New electronic resource on US labor market trends

With the release of the Bureau of Labor Statistics' August labor market data, the Economic Policy Institute posts its first installment of JobWatch, a new initiative designed to track current trends in the U.S. labor market and provide up-to-date analysis of national and state data.
To receive JobWatch bulletins as they are released, sign up at http://lists.lights.com/mailman/listinfo/jobwatch-list


Some recent EPI reports:

Bush Administration’s tax cuts falling short in job creation
The Bush Administration called the tax cut package, which took effect in July 2003, its “Jobs and Growth Plan.” The president’s economics staff, the Council of Economic Advisers (see background documents at http://jobwatch.org/creating/background.html ), projected that the plan would raise the level of growth enough to create 5.5 million jobs by the end of 2004—344,000 new jobs each month, starting in July 2003. Last month, August 2003, the jobs and growth plan fell 437,000 jobs short of the administration’s projection.

High unemployment eroding wages
Continued high unemployment has affected those who have remained employed by depressing wage growth. Comparing wages in the first half of 2003 to those a year earlier shows that the growth of hourly wages has fallen behind inflation across the board—down 0.7%, 0.1%, and 1.0%, respectively, for low-, middle-, and high-wage workers. In contrast, wages grew far faster than inflation in the prior year, increasing by 3.1% for low-wage workers, 1.9% for middle-wage workers, and 2.1% for high-wage workers. (See http://jobwatch.org/national.html for more analysis of job and wage trends.)

Greatest employment contraction since the Great Depression
Since the recession began 29 months ago in March 2001, 3.3 million private sector jobs have disappeared, a 2.9% contraction. This is the largest sustained loss of jobs since the Great Depression. Since the official end of the recession in November 2001, there has been a 1.3 million loss in private sector jobs, a 1.1% contraction. Unemployment has risen to over 8.9 million people, as the unemployment rate increased from 4.0% in 2000 to 6.1% in August 2003. (See http://jobwatch.org/states/index.html for more information on your state.)

11:04:05 AM    comment []

New bill protects California workers from unscrupulous employer insurance practices
The California Labor Federation was instrumental in passing this important piece of legislation that protects California workers from unscrupulous employer practices. For full text and legislative history, see
http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/cgi-bin/postquery?bill_number=ab_226&;sess=CUR&house=B&author=vargas


Governor' Davis' press release:

Governor Gray Davis has signed AB 226 by Assemblymember Juan Vargas (D-San Diego). This legislation prohibits the sale of corporate owned life insurance policies that designate the employer as the beneficiary of the policy for current or former rank and file employees.
"Families, not employers, should benefit from life insurance policies," Governor Davis said. "The notion of a corporation profiting from the death of their workers is repulsive to me. If employers want to provide employees with the benefit of life insurance, they should provide that benefit directly to the families."

Some large employers have engaged in the practice of taking out life insurance policies on thousands of their rank-and-file workers. This corporate owned life insurance is commonly known as "dead peasant" insurance. It is often low-wage employees who are covered under these policies, and whose families are in the worst position to deal with the financial repercussions of the loss of a wage earner. These policies are entirely separate from the life insurance many employers provide to cover workers as part of their benefits.

Source: Califiornia Labor Federation

10:41:37 AM    comment []