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

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.

Sustaining Strong Communities on Maryland’s Eastern Shore

Maryland’s Eastern Shore is a place with significant assets including natural beauty, productive farmland, and an iconic seafood industry. The region also faces significant challenges. Some of these would be familiar to residents of any other part of Maryland, such as wages that barely keep up with the cost of living and leave too many unable to afford the basics. Other challenges stem from the region’s distinctive geography and development patterns, like the long distances many residents must travel to get to a hospital…

While the threat of climate change looms over our entire state, it is already a dangerous reality for many of the Eastern Shore’s coastal communities. The region needs thoughtful solutions that balance community preservation, public health and safety, and long-term sustainability.

Media

Op-Ed: The Problem is Bad Jobs, Not Bad Workers

A full 30 percent of Kentuckians are working jobs that pay less than $12.50 an hour; fewer than half working in the private sector have an employer-sponsored retirement plan and just 44 percent have employer-sponsored health insurance. In economically distressed regions, even bad jobs are scarce.

Yet we often hear that the problem facing Kentucky is a lack of good workers. This “skills gap” explanation of Kentucky’s economic situation is not supported by the evidence, but you don’t have to take my word for it. When someone says Kentucky employers can’t fill jobs with good workers, ask “at what wage?”