. They are really doing all the social emotional work. As others are saying, ‘we don’t want teachers to talk to each other or talk to kids about emotional work,’ here you have this really conservative school district where they’re doing it.”

Ailen Arreaza

“When it comes to schools, parents are really concerned about adequate funding, and they’re concerned about safety and security in schools.

“You’ll notice that I didn’t say anything about banning books or censoring what teachers are talking about in the classroom. That’s really not what parents care about. We think that is a strategy that is being used to try to divide and distract parents at a time when parents are feeling really stressed and anxious.

“It’s been two years of COVID, closed schools, and economic insecurity. So these made-up controversies about book bans and censoring history are just a ploy to try to get us distracted from the things that really matter.

“What parents are telling us that they’re feeling anxious about is how to provide for their families. The solutions that they need are things like expanding the child tax credit, for example, and adequately funding schools, and having their kids feel safe in schools.”

Last week’s release of data on gross domestic product (GDP) and employer costs are sending a message to the Fed as it meets to set interest rates: There is substantial disinflation in the pipeline that will allow inflation to normalize in coming months even if the labor market remains strong. But securing this “soft landing” will require patience.

• In the most important markets for normalizing inflation, the housing and labor markets, there are signs of noticeable disinflation happening.
• Further, the Fed has not been the only source of macroeconomic policy tightening this year—the fiscal contraction in 2022 has been highly significant and underappreciated. This contraction has, in turn, contributed to the very slow pace of demand growth over the past year.

• Combined, these facts give the Fed some breathing room to slow the pace of rate hikes, even if these disinflationary trends have yet to show up in the consumer price index (CPI). In short, the “soft landing,” wherein inflation normalizes without sabotaging today’s strong labor market, is still possible and the Fed should try hard to secure it. 

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Below, EPI economists offer their initial insights on the jobs report released this morning, which showed 263,000 jobs added in September.

From EPI senior economist, Elise Gould (@eliselgould):

Read the full Twitter thread here. 

The unemployment rate fell to 3.5% in September, back to where it was in July, mostly for the “wrong” reasons as labor force participation declined. Two-thirds of the decline in the unemployment rate was due to the drop in the labor force and one-third from increased employment. pic.twitter.com/snor6FSdKK

— Elise Gould (@eliselgould) October 7, 2022

The private sector keeps chugging along while the public sector is faltering. With the September increase, private sector employment is now 0.9% above pre-pandemic levels while state and local jobs remain stubbornly 3.0% below its Feb 2020 level with little recent improvement. pic.twitter.com/txEIaCI29i

— Elise Gould (@eliselgould) October 7, 2022

After a troubling rise last month in Black unemployment accompanied by falling labor force and employment the last three months, Black unemployment fell back to 5.8% alongside increasing employment and participation.

Note: volatile series but hopefully a reversal in trend. pic.twitter.com/r1rsTAvWHq

— Elise Gould (@eliselgould) October 7, 2022

The fall in Black unemployment and rise in participation in September was experienced by both Black men and Black women. Again, huge disclaimer on data volatility for smaller demographic groups. pic.twitter.com/8Ol83CHmwt

— Elise Gould (@eliselgould) October 7, 2022

From EPI president, Heidi Shierholz (@hshierholz):

Read the full Twitter thread here. 

The unemployment rate dropped to 3.5% in September, but mostly *not* for good reasons—the share of the working age population with a job held steady, while labor force participation dropped. (Though make no mistake, 3.5% unemployment is extremely low.) 2/

— Heidi Shierholz (@hshierholz) October 7, 2022

We’re clearly starting to see the effects of the Fed’s rate hikes, but the labor market is still extremely strong. However, it takes a while for higher interest rates to have a big impact and there’s a huge concern the Fed has overshot and secured a recession in coming months. 4/

— Heidi Shierholz (@hshierholz) October 7, 2022

One thing: there is still a giant gap in state and local govt jobs—they are down 600,000 since Feb ‘20, with over half of that, 317,000, in education. It’s crucial that state and local govts use their ARPA funds to raise pay and refill those jobs. 6/

— Heidi Shierholz (@hshierholz) October 7, 2022

The overall numbers mask big disparities for different groups. Due to the impact of structural racism on the labor market, people of color have much higher unemp rates than white workers. For example, the unemp rate is currently 5.8% for Black workers, 3.1% for white workers. 8/

— Heidi Shierholz (@hshierholz) October 7, 2022

And that’s because, unlike with the Great Recession, Congress did what was needed to spur a robust recovery this time around (namely, CARES and ARPA). And no, those relief and recovery packages are not to blame for inflation. 10/ https://t.co/80YTugXRdp

— Heidi Shierholz (@hshierholz) October 7, 2022

Excellent thread on today’s jobs numbers https://t.co/R7pzfACYUG

— Heidi Shierholz (@hshierholz) October 7, 2022

Over the last few months, we’ve seen signs of labor market cooling (though from a very strong base): the historic decline in job openings in August; moderating wage growth; and employment losses in interest-rate-sensitive jobs.  

Private-sector employment rebounded fantastically following the pandemic recession because Congress made fiscal investments at the scale of the problem, and employment in the private sector exceeded pre-pandemic levels by July 2022. While the recovery continues to chug along, with rising labor force participation and prime-age employment-to-population ratio approaching pre-pandemic levels, the one sector that has failed to recover and has actually stalled for much of this year is state and local government employment.  

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This op-ed was originally published in the Times Union. 

Farm workers have long demanded overtime pay that kicks in after working 40 hours a week, just like other workers get. This year’s state budget included—at Gov. Kathy Hochul’s urging—a subsidy that will compensate farm owners for 100 percent of the cost of paying overtime, plus a little more to cover whatever extra is involved. Yet, farm owners are still resisting.

They’re wrong to do so.

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The pandemic highlighted vast inequalities in the United States, especially in the U.S. labor market. Striking disparities were magnified in who could work from home and who had to go into work in person, who was able to keep their job and who suffered from lost work hours or employment altogether, who had health insurance to seek care when they needed it and who didn’t, and who had the ability to take paid sick days to stay home when sick, get vaccinated, or take care of loved ones and who did not. Yesterday, the latest data on employer benefits was released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Stark inequalities persist in access to workplace benefits. One that hits hard is the inability of over 60% of the lowest-wage workers in the U.S. to be able to earn paid sick days to care for themselves or family members.  

Figure A  below shows access to paid sick days is vastly unequal: Workers at the bottom are disproportionately denied this important security. The highest-wage workers (top 10%) are two and a half times as likely to have access to paid sick leave as the lowest-paid workers (bottom 10%). Whereas 96% of the highest-wage workers had access to paid sick days, only 38% of the lowest-paid workers are able to earn paid sick days. 

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Government policies enacted in the wake of the pandemic have proven critical for reducing child poverty in the United States. Census Bureau data released last week showed that government social programs kept tens of millions of people out of poverty in 2021.

Child poverty reached its lowest level on record, as calculated by the Supplemental Poverty Measure (a measure that includes both cash and noncash benefits). This new historic low is largely thanks to the expanded Child Tax Credit (CTC), a key component of the 2021 American Rescue Plan (ARP) that has since expired. Without additional action by Congress to renew the expanded Child Tax Credit, we should expect higher child poverty in future years.

Let’s start with the outstanding role the Child Tax Credit played in reducing child poverty. The Child Tax Credit is a payment to support families raising children under 17 years of age of up to $2,000 per qualifying child. The 2021 ARP expanded the credit to increase the level of earnings to families receiving the credit (up to $3,600 per child under age 6) and to make the credit more widely available and fully refundable.

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There are two main debates about what to do about inflation. One is mostly good-faith (if highly contested): It concerns the actions of the Federal Reserve. Another is mostly bad-faith: It uses the existence of elevated inflation as a cudgel against any progressive policy change and as a justification for long-standing ideological priorities. This is most visible in fiscal policy debates, with some people claiming simultaneously that spending must be restrained (a contractionary move in fiscal policy), but taxes must be cut (an expansionary move). 

This bad-faith will certainly rear its head in debates on attempts to move forward on stronger labor standards as well—say by increasing the federal minimum wage. Even under normal circumstances, opponents of minimum wage increases claim that they will be inflationary, so they will almost certainly exaggerate these effects today. In this blog post, I make the following points about the relationship between minimum wages and inflation:  

• Faster inflation makes it more important, not less, to raise the federal minimum wage. Every year lawmakers don’t raise the minimum wage is a year that they have effectively cut the purchasing power and living standards of this country’s lowest wage workers. 
• Even under a worst-case inflation scenario where every penny in extra pay that results from moving the federal minimum wage to $15 by 2027 is passed on in the form of higher prices, the result would be a five-year stretch of inflationary pressure equal to 0.1% per year (or about 1/100th of the increase we’ve seen since 2021), then the inflationary effect would return to zero. 
• Even this extremely mild inflation could be substantially blunted by other margins of adjustment to a higher minimum wage—including a retreat from today’s still sky-high profit margins. During normal times, profits account for about 13% of the price of goods and services, but since recovery from the COVID-19 recession began in the second quarter of 2020, rising profit margins have accounted for roughly 40% of the rise in prices. When these margins normalize, there will be ample room for noninflationary wage growth.  

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The year 2021 proved to be a remarkable showcase of the power of public policies in alleviating economic hardship. This week, the Census Bureau released data from the 2021 Current Population Survey Annual Social and Economic Supplements (CPS ASEC) detailing poverty and other economic conditions across the country. The data revealed that social insurance programs—like Social Security, economic stimulus checks, a strengthened unemployment insurance (UI) system, and the expanded Child Tax Credit—kept more than 25 million people out of poverty. State lawmakers should do everything in their power to revive these programs. 

Differences in the supplemental and official poverty measures highlight the impact of pandemic support programs 

In 2011, the Census Bureau began annually releasing an additional poverty measure called the Supplemental Poverty Measure (SPM). Although imperfect, the SPM is a much better measure of poverty than the official poverty rate. SPM accounts for major government benefits like Social Security and child tax credits, and uses a more holistic measurement of modern costs of living and geographical differences in those costs. The latest data show that the 2021 SPM rates are the lowest on record for all years for which SPM estimates are available, starting from 2009. This is even more remarkable considering that the economic hardships and disruptions brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic were still very present during 2021.  

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On Thursday, the U.S. Census Bureau released 2021 household income and household earnings data for states from the American Community Survey (ACS). National averages hide the wide disparities experienced by workers and families across states while state-level data can help us understand how policy choices impact income and earnings. According to the ACS, inflation-adjusted median household income in 2021 was $69,717 nationally with large differences across states. Nineteen states and the District of Columbia had median household incomes above the national average with the highest being Maryland ($90,203), The District of Columbia ($90,088), and Massachusetts ($89,645). However, 31 states had median household incomes below the national median with the lowest being in Mississippi ($48,716), West Virginia ($51,248), and Louisiana ($52,087).

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The 2021 Census Bureau reports on income and poverty provide a first official glimpse at the economic condition of U.S. households by race and ethnicity in the first full year of the COVID-19 economic recovery, which reached people of color much faster than the recovery from the Great Recession.  

The faster pace of this recovery can be attributed to the strong pandemic policy response that not only contributed to robust job growth throughout 2021, but also provided critical income supports to economically vulnerable families and children.

However, along with these positive outcomes came a spike in inflation that threatened to chip away at any income gains. As a result, in 2021, real median household income ($70,784) was not statistically different from 2020 ($71,186). Real median household income was also statistically unchanged across all racial and ethnic groups. Reported income estimates reflect the Census Bureau’s inflation adjustment for 2021 – an annual increase of 4.7% between 2020 and 2021 and the largest annual increase since 1990. While this suggests that median incomes essentially kept pace with the 2021 rise in prices, these estimates do not reflect the more rapid increase in inflation in 2022.   

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The number of workers with health insurance coverage grew between 2020 and 2021 as the economy recovered from the massive job losses associated with the coronavirus pandemic. Most people (91.7%) had health insurance coverage at some point during the year and the share of uninsured people fell from 8.6% in 2020 to 8.3% in 2021.  

Notably, the share of Black people who were uninsured fell from 10.4% in 2020 to 9.0% in 2021, marking a rare occurrence in which the Black uninsured rate fell below double digits.  

In 2021, most people (54.3%) had health insurance through an employer (either their own employer or a family member). The share of people with private health insurance of any kind (employment-based or through individual purchase) fell slightly to 66.0%, while the share of those with a public plan rose to 35.7% (note that coverage types are not mutually exclusive – one person can have two types of health insurance coverage).  

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It should not have taken a pandemic to realize poverty is a public policy choice.  

Public investments in safety net programs continue to be extremely effective poverty reduction tools, as newly released Census income data show. Government social programs kept tens of millions of people out of poverty in 2021. Because of expansions to programs like unemployment insurance benefits and the Child Tax Credit, poverty rates were actually lower in 2021 than they were prior to the COVID-19 pandemic.  

The poverty reduction achieved through expanded social insurance programs highlights how much policymakers’ choices can impact poverty.   

Unfortunately, some of the program expansions enacted in the pandemic have already been reversed, and cuts to programs like unemployment benefits and the Child Tax Credit will increase household economic distress going forward. 

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Below, EPI senior economist Elise Gould offers her initial insights on the Census Bureau’s latest data on earnings, incomes, poverty, and health insurance for 2021. Read the full Twitter thread here and follow along for more to come.

The federal government played a vital role in reducing poverty in 2021. While Social Security remains the largest poverty reducer in the U.S.—reducing the number who would have been in poverty in 2021 by 26.3 million—the relief measures in 2021 were vital. pic.twitter.com/zYDwW87lIT

— Elise Gould (@eliselgould) September 13, 2022

Even with the rise in inflation, the bounce back in the labor market and strong safety net programs such as the child tax credit meant a reduction in poverty between 2020 and 2021. Remember SPM poverty includes those safety net programs while the Official Pov Measure does not. pic.twitter.com/4TA7YVekbs

— Elise Gould (@eliselgould) September 13, 2022

Today, the Census Bureau also released valuable statistics on earnings for men and women in 2021. A bit surprising to me that there was little change in the overall number of workers, but a notable increase in full-time, year-round workers in 2021, for both men and women. pic.twitter.com/iep9KUELX7

— Elise Gould (@eliselgould) September 13, 2022

Median earnings for all workers (regardless of work hours) rose between 2020 and 2021 by 4.6%, in part because of the shift from part-time to full-time work. The 4.5% rise in women’s earnings was particularly good news given that theirs is still significantly lower than men’s . pic.twitter.com/WIrGOBAmej

— Elise Gould (@eliselgould) September 13, 2022

Below, EPI director of research Josh Bivens offers his predictions for tomorrow’s release of the consumer price index (CPI) for August. Read the full Twitter thread here. 

The price decline will be driven overwhelmingly by commodity price softening. But even core inflation (excluding food and energy) fell in the PCE index last month to its lowest level since 2020. 2/

— Josh Bivens (@joshbivens_DC) September 12, 2022

What should policymakers if they get another month of breathing room on inflation? Many people will be persuaded by a view that the responsible thing to do here is maintain the fight to cram price pressure down as far as possible. 4/

— Josh Bivens (@joshbivens_DC) September 12, 2022

But, the “maintain pressure” view is only responsible if one thinks measurably-greater economic slack (higher unemployment, for example) is needed to pull inflation back down to more-normal levels (say around 2-3%) in a reasonable time-span. 6/

— Josh Bivens (@joshbivens_DC) September 12, 2022

Goods prices are set to post outright falls going forward. Supply chain pressure seems to unwinding – even in the face of China’s continued Zero Covid approach. The normalization of pre-pandemic spending patterns (more services and less goods) is continuing. 8/

— Josh Bivens (@joshbivens_DC) September 12, 2022

In the labor market, over the past 6 months, average hourly earnings are growing at a 4.8% annualized pace, down a full percentage point from January – a pronounced fall even with low unemployment. 10/

— Josh Bivens (@joshbivens_DC) September 12, 2022

About those profits – while the most recent quarter saw a huge increase in the contribution of profits to price growth, this was almost surely mostly in the energy sector. 12/

— Josh Bivens (@joshbivens_DC) September 12, 2022

What all this tells us is that something close to the current state of economic slack is consistent with moderating price pressures – even outside of food and energy. 14/

— Josh Bivens (@joshbivens_DC) September 12, 2022

For example, real final sales to domestic purchasers (domestic demand) grew by just 1.2% between 2021q2 and 2022q2. That’s a growth rate that should have substantially “cooled” the economy by any measure. 16/https://t.co/IBH0CQv4qe

— Josh Bivens (@joshbivens_DC) September 12, 2022

A month of flat prices would mean that the inflationary outlook has meaningfully changed. So, policy should change too. Hiking by 0.75 in the face of flat monthly prices tilts risks too-sharply in the direction of recession, and isn’t needed to keep tamping down inflation. end/

— Josh Bivens (@joshbivens_DC) September 12, 2022

The vast majority of families and households in the United States rely on a combination of labor earnings from work and public assistance to make ends meet, especially throughout the pandemic recession and recovery.  

Next week, the Census Bureau will release their latest data on earnings, incomes, poverty, and health insurance for 2021, which will inform our understanding of people’s economic wellbeing last year. Below, I provide context for the data next week by looking at how an expanding economy—the robust bounce-back in the labor market— and vital public programs sustained workers and their families in 2021.  

These two phenomena are related, as public policy directly led to the robust recovery we experienced in the wake of the pandemic recession. Public policy further helped workers and their families stay afloat with expanded and enhanced unemployment insurance, economic impact payments, and child tax credits, to name a few. 

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The original version of this post inadvertently left New Jersey off the list of states that will raise their minimum wage in response to inflation, it has since been updated.

13 states and the District of Columbia have policies that increase (or index) their state’s minimum wage based on inflation. Most of those indexed increases are based on the August-to-August change in the Consumer Price Index, which will be announced sometime in mid-September. With inflation higher than it has been in recent years, the indexed inflation increases in these states will be higher than usual as well. Still, these indexed increases are similar in size to other legislated minimum wage increases in recent years and they will help reduce the burden of rising prices for low-wage workers and their families.  

The federal minimum wage has remained at $7.25/hour for the past fifteen years. Since then, its purchasing power or real value has dropped by 27% because of increases in the cost of living. As a result, the value of the minimum wage is the lowest since 1956. In response, thirty states, Washington D.C., and dozens of local governments have introduced their own minimum wages that are higher than the federal minimum wage. Workers in many of those states still experience the same problem – if the state doesn’t raise its minimum wage on a regular basis, its value will decline. 

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Below, EPI economists offer their initial insights on the jobs report released this morning, which showed 315,000 jobs added in August.

From EPI senior economist, Elise Gould (@eliselgould):

Read the full Twitter thread here. 

In August, most jobs were added in education and health services and professional and business services. While govt jobs increased by 7,000 in August, they remain 645,000 below pre-pandemic levels, a concerning phenomenon for those workers and the vital services they provide. pic.twitter.com/wMoqhfZhNg

— Elise Gould (@eliselgould) September 2, 2022

With the August increase, private sector employment is now 0.7% above pre-pandemic levels while state and local jobs remain stubbornly 3.2% below its February 2020 level with little improvement in recent months. pic.twitter.com/VS9ICLnRre

— Elise Gould (@eliselgould) September 2, 2022

The latest quarterly change (annualized) in average hourly earnings for all private-sector and production-nonsupervisory workers shows no signs of acceleration and demonstrates, once again, that wages in the labor market are pulling down (not pushing up) inflation. pic.twitter.com/dc1OcLulbi

— Elise Gould (@eliselgould) September 2, 2022

Troubling trend in Black unemployment, which rose 0.6 pps over the last two months to 6.4%. It’s a more volatile series, but labor force participation and EPOPs for Black workers have declined in each of the last three months as well. pic.twitter.com/YpVKSfijag

— Elise Gould (@eliselgould) September 2, 2022

The rise in Black unemployment and fall in participation and employment in August was experienced by both Black men and Black women.

The rise in Hispanic unemployment was accompanied by an increase in participation and employment for both Hispanic men and Hispanic women. pic.twitter.com/cqGR6WjUVm

— Elise Gould (@eliselgould) September 2, 2022

From EPI president, Heidi Shierholz (@hshierholz):

Read the full Twitter thread here. 

We added 315,000 jobs in August. This is down substantially from the blistering average pace of 561,000 per month for the 12 months ending in February of this year, but remains solid. 2/

— Heidi Shierholz (@hshierholz) September 2, 2022

Wage growth dropped in August and has clearly not accelerated in 2022. 4/ pic.twitter.com/4QTO3gVadZ

— Heidi Shierholz (@hshierholz) September 2, 2022

Though today’s release underscores we’re almost surely not in a recession now, the fed may have already overshot and secured a recession in coming months. Regardless, they should slow the pace of rate increases substantially and be ready to go into neutral or even cut rates. 6/

— Heidi Shierholz (@hshierholz) September 2, 2022

The private sector has gained back all the jobs it lost in the covid recession, and more. State and local governments have gained back less than 60%. I’m a broken record on this, but we have to push state and local govts to use their ARPA funds to raise pay & hire workers. 8/

— Heidi Shierholz (@hshierholz) September 2, 2022

The overall numbers mask big disparities for different groups. Due to the impact of structural racism on the labor market, people of color have much higher unemp rates than white workers. For example, the unemp rate is currently 6.4% for Black workers, 3.2% for white workers. 10/

— Heidi Shierholz (@hshierholz) September 2, 2022

But it’s worth noting that all groups are seeing far faster recoveries *than they did following the Great Recession.* From the start of the Great Recession, it took more than 10 years for Black unemployment to get down to 6.4%, but this time around it took just over 2 years. 12/

— Heidi Shierholz (@hshierholz) September 2, 2022

Of course, a recession caused by the fed raising rates too aggressively would undo a great deal of the enormous gains that have occurred in the current recovery. 14/

— Heidi Shierholz (@hshierholz) September 2, 2022

Below, EPI senior economist Elise Gould offers her initial insights on today’s release of the Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) for July. Read the full Twitter thread here. 

The July data show mild reductions in hires and quits while layoffs hold steady. Hires remain above pre-pandemic levels as the labor market continues to expand. Layoffs remain low in historical terms. Elevated quits mean workers seeking (and finding) better opportunities. pic.twitter.com/4DSSBXsfUI

— Elise Gould (@eliselgould) August 30, 2022

 

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This week’s Senate passage of the California FAST Recovery Act, AB257, marks a historic breakthrough for workers and state labor policymaking with far-reaching national implications. As EPI and the National Employment Law Project noted in a statement endorsed by forty organizations earlier this year, AB257 “is important for workers across the country and for shaping the future of our national economy. The state of California has a long history of leading the way on workers’ rights and worker protections, including becoming the first state to pass a $15 minimum wage in 2016—a breakthrough that paved the way for states across the country to take similar action.” 

AB257 was designed to address poverty wages and widespread worker rights violations that have resulted from extremely unequal bargaining power between fast food workers and employers across the industry. If signed into law by Governor Newsom, the legislation will give workers a seat at the policymaking table to engage as equals with franchisees, franchisors, and government agencies through a 10-member Fast Food Sector Council with authority to set statewide minimum wages and standards across the industry. Standards set by the new council will have a direct impact on over 550,000 California fast food workers, over 80% of whom are workers of color and two-thirds of whom are women. 

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