Everyone gets sick, but more than a million workers in North Carolina have no opportunity to earn paid sick leave, and even fewer can take longer-term paid leave to address a serious health condition or welcome a new child. When illness inevitably strikes, they must take unpaid time off—sacrificing their wages so they can get well or take care of sick loved ones or recover from pregnancy. They may even face retaliation from their employers and could lose their jobs. North Carolina needs an economy that works for all and ensures broadly shared prosperity.
Research has shown that paid leave policies, such as earned paid sick days and family and medical leave insurance, benefit workers, businesses, and the economy as a whole. Providing workers with paid sick days keeps sick workers at home, preventing contagion from spreading to other workers and customers, and giving them the time they need to fully recover and return to normal levels of productivity. In turn, this boosts businesses bottom lines by reducing turnover and the costs associated with training new employees.
Ensuring workers have paid time off to welcome a newborn, recover from childbirth, or deliver extended medical care to a loved one provides yields similar economic benefits, along with keeping new women attached to the workforce and earning higher wages in the years after childbirth than those that don’t. Additionally, providing paid family leave to all workers, regardless of business size, helps level the playing field for small businesses which have often have trouble matching the more generous leave policies of larger employers.
In July Vermont’s labor force dropped to its lowest level in 15 years. The labor force comprises people who are employed, including self-employed, and those who are unemployed but actively job hunting. Vermont’s labor force fell to 343,850 last month—the lowest level since July 2002, when it numbered 343,835. The unemployment rate also dropped in July, to 3.1 percent. The decline in the labor force tells us that unemployment shrank not because people found jobs, but because they stopped looking.
New data released by the US Bureau of Economic Analysis provide more evidence of Maine’s lackluster economy, and the failure of policies pursued by Governor LePage and his allies. In the first quarter of 2017, Maine’s economy saw no real growth. Zero. That was the lowest rate in New England, and the seventh-worst performance of any state. These new data are just the latest in a series of indicators that demonstrate just how much of a failure LePage’s economic legacy will be, especially for rural Maine.
Economic growth is not like the weather. Lawmakers are not powerless to affect change – to encourage growth, and ensure that its gains are shared fairly. Governor LePage and his legislative allies have held Maine’s economy back by favoring wealthy Mainers over hardworking families, and opposing investments in our infrastructure, and our education system. The mantra of small government has not only hurt working Mainers, but also stymied the state’s job growth. The governor and his administration have even turned away nearly $2 billion in outside funding that would have stimulated our economy. The results of those disastrous policies are becoming increasingly clear.
Most Vermont counties are below average—at least when it comes to wages. The latest annual figures for 2016 show that only three counties had annual wages higher than the state average. Workers did worst in Orleans, Essex, and Grand Isle counties, where annual wages came in at more than 20 percent below the state average.