By Joseph Martinez and Walen Ngo, United Way of Greater Los Angeles The EITC, or Earned Income Tax Credit, has been known for over thirty years to be one of the more successful anti-poverty programs in the nation. The tax relief program is geared toward only workers earning income below a certain income threshold and [...]
Posts Tagged ‘Employment’
What Tax Time can do for the Working Poor
Posted in Data, Economy, Employment, General, Los Angeles, Poverty, Working poor, tagged Earned Income Tax Credit, EITC, Employment, Poverty, Public benefits on March 25, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
Good News/Bad News
Posted in Economy, General, tagged Economy, Employment, Los Angeles, Los Angeles Times on January 6, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
I have a confession to make: I fight with my daughter almost every morning. Well, “fight” might be a strong word, but part of our morning ritual is to tussle over who gets the Business section of the paper. She is the household meteorologist (a word she learned in her first grade section on “community [...]
Wall Street vs. Main Street part deux
Posted in Data, Economy, Employment, tagged Dow Jones, Economy, Employment, Main Street, Wall Street on November 3, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
I recently introduced the authors of the American Human Development Report at a presentation and made the point that just as the GDP has been criticized for not reflecting how the economy affects everyday people, the last year has driving home how out of touch stock market performance is with most regular folks. As this [...]
Steep rise in mass layoffs
Posted in Economy, Employment, tagged Economy, Employment, layoffs on July 1, 2009 | 1 Comment »
Analysis by researchers at the Economic Policy Institute clearly shows the extent to which the economy is losing jobs. Mass layoffs – defined as letting go of 50 or more people by a single employer – have doubled over the last couple years and are at their highest level in the last 15 years. In [...]
Trends in LA and CA over the next few years
Posted in Data, Economy, Employment, Health, Homelessness, Los Angeles, Poverty, Working poor, tagged Economy, Employment, Homelessness, Poverty on June 21, 2009 | 2 Comments »
A common problem in trying to discern trends in poverty and inequality is that the data that we often have at hand are usually not particularly recent. The lag between when data are collected and publicly available can be significant, especially in a rapidly changing economy like we’ve been in over last several months. Also, [...]
Consequences of unemployment
Posted in Employment, Los Angeles, tagged California, Child support, Employment, Los Angeles on May 4, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
We’re familiar with the normal consequences of layoffs and unemployment: lost income, health insurance and increased stress and anxiety. The LA Times had an interesting article this week highlighting how “California’s rising unemployment rate is driving a steep increase in child support cases, as the newly jobless appeal for increases in monthly payments or argue [...]
The economy and gender discrimination
Posted in Economy, Employment, tagged Employment, Gender on April 4, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
Most people are well aware that unemployment continues to rise to its highest levels in 25 years, above 8% nationally and approaching 11% in California. What is less apparent is that this rise is not evenly distributed for men and women. About 14 months ago, men and women had the same level of unemployment (around [...]
We all should care about the state of public education
Posted in Data, Education, Race/ethnicity, tagged Economy, Education, Employment on March 5, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
Good public education has long been a staple of American democracy and social mobility; but that promise is increasingly threatened. Nowhere is this more evident than in the state where I live, California. The Golden State’s educational system from kindergarten to the university was affordable and excellent for decades; but today we have a system [...]
Yeah, it’s a slow economy
Posted in Data, Employment, tagged Economy, Employment on February 28, 2009 | 1 Comment »
I went into my local bicycle store this morning to get a long-overdue tuneup and saw clear evidence of how the horrible economic situation is affecting retailers. First, I was the only customer in the store: this on a Saturday morning, when that store is usually filled with cyclers passing by the bike route in [...]
