Hard work is supposed to provide the income to allow people to get by and set their children up for future success. North Carolina policymakers have violated that promise, both with their policy choices that make it more difficult for North Carolinians to connect to good jobs and with their failure to enact the policies that make sure work translates into greater economic security.
The national economic recovery began in 2009, but it has yet to reach North Carolinians across the state. Too many workers have failed to find work or left the labor market for lack of jobs in their community. Far too many who are working find their wages falling short of what it takes to make ends meet and otherwise contribute to their communities’ improvement.
This is a divisive time in America. One contributing factor is nearly 40 years of economic stagnation, with some workers, families and communities going backwards economically. Particularly when political leaders fail to offer those hurt by a restructuring economy a realistic promise of better days, anger and despair can spread and undermine the fabric of our society. Some may even be lead to resent “other” groups—to think that their lack of progress results from the undue gains made by another group.
The State of Working Pennsylvania 2016 documents the reality of difficult economic times for many groups. It tells a fairly simple story: most Pennsylvania workers have shared little of the economic gains of the last four decades because a tiny slice at the top has garnered so much of those gains. Whatever group people see themselves belonging to, in many cases that group has not done well. But our numbers also validate that most of those “other” groups have not done well either. The data show that if you think some “other” group is unfairly receiving some of the economic well-being that is rightfully yours, you are mostly wrong—unless that “other” group is the highest-income 1 percent.
Although Oregon’s labor market is stronger than it has been since before the Great Recession, there is still room for improvement. Strong job growth in early 2016 lowered Oregon’s unemployment rate to levels not seen since the mid-1990s. However, the unemployment rate alone doesn’t capture the insufficient and uneven recovery of Oregon’s labor market, which keeps many working families struggling economically.
Oregon lawmakers can help struggling workers and strengthen the Oregon economy with certain targeted investments. These include expanding access to affordable child care, investing in education, and making needed repairs and improvements to Oregon’s infrastructure.
In its present state, the New Hampshire economy offers a number of encouraging signs. Both employment – the total number of people working in the Granite State – and economic output – the value of the goods and services those individuals produce – have been on the rise over the past several years. At the same time, the quality of New Hampshire’s workforce remains high, as its level of educational attainment continues to exceed that in most states, while the extent of severe economic hardship, as expressed by the state’s poverty rate, is still lower here than anywhere else.
Yet, the state of working New Hampshire – the circumstances faced by many individual workers and their families – is somewhat less favorable. As this Issue Brief details, New Hampshire’s workforce is aging in character and all but stagnating in size. Moreover, recent years have seen a continuation of a longer-term shift in the types of jobs available in the Granite State, with service sector employment – and the comparatively lower wages associated with it – becoming more prominent. Further, the income for the typical New Hampshire household, as well as hourly wages for much of the Granite State workforce, have yet to recover ground lost since the Great Recession. In fact, the median hourly wage in New Hampshire has dropped more sharply than nearly anywhere else over the last eight years.