Seattle’s job boom may be making headlines, but new data show the economy is growing across Washington state. Employment markets from Spokane to Longview have experienced several years of job growth. In most counties, typical household incomes are also up, while poverty rates are down.
But the news is not all good. Across the state, costs for housing and other basics have risen dramatically. Because general inflation has been low and Washington’s minimum wage is tied to the Consumer Price Index, the statewide minimum wage did not go up at all in 2016 and is slated to increase only 6 cents to $9.53 in 2017. These factors make the initiative to raise Washington’s minimum wage in four stages to $13.50 in 2020 and include paid sick and safe leave as a basic labor standard particularly well-timed.
The U.S. economic recovery has been slow. Although Minnesota hasn’t been immune to the effects of an economic recovery characterized by fits and starts, Minnesota’s economy has a number of strengths, compared to the recent past and to national trends. Some economic indicators are back to pre-recession levels, including unemployment. Considering perhaps our most comparable neighbor, Wisconsin, our relative economic strength shines through with Minnesota’s higher labor force participation and higher median wages.
However, the national economy is not seeing the growth in wages and family incomes that we might expect seven years into the economic recovery. As a result, many working Minnesotans are still struggling to reach economic security. The inflation-adjusted wages of many Minnesotans have just gotten back to where they were before the Great Recession hit, but the longer-term trend is that wages aren’t keeping up with the cost of living. As a result, many families can’t meet their basic needs for child care, transportation, housing and health care.
A review of recent economic information reveals that too many working Minnesotans still lack the quality jobs that would allow them to support themselves and their families.
For the many Marylanders who are struggling to make ends meet the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) is a vital resource. New time limits on food assistance threaten the food security of the thousands of Marylanders who rely on this resource. One important policy lever the state can use to help these families to get ahead is to maximize the use of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program Employment and Training (SNAP E&T), a federal program that provides funds to states to support workforce training programs for food assistance recipients. SNAP E&T provides an excellent opportunity to help people receiving food assistance get the skills and credentials they need to get good-paying jobs. It also ensures that working-age adults without dependents don’t lose their food assistance due to harsh federal time limits while they’re building skills and seeking employment, and it can bring funding that expands high-quality workforce training programs.
Following recent changes to model best practices from other states, Maryland is on track to have one of the strongest SNAP E&T programs in the country, though there is still room to make it more effective and help more people get well-paying jobs. By creating additional partnerships with community organizations, the state’s SNAP E&T program could enroll more people and take advantage of additional federal funds.
In The State of Working Wisconsin 2016, COWS finds that the long shadow of the Great Recession is finally lifting in Wisconsin. The state has more jobs than ever before, unemployment rates have fallen to pre-recession levels, and workers that want full-time work are having an easier time finding it. Labor market opportunities are more clear and consistent than they have been in nearly a decade.
Longer-term challenges that Wisconsin faces, long documented by COWS, remain daunting. Wages have been stagnant over the last three and a half decades and workers have very little to show for increasing productivity. Women earn less than men and the gap is slow to close. African Americans have suffered declining wages and growing disparity. The wage reward for higher education is evident, as is the difficulty of making ends meet without completing some post-secondary education. One-in-four workers toils in a poverty wage job and low-wage sectors are growing faster than better-paying ones. Racial disparities, while hardly unique to Wisconsin, are particularly extreme here. A variety of economic and social indicators of racial inequality consistently identify us as among the most racially unequal states in the nation.