Jobs

Every American who wants to work should be able to get a job. When stable employment is available to all, it improves the welfare of the country not only because more people are working, but because at full employment, employers have to compete for personnel, raising wages for workers more broadly. Moreover, workers of color and those without four-year college degrees—who have substantially higher unemployment—gain the most when the economy approaches genuine full employment. To make employers genuinely value their low- and middle-wage workers—no matter where they live or what credentials they hold—lawmakers must pursue policies that make more jobs available, and reduce barriers to employment.

EARN groups develop and advocate for policies that will create good jobs, such as investments in infrastructure and responsible economic development programs, tailoring programs target underserved communities and areas of high unemployment. They also work to reduce barriers to employment by supporting workforce development programs with good labor standards, sector partnerships, and policies such as ban-the-box that help formerly incarcerated individuals rejoin the workforce. Lastly, EARN groups’ work to strengthen state unemployment insurance programs, so that unemployed workers have support when looking for a new job.

Publications

State of Working Colorado 2018

At a cursory glance, Colorado has much to celebrate in terms of low unemployment and poverty levels, but scratching the surface of the data reveals troubling trends fraught with wage stagnation and disparities.

CCLP produces the State of Working Colorado every year to gauge how the economy is performing for workers across the income spectrum. The publication is intended to help stakeholders and policymakers determine where to focus their efforts in revitalizing opportunities and prosperity for hard-working Coloradans across the racial spectrum.

Exclusive Highlight

Breaking barriers: Issue 1 could put Ohioans back to work

The consequences of a criminal conviction extend far beyond the sentence imposed in court. Ohio’s legislature and its administrative bodies have constructed an array of legal restrictions, called collateral sanctions, that can limit access to housing, licensing and jobs. Policy Matters Ohio has found that collateral sanctions limit or bar access to one in four Ohio jobs and contribute to $3.4 billion in foregone wages each year. For Ohioans whose highest conviction is for a drug possession charge, relief could come on November’s ballot, in the form of Issue 1.

Media

State of Working Philadelphia 2018

  • October 25, 2018
  • Mark Price

Each Labor Day the Keystone Research Center releases an annual checkup on the health of the Pennsylvania labor market, “The State of Working Pennsylvania.” (https://www.keystoneresearch.org/SWP2018). The 2018 edition focused on state-level data, mostly available through June 2018. This addendum to that report focuses on 2017 data released last month by the Census Bureau on incomes and poverty for Philadelphia. We complement the Census data with statistics on employment and unemployment from the Bureau of Labor Statistics to provide a comprehensive assessment of the performance of the Philadelphia economy since 2005. We start with the year 2005 as that is the first year in which data at the county level are available from the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey.

State of Rural West Virginia

West Virginia’s population is increasingly living in urban areas, with those urban areas experiencing all the state’s job growth in the past quarter century, leaving rural West Virginia behind in many key areas, according to a new West Virginia Center on Budget and Policy report.

The report, State of Rural West Virginia, shows rural West Virginians primarily have poorer health, lower educational attainment levels, lower wages, are older and have fewer job opportunities outside of industrial and extractive industries, underscoring the contrast between the state’s rural and urban areas.

Rural West Virginia has been plagued with job losses from 2007 – 2016, losing more than 21,000 jobs, or eight percent, highlighting the uneven balance of West Virginia’s weak economic recovery.