When Senator Kamala Harris told former Vice President Joe Biden “that little girl was me,” she evoked a mostly-forgotten era, a half-century distant, when federal courts mandated busing of black children to schools in white neighborhoods.

The court orders were controversial and unpopular amongst almost all whites and many blacks, and yet: assemble a list of African Americans in their mid-to-late 50s or early 60s, and who are the most successful lawyers, political leaders, executives in the non-profit, corporate, and foundation sectors, or otherwise spread throughout the professional and managerial class, and you will find a disproportionate share were bused during the heyday of court-ordered school desegregation—roughly 1968 to 1980.

Masterful books, one by Susan Eaton (The Other Boston Busing Story, 2001) and another by a team led by Amy Stuart Wells (Both Sides Now, 2009) recount interviews with adults who had been bused for desegregation decades earlier. Eaton interviewed 65 African Americans who, as children, took part in a voluntary busing program that transferred students from Boston public schools to white suburbs where family sizes were declining, leaving schools with empty seats. Wells’s team interviewed 215 white and black adults who, as children, had been bused out of their segregated black schools in six cities—Austin (TX), Charlotte (NC), Englewood (NJ), Pasadena (CA), Shaker Heights (OH), and Topeka (KS).[*] The books have lost none of their relevance; indeed, if you are intrigued by Harris’ remark and you missed the Eaton and Wells books the first time around, this is a good time to get them from your local library or used bookstore and catch up.

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On Friday, the release of Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) estimates of June job growth and unemployment will provide a first look at how the labor market has performed over the first half of the year. The unfortunate timing of the release for the Friday after the Independence Day holiday, however, means that EPI will have limited capacity to perform a full same-day analysis. But there are several things I will be tracking this Friday.

May’s noticeable slowdown in the pace of job growth, foreshadowed by the exceptionally slow pace of hiring reported by ADP last month, raised some concerns about whether an economic slowdown was imminent. The economy added 75,000 jobs in May which was significantly less than April’s growth of 224,000 and below the year-to-date average of 164,000 a month. With the June ADP estimates coming in much higher—102,000 private sector jobs added in June compared to 41,000 in May— we will be looking to see if there’s a similar rebound in the BLS estimates.

Overall, May’s unemployment rate, labor force participation rate, and share of the population with a job each signaled an economy basically treading water. However, there have been questions about whether the recent rise in the black unemployment rate is another potential sign of a slowing economy or just typical volatility in the data series. Last month, the black unemployment rate ticked down 0.5 percentage point to 6.2 percent after rising from 6.0 percent in November to as high as 7.0 percent in February. Over the same period of time, the white unemployment rate has remained relatively stable. Given that tighter labor markets have typically yielded disproportionate improvements for black workers and other historically disadvantaged groups, I will be tracking whether the June numbers provide any more clarity about what (if any) conclusions we can draw from the black unemployment rate.

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A strong dollar is hurting American workers and main street manufacturers, as I explained last week in the New York Times. I discussed what can be done about it, which builds on a crucial plank of Elizabeth Warren’s American Jobs plan.

In order to rebalance U.S. trade, the dollar needs to fall 25–30 percent, especially against the currencies of countries with large, persistent trade surpluses such as China, Japan, and the European Union. This would help to address the trade deficits that have eliminated nearly 5 million good-paying American manufacturing jobs over the past two decades and some 90,000 factories. In fact, trade with low-wage countries has pulled down the incomes of 100 million non-college educated workers by roughly $2,000 per year.

This week, Ruchir Sharma of Morgan Stanley trotted out a bunch of very shaggy dogs in defense of a strong currency. But he never mentioned the real reason Wall Street loves a strong dollar. An overvalued greenback has enabled the cheap imports that fuel the massive profits of American giants ranging from Apple and Amazon to Costco and Walmart. And multinational corporations have used offshoring, and the threat of moving more plants abroad, to drive down U.S. wages and benefits, and to weaken domestic labor unions.

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In February 2018, teachers went on a statewide strike in West Virginia to demand just wages and better teaching and learning conditions. For nine days, schools across the state were closed as teachers, students, and community supporters protested at the state capital against the state government’s chronic underfunding of public education and the impact on the teachers and students. After a week and a half of striking, the West Virginia teachers received a pay increase, but more importantly, they sparked a movement that prompted public school teachers across the nation to strike in support for fairer pay and better working conditions.

The teachers in West Virginia and across the nation relied on the solidarity and support from their communities to win these fights, because in many states public-sector workers do not have the right to collectively bargain. Under current federal law, public-service workers do not have the freedom to join in union and collectively bargaining for fair pay, hours, or working conditions. There are more than two dozen states with laws that protect public-service workers’ right to join unions, but dozens more have lack any rights. Last year, the Supreme Court’s 5-4 decision in Janus v. AFSCME Council 31 overturned 40 years of precedent by barring unions from requiring workers who benefit from union representation to pay their fair share of that representation. And states continue to perpetrate the assault on public-service employees by either denying or undermining workers’ ability to act collectively in addressing workplace issues.

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In The Color of Law, I wrote that de facto residential segregation is a myth. The distribution of whites and blacks into separate and unequal neighborhoods in metropolitan areas nationwide was not accidental or merely the product of private activity, but was reinforced, created, and sustained by federal, state, and local policy to a sufficient extent to make these residential patterns a civil rights violation, or de jure segregation. The book describes how the Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry S Truman administrations required residential segregation in their many housing programs. These two presidencies were the first in American history to invest federal funds in civilian housing.

Until now, reviewers of the book have accepted the book’s extensively documented historical account, as the subtitle summarizes: “a forgotten history of how our government segregated America.”

But now, Richard Walker, director of the Living New Deal, a campaign to promote the legacy of the Roosevelt administration’s public works projects, has written a critique of The Color of Law in the socialist magazine, Jacobin, and I’ve responded.

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One clear way to understand the priorities of a government is to look at how it spends money. If it’s true as they say that “budgets are moral documents,” then this Congress and administration do not place much value on worker rights or working conditions. A comparative analysis of 2018 federal budget data reveals that detaining, deporting, and prosecuting migrants, and keeping them from entering the country, is the top law enforcement priority of the United States—but protecting workers in the U.S. labor market and ensuring that their workplaces are safe and that they get paid for every cent they earn is barely an afterthought.

In 2013, the Migration Policy Institute (MPI) made headlines with a report that highlighted the fact that appropriations for immigration enforcement agencies exceeded funding for the five main U.S. law enforcement agencies combined by 24 percent. A recent report from MPI updated the numbers, showing that after six years of skyrocketing spending, immigration enforcement agencies received $24 billion in 2018, or $4.4 billion more than they did in 2012 (in constant 2018 dollars). This amounts to “34 percent more than the $17.9 billion allocated for all other principal federal criminal law enforcement agencies combined,” which includes the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Drug Enforcement Administration, Secret Service, Marshals Service, and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives.

With $24 billion in federal spending and climbing, immigration enforcement has undoubtedly become the top law enforcement priority of the U.S. government and the Trump administration. Where do labor standards and worker rights fit in?

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Data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Employer Costs for Employee Compensation gives us a new chance to look at private sector workers’ nonproduction bonuses in 2018 and March 2019 to gauge the impact of the GOP’s Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017. The bottom line is that bonuses in the most recent quarter, March 2019, remained very low at $0.72 per hour (in $2018), the same as in December 2018 and far below their $0.88 level in 2017 or the $0.90 level in 2018.

This is not what the tax cutters promised, or bragged about soon after the tax bill passed. They claimed that their bill would raise the wages of rank-and-file workers, with congressional Republicans and members of the Trump administration promising raises of many thousands of dollars within ten years. The Trump administration’s chair of the Council of Economic Advisers argued last April that we were already seeing the positive wage impact of the tax cuts:

Following the bill’s passage, a number of corporations made conveniently-timed announcements that their workers would be getting raises or bonuses (some of which were in the works well before the tax cuts passed). But as EPI analysis has shown there are many reasons to be skeptical of the claim that the TCJA, particularly its corporate tax cuts, would produce significant wage gains.

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Josh Bivens

For the past six months the Federal Reserve has been soliciting input to guide a reassessment of its “monetary policy framework.” This reassessment has been pegged to the 10-year anniversaries surrounding the financial crisis of 2008–09 and the Great Recession. While the Fed’s policy framework deserves much scrutiny, focusing too narrowly on what it could have done differently during the crisis and its aftermath would be a bad mistake.

The Fed failure that inflicted real damage on low- and middle-wage workers over recent decades was generally not insufficient effort in fighting recessions. Instead, the mistake was cutting short recoveries before they had maximized opportunities for employment and wage growth. In short, the time to worry about Fed actions that do not protect the interests of low- and middle-wage workers is during economic booms, not during slumps.

This newsletter explains why the Fed should keep the following points in mind as it undertakes its reassessment:Read more

The teacher shortage is real and it exists for many reasons. The question is why do we lose so many young educators? What causes them to not enter teaching? Why do many leave their chosen field after just a few years? And how can we make teaching as financially rewarding as other fields when the reality is many localities do not have the funds to raise salaries?

Many colleges and universities now require educators to have a Bachelor’s degree prior to entering an education program. After getting a Bachelor’s degree future teachers have one more year to get teaching credentials or in many cases they can spend two more years getting a Master’s degree.

In other words: teachers face the unenviable choice of incurring greater debt prior to entering the workforce or changing majors and entering the workforce after only four years with less debt but also less credentials. This is a significant problem since students average $30,000 in college debt. Some of my colleagues owe something closer to $60,000 in debt. It is the passion, the call of teaching, the desire to make a difference that leads people into education not the paychecks.

When you consider teacher’s salaries you have to ponder how someone with this much debt can afford to take a starting position with the national average starting salary less than $40,000 in 2017! Why would anyone become a teacher?

It is not surprising that education programs are now considering changing course in Virginia to make education once again a four-year degree program. If we want the best people in education we need to make it affordable to get a degree. We also need to consider the portability of that degree. Some states work with surrounding states for reciprocity of licensure, however; a teacher usually has to take additional courses if he/she relocates too far away. This presents yet another drawback.

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The world’s climate is changing at an alarming rate, and at the same time, investments to address the problem are some of the most promising opportunities to boost the economy—both immediately and in the face of any future recession.

However, if today’s investments fail to address climate change or align with the clean technologies of the future, we cannot build a competitive, prosperous, or fair economy for the long term. And it is equally true that if our climate solutions ignore working people and only reinforce today’s inequality, they will neither be lastingly effective, nor will we have any chance of building the support and momentum we need to see them become reality.

By contrast, acting on climate in ways that are focused on the needs, concerns and aspirations of working people and communities can bridge division, galvanize action, and drive sustained climate and economic progress.

This starts at all levels—local, state and national—with having working people, including labor, community, environmental, equity, and justice advocates, at the table. It requires a bold, inclusive worker-centered agenda that not only addresses our climate and environmental crises at the scale that science and equity demand but also addresses the underlying issues that leave so many Americans struggling paycheck to paycheck, and bearing the disproportionate costs of economic disruption and technological change.

We need to act now, and we also have powerful opportunities to respond to recession and economic distress.

We have the need and opportunity to act at scale. The urgency and breadth of the climate challenge has the potential to mobilize trillions in public and private investment across multiple sectors of the economy: energy, transportation, infrastructure, technology, and community resilience—just to name a few. Any one of these has the potential to be economically transformative, and could provide a major—or targeted—stimulus to the economy.

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