California looks to ease the strain put on its vulnerable undocumented workforce.
The fraying of the state’s safety net is about to be put on full display.
In the poorest state in the nation, a push to cancel federal support for those out of work.
Despite record job losses during the pandemic, the 1% have left the state flush with cash.
Lowest-paid workers take the worst hit while pandemic continues its damage.
Will all the door knocking and pixie dust be enough to secure a win for Biden in Florida?
The pandemic shines a spotlight on a system in need of a makeover.
Many of these struggling metropolitan areas are in states that could determine the 2020 election.
The state’s broken benefits system could see voters turn on Republicans as hundreds of thousands struggle to file claims.
More than a third of Americans are showing signs of clinical anxiety or depression, a 300 percent increase over last year.
Gov. Newsom’s revised budget puts programs aimed at addressing disparities in access to vital services on the chopping block.
The Mayor’s Fund has raised $20 million to fund debit cards for impoverished residents hit hard by the COVID-19 economic crisis.
There are signs that another foreclosure crisis may be looming in this swing state.
Food insecurity skyrockets in the key battleground state.
SB 943 would expand the state’s Paid Family Leave program, extending benefits to parents impacted by school closures.
For homeless workers, earning a paycheck can take second place to finding a safe place to sleep at night.
The Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment (ACCE) held a town hall meeting February 6 to discuss its new Fix Unemployment Now campaign, which aims to make unemployment insurance more accessible in light of recent problems with California’s Employment Development Department (EDD). The meeting, which took place at Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 721’s headquarters in Los Angeles, drew members of ACCE and SEIU, EDD employees and members of the community. (Full Disclosure: The author of this article has previously volunteered for ACCE.)
Fix Unemployment Now primarily addresses EDD’s failure to provide unemployment checks on time and to answer claimants’ questions and concerns. According to ACCE, these problems are related to EDD’s decision to outsource a computer upgrade to Deloitte Consulting, a company that has been fired by other public contractors in the past. According to the Los Angeles Times, EDD is so unresponsive that it answers only a fraction of the phone calls it receives.
» Read more about: Campaign Targets California’s EDD Failure »
Last week, the U.K. publication The Guardian used an interesting anecdote to describe the key finding of an Oxfam report on global inequality: The world’s 85 richest people now own more wealth than the planet’s poorest 3.5 billion people. All of the world’s wealthiest individuals, Guardian writer Graeme Wearden noted, “could squeeze onto a single double-decker” bus.
The ironic image of the super-rich riding a humble public bus is an apt metaphor for the socioeconomic quandary facing America before President Obama makes his 2014 State of the Union address tonight. Underinvestment in job creation, training, education and public services like transportation put middle-class success out of reach for many Americans, while at the other end of the spectrum, wealth has been concentrated in very few hands.
President Obama’s speech ought to address the central problems of economic inequality and deficit of opportunities and services for many Americans.
The number of families with children and at least one unemployed parent jumped by 33 percent in recent years, going from 2.4 million to 3.2 million households between 2005 and 2011, the U.S. Census Bureau reported.
The Great Recession – the nation’s worst in decades – caused much of the increase, the Census Bureau said in an Aug. 27 statement, adding that some states, such as Florida, Nevada, Hawaii, Connecticut, New Jersey, California and North Carolina had growth rates higher than the national average.
Those states had a range of 54 percent for North Carolina to 148 percent for Nevada. Florida, for example, had a 93 percent increase in families with at least one unemployed parent and California had a rate of 61 percent, the Census Bureau said, citing its America’s Families and Living Arrangements: 2012 report.
“During the recession, economic well-being worsened for families with children,” Jamie Lewis,
» Read more about: Unemployment in American Families With Kids Jumps »
Last week President Obama gave a speech at Knox College in Illinois in which he announced plans to return his focus to the economy. The agenda he outlined centered on policies to rebuild the middle class leading to growth from the middle out as he put it.
The basic idea sounds good. There are few who would take issue with the focus of his policies: improving the nation’s infrastructure, better school to work transitions, high quality pre-school for everyone. These ideas all score very high in opinion polls and focus groups, although there might be serious differences on what they mean concretely.
But even if we can agree on the best way to rebuild our infrastructure, better our schools, and guarantee high quality pre-school education we will still face serious economic problems well into the future for the simple reason that the economy lacks demand. Generating demand has to be issue one,
» Read more about: A Demand Economy: What’s Needed for Growth »