Selective government assistance programs have left behind the
persistently poor, an issue that has not been addressed in the
presidential election season.
Half of New Yorkers Say They Are Barely or Not Getting By, Poll Shows
The survey showed great differences in perceptions of the quality of
life in the city’s five boroughs, but it found that economic anxiety was
widespread.
Urban Charter Schools Often Succeed. Suburban Ones Often Don’t.
When you see news that unemployment in California has dipped to 5.8%,
said Chris Hoene of the California Budget & Policy Center, it's not
as rosy as it sounds. "There are more and more sectors in which
people are being paid less than they were before … or they're having to
work several jobs," said Hoene.
For Artfully ‘Worn’ Jeans, Technology Replaces Labor
Levi
Strauss & Co.now uses an awful lot of design and technology to
produce beat-up pants that command higher prices and margins. Technology
is not only replacing ever-more-expensive labor but ever-more-busy
consumers who don’t have the time to break in their jeans.
In a former kitchen-cabinet workshop here, a dozen engineers are
creating robots to sew garments and rugs—tasks usually relegated to
low-wage workers in distant countries.
A
new report shows that residential mobility has been largely stable in
recent decades, but has declined for African-Americans, even as the link
between moving and economic mobility grows stronger
Over the past 20 years, black enrollment in colleges and universities has skyrocketed.
It’s a huge success story, one that’s due to the hard work of black
families, college admissions officers, and education advocates. But at
top-tier universities in the United States, it’s a different story.
There, the share of students who are black has actually dropped since
1994.
In November 2014, a Michigan bankruptcy judge confirmed a
plan that allowed Detroit’s government to shed $7 billion in
liabilities, averting a total financial collapse. One year later,
however, many in Detroit are still dealing with the fallout of the
massive debt reorganization.
n a series of four dispatches, Chris McGreal reports from four of the
poorest towns in the USA - in Kentucky, Mississippi, Texas and Arizona -
and meets those trying to do more than survive in places so remote from
the American Dream.
Tuesday, November 17, 2015
We Live Longer. That’s Great, Except for Social Security.
Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti's overhaul of how the city hires new firefighters - launched 16 months ago
amid allegations of nepotism and bias - has so far failed to meet his
aim of diversifying the LAFD and may require further reforms to succeed,
according to interviews with city officials and a Times analysis of
government data.
An LAPD employee program costs the city millions, and there isn't a reliable way to track it
The Los Angeles Police Department
has no reliable way to track employees on extended injury leave, a
program that pays officers 100% of salary, tax-free, for up to a year
and costs the city tens of millions of dollars annually.
CalPERS may lower investment expectations, costing taxpayers billions
Experts have warned for years that the state's largest public pension
plan has overestimated how much its investments will earn, leaving
taxpayers to pay billions of dollars more than expected.
A slowdown in international trade could be a harbinger of a new
recession for the world’s leading economies, the Organization for
Economic Cooperation and Development said.
Strong Unemployment News Bolsters Case for Fed to Raise Rates
Job openings grew last week while applications for unemployment benefits
stayed low, bringing the Federal Reserve’s conditions for raising the
benchmark rate closer to being met.
Men Do More at Home, but Not as Much as They Think
Conservative economist Scott Winship of the Manhattan Institute confronted what he calls "the myth of the vanishing pay raise" head-on
in Forbes. His foils were Bernstein and Steven Greenhouse of the New
York Times, who also reported on the phenomenon of stagnation in the midst of apparent prosperity. Winship's goal is to show that the average worker has done a lot better than it seems.
How to build a better teacher: Groups push a 9-point plan called TeachStrong
Most voters in counties along the coast were hopeful about their
personal finances in the next few years. But in the interior, mainly the
Central Valley and Inland Empire, less than half were hopeful and most
were at least somewhat anxious.
Federal employees make 35% less than private-sector workers
As
Kentucky’s governor-elect Matt Bevin vows to dismantle the state’s
health-care exchange and reverse its Medicaid expansion, residents worry
that they’ll lose health benefits in a place where coal jobs have
vanished and poverty remains high.
Employment growth was strong in October,
with the U.S. economy adding 271,000 jobs in the month, according to the
latest employment and earnings data released by the U.S. Bureau of
Labor Statistics.
After dipping slightly in 2013, annual earnings of the top 1.0
percent of wages earners grew 4.9 percent in 2014, and the top 0.1
percent’s earnings grew 8.9 percent, according to our analysis of the
latest Social Security Administration wage data.
One month of good news does not make a strong economy
On average, these women (it’s almost entirely women) are paid
significantly less than the average American worker and are twice as
likely to live in poverty, a new study
released by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) found. The median
hourly wage for childcare workers in the U.S. is $10.39, nearly 40
percent below the median hourly wage of workers in other occupations.
A pact between Washington and Hanoi to strengthen labor unions in Vietnam
could give workers greater bargaining power, but the impact will depend
on how Vietnam carries out the agreement, longtime Vietnamese
government advisers and other experts said on Thursday.
Communist Vietnam Says It Will Allow Unions and Strikes
In Sight sat down with award-winning documentary photographer Pete Marovich,
who for several months in 2015, set out to document the slow collapse
of a town that once stood as a titan of Pennsylvania’s steel industry:
Aliquippa. Our two-part series explores Marovich’s personal connection
to the town. His familial ties run deep in the former steel city that at
one point was home to the largest steel mills in the world.
Another top Twitter employee is slamming the company’s lack of diversity on his way out the door
The
departure leaves Twitter with no "managers, directors, or VP’s of color
in engineering or product management," the former engineering manager
said.
Cal State faculty approve strike in salary dispute
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