When Mainers work extra hours, they deserve extra pay. The 40-hour workweek has been a pillar of the American economy for decades. It’s still what most of us envision when we think about a “full-time job.”
If the 40-hour workweek is one side of a coin, overtime protection, which provides time-and-a-half pay for hours worked beyond 40, is the critical flip side. Overtime pay buttresses the 40-hour workweek as a norm. It ensures full-time workers can expect a decent work-life balance and will be compensated when that balance is thrown off. But outdated and difficult-to-enforce overtime laws mean many Mainers are stuck with lower wages even if they’re willing or required to work long hours.
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.
Media
- 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.
By many measures, Washington’s economy has soared since the Great Recession. The state has added over 400,000 jobs since 2008 – more than making up for previous losses – and average hourly wages have climbed 13 percent after adjusting for inflation. However, those rosy numbers mask the fact that sluggish wage growth, increasing inequality and rising prices are leaving many Washington residents struggling.