Dean of the US House of Representatives | Ranking Member, House Judiciary Committee
The Federal Reserve is widely expected to raise the federal funds interest rate from the near-zero levels in force since December 2008. With the headline unemployment rate at 5 percent, many Fed officials are declaring that we are near full employment, and will therefore act to slow the economy for the first time in 7 years.
See the attachment for the full story that was published on the Huffington Post on Dec. 16, 2015.
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"Challenging the Oligarchy" is Paul Krugman's review of Robert Reich's new book, Saving Capitalism. In the review Krugman plots the demise of a popular explanation for lousy wages: skill-based technological change (SBTC). That view often amounted to blaming the victim. Reich was a champion of SBTC in the 90s. But he's changed. He and Krugman both understand now that low wages reflect power and politics, not low skills and new technologies. But I am not sure if either of them understand how much mainstream economics in America is warped by adherence to an ideal of free competitive markets.
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Report of the Labor Advisory Committee (LAC) on the TransPacific Partnership (TPP)
I. Executive Summary
On behalf of the millions of working people we represent, we believe that the TPP is unbalanced in its provisions, skewing benefits to economic elites while leaving workers to bear the brunt of the TPP's downside. The TPP is likely to harm the U.S. economy, cost jobs, and lower wages.
The primary measure of the success of our trade policies should be increasing jobs, rising wages, and broadly shared prosperity, not higher corporate profits and increased offshoring of America's jobs and productive capacity. Trade rules that enhance the already formidable economic and political power of global corporations—including investor-to-state dispute settlement, excessive monopoly rights for pharmaceutical products, and deregulatory financial services and sanitary and phyto-sanitary rules—will continue to undermine worker bargaining power, here and abroad, as well as weaken democratic processes and regulatory capacity across all 12 TPP countries.
The LAC entered the TPP process hopeful and optimistic that the TPP would finally be the agreement that broke the elite stranglehold on trade policy and put working families at the front and center. Unfortunately, we believe the TPP fails to strike the proper balance: of course it is difficult to convince Vietnam to implement freedom of association before the TPP enters into force once Vietnam has already agreed to provisions that will force it to pay higher prices for medicines and subject even its most basic laws to challenge by foreign investors in private tribunals. Given the misguided values enshrined in the TPP, it is no surprise that the economic rules it will impose will actually make it harder to create a virtuous cycle of rising wages and demand in all 12 TPP countries.
While the TPP may create some limited opportunities for increased exports, there is an even larger risk that it will increase our trade deficit, which has been a substantial drag on job growth for more than twenty years. Especially at risk are jobs and wages in the auto, aerospace, aluminum and steel, apparel and textile, call center, and electronic and electrical machinery industries. The failure to address currency misalignment, weak rules of origin and inadequate state
-owned enterprise provisions, extraordinary rights provided to foreign investors and pharmaceutical companies, the undermining of Buy American, and the inclusion of a labor framework that has proved itself ineffective are key among the TPP's mistakes that contribute to our conclusion that the certain risks outweigh the TPP's speculative and limited benefits.
As part of our work to create this report, the LAC reviewed our NAFTA report from more than 20 years ago and the history of trade agreements implemented since that time. What is stunning is that despite the mounting evidence that neoliberal trade and globalization rules do not create shared prosperity and inclusive growth, and despite the fact that some of NAFTA's biggest supporters, including former Labor Secretary Robert Reich, now agree with us that corporate
-driven trade doesn't work for workers, we are essentially having the same debate as we had regarding NAFTA.
The LAC urges the President in the strongest possible terms to reverse course now. Do not send this TPP to Congress. Instead, the TPP should go back to the negotiating table. We want to work with you and our counterparts in the other TPP countries to create a truly progressive TPP that uplifts working people, creates wage-led growth, diminishes income inequality, promotes infrastructure investment, protects intellectual property without undermining access to affordable medicines, and respects our democracy.
This is just one excerpt, published Dec 1 by EPI. The whole piece, Fact Sheet|Economic Growth can be found at EPI.org.
Won't strengthening the Fed's full-employment mandate impinge on the Fed's independence?
Not in historical context.The Fed was created by Congress and gets its guidance from Congress. Under the law, the Fed is supposed to pursue a policy that promotes maximum employment and price stability. Congress decided that these goals should be the basis for policy when it enacted the Humphrey-Hawkins Full Employment Act of 1978. The concern is that the Fed has placed more emphasis on the price stability portion of its mandate than Congress had intended when it passed the law. The purpose of theFull Employment Federal Reserve Actis to emphasize the need for the Fed to give more weight to the full employment part of its mandate. Passing this law would be no more of an interference with the Fed's independence than passing the 1978 lawThe Fed was created by Congress and gets its guidance from Congress. Under the law, the Fed is supposed to pursue a policy that promotes maximum employment and price stability. Congress decided that these goals should be the basis for policy when it enacted the Humphrey-Hawkins Full Employment Act of 1978. The concern is that the Fed has placed more emphasis on the price stability portion of its mandate than Congress had intended when it passed the law. The purpose of theFull Employment Federal Reserve Actis to emphasize the need for the Fed to give more weight to the full employment part of its mandate. Passing this law would be no more of an interference with the Fed's independence than passing the 1978 law.
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Here's an excerpt from the conclusion of Anne Case and Angus Deaton 's new study, Rising morbidity and mortality in midlife among white non-Hispanic Americans in the 21st century.
The whole study, with excellent graphs, is attached.
"Although the epidemic of pain, suicide, and drug overdoses preceded the financial crisis, ties to economic insecurity are possi- ble. After the productivity slowdown in the early 1970s, and with widening income inequality, many of the baby-boom generation are the first to find, in midlife, that they will not be better off than were their parents. Growth in real median earnings has been slow for this group, especially those with only a high school education. However, the productivity slowdown is common to many rich countries, some of which have seen even slower growth in median earnings than the United States, yet none have had the same mortality experience."
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The sword of Damocles hangs over the head of the American labor movement. This spring the U.S. Supreme Court will rule on Friedrichs vs. CTA, a case that could end automatic union membership in all government jobs. If this "right to work" effort goes the way the right wing hopes, it would be followed by an aggressive and well-funded direct mail and robo-call campaign to encourage public sector employees to "give yourself a raise" by dropping their union memberships and ceasing to pay dues or fees.
Misleadingly titled "right to work" laws prohibit unions in the private sector from negotiating fees for the services they are compelled to provide to all workers they represent. They are designed to reduce unions' income and power. First introduced in 1947, these laws used to be limited to the former slave states of the Confederacy. But in recent years, a coordinated right-wing drive has expanded these laws to a majority of states, including union strongholds like Michigan and Indiana. Thanks in part to such laws, unions today represent only 7 percent of private sector workers. But factoring in the public sector raises total union density to 12 percent. Unions with substantial public sector membership—AFSCME, SEIU, the teachers unions—are the last remaining large, powerful unions in the U.S. Friedrichs is nothing less than an assassination attempt on the union movement.
....According to a recent Gallop poll, 58% of Americans support unions and want to see them strengthened. Research shows that one in three American workers would vote for a union at their workplace if an election were held today.
But a union election won't be held today at most workplaces. Vicious employer resistance and retaliation, a broken legal process and declining union resources stand in the way of most workplaces winning the majority vote that is required in our all-or-nothing union representation system.
Of course, the workers who want a union want… a union. They want an organization that can help raise their wages and improve their benefits, protect them from arbitrary and capricious firings and gives them voice in how things get done at work. All that a union can provide an at-large member right now is discount AT&T cell phone plans and pet health insurance. At-large memberships are not likely to lead to millions of new union members.
But there might be a couple hundred thousand people willing to pay 10 bucks a month to belong to a movement. Potentially faced with the immediate loss of exactly that many current members, that's an attractive proposition to unions. The key will be to actually bring a movement into people's homes, and that means connecting at-large union membership with advocacy and legislative campaigns.
A "right to your job" movement
Opening up the labor movement and pursuing new rights for all workers would help get labor out of the box of thinking mostly about unionized workplaces and appearing to be a special interest. Unions' recent embrace of ambitious efforts to raise state-level minimum wages to $15 has so far been at the heart of these efforts. Upwards of 24 million working people would receive a raise if the pathetic federal floor of $7.25 an hour was raised to just $10, so the Fight for $15 has a huge built in constituency beyond just fast food workers.
....
Imagine how quickly the debate would change if unions fought for and won meaningful job protections for all workers in a state! Call it a "right to your job" law. Such a law would lay bare just how cynically manipulative and hollow the so-called "Right to Work" laws are.
To be meaningful, such just cause laws would have to include some kind of a court in which to hear cases. This could be as simple as mandating private mediation and arbitration or as complex as creating new state regulatory agencies to hear such cases. If workers did have a court in which they could defend their employment, unions would have something real to offer at-large members as a part of joining the union. And with that offer comes the potential for substantial membership growth.
A radical departure for labor
Attempting to legislate job protections, pay and benefit increases for large groups of workers who probably won't become dues-paying union members would be a radical departure for the American labor movement. Unions have, for historical reasons, preferred to make their gains in contract bargaining. The early labor movement, in the 19th century, did work to pass laws on wages, hours and factory conditions. They saw most of those laws overturned, as well as many of their strikes and boycotts enjoined, by conservative courts that viewed unions' efforts as violations of private contracts and disturbances of interstate commerce.....
[Of course, a "right to A job" would be even better. j]
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With the unemployment rate falling to 5.3 percent, the lowest in seven years, policy makers are heaving a sigh of relief. Indeed, with the technology boom in progress, there is a lot to be optimistic about. Manufacturing will be returning to U.S. shores with robots doing the job of Chinese workers; American carmakers will be mass-producing self-driving electric vehicles; technology companies will develop medical devices that greatly improve health and longevity; we will have unlimited clean energy and 3D-print our daily needs. The cost of all of these things will plummet and make it possible to provide for the basic needs of every human being. I am talking about technology advances that are happening now, which will bear fruit in the 2020s. But policy makers will have a big new problem to deal with: the disappearance of human jobs. Not only will there be fewer jobs for people doing manual work, the jobs of knowledge workers will also be replaced by computers. Almost every industry and profession will be impacted and this will create a new set of social problems — because most people can't adapt to such dramatic change. If we can develop the economic structures necessary to distribute the prosperity we are creating, most people will no longer have to work to sustain themselves. They will be free to pursue other creative endeavors. The problem, however, is that without jobs, they will not have the dignity, social engagement, and sense of fulfillment that comes from work. The life, liberty and pursuit of happiness that the constitution entitles us to won't be through labor, it will have to be through other means. It is imperative that we understand the changes that are happening and find ways to cushion the impacts. .... The industrial revolution unfolded over centuries. Today's technology revolutions are happening within years. We will surely create a few intellectually-challenging jobs, but we won't be able to retrain the workers who lose today's jobs. They will experience the same unemployment and despair that their forefathers did. It is they who we need to worry about. The first large wave of unemployment will be caused by self-driving cars. These will provide tremendous benefit by eliminating traffic accidents and congestion, making commuting time more productive, and reducing energy usage. But they will eliminate the jobs of millions of taxi and truck drivers and delivery people. Fully-automated robotic cars are no longer in the realm of science fiction; you can see Google's cars on the streets of Mountain View, Calif. There are also self-driving trucks on our highways and self-driving tractors on farms. Uber just hired away dozens of engineers from Carnegie Mellon University to build its own robotic cars. It will surely start replacing its human drivers as soon as its technology is ready — later in this decade. As Uber CEO Travis Kalanick reportedly said in an interview, "The reason Uber could be expensive is you're paying for the other dude in the car. When there is no other dude in the car, the cost of taking an Uber anywhere is cheaper. Even on a road trip." The dude in the driver's seat will go away. Manufacturing will be the next industry to be transformed. Robots have, for many years, been able to perform surgery, milk cows, do military reconnaissance and combat, and assemble goods. But they weren't dexterous enough to do the type of work that humans do in installing circuit boards. The latest generation of industrial robots by ABB of Switzerland and Rethink Robotics of Boston can do this however. ABB's robot, Yumi, can even thread a needle. It costs only $40,000. China, fearing the demise of its industry, is setting up fully-automated robotic factories in the hope that by becoming more price-competitive, it can continue to be the manufacturing capital of the world. But its advantage only holds up as long as the supply chains are in China and shipping raw materials and finished goods over the oceans remains cost-effective. Don't forget that our robots are as productive as theirs are; they too don't join labor unions (yet) and will work around the clock without complaining. Supply chains will surely shift and the trickle of returning manufacturing will become a flood. But there will be few jobs for humans once the new, local factories are built. With advances in artificial intelligence, any job that requires the analysis of information can be done better by computers. This includes the jobs of physicians, lawyers, accountants, and stock brokers. We will still need some humans to interact with the ones who prefer human contact, but the grunt work will disappear. The machines will need very few humans to help them. This jobless future will surely create social problems — but it may be an opportunity for humanity to uplift itself. Why do we need to work 40, 50, or 60 hours a week, after all? Just as we were better off leaving the long and hard agrarian and factory jobs behind, we may be better off without the mindless work at the office. What if we could be working 10 or 15 hours per week from anywhere we want and have the remaining time for leisure, social work, or attainment of knowledge? Yes, there will be a booming tourism and recreation industry and new jobs will be created in these — for some people. There are as many things to be excited about as to fear. If we are smart enough to develop technologies that solve the problems of disease, hunger, energy, and education, we can — and surely will — develop solutions to our social problems. But we need to start by understanding where we are headed and prepare for the changes. We need to get beyond the claims of a Luddite fallacy — to a discussion about the new future.
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After reviewing more than 200 scholarly papers on the minimum wage for their book What Does the Minimum Wage Do?, Dale Belman and Paul J. Wolfson have found that it does pretty much what policymakers intended it to.
Their conclusions, in a nutshell:
[I]ncreases in the minimum wage raise the hourly wage and earnings of workers in the lower part of the wage distribution and have very modest or no effects on employment, hours, and other labor market outcomes. The minimum wage can then, as originally intended, be used to improve the conditions of those working in the least remunerative sectors of the labor market. While not a full solution to the issues of low-wage work, it is a useful instrument of policy that has low social costs and clear benefits.
This thorough study recently won Princeton University's 2014 Bowen Award for the year's outstanding book on labor and public policy.
Belman and Wolfson describe the above conclusions as "things we know with confidence" -- with the caveat that they come from studies of moderate minimum wage increases like those in the United States over the past few decades.
Their findings, they note, don't square with critics' claims that the minimum wage has unintended consequences that defeat its purpose by raising unemployment among low-income workers and providing too many benefits to people who don't need them:
The moderate increases seen in the United States have resulted in increased earnings with little or no effect on employment. The increase in earnings has gone largely to households in the lower half of the earnings distribution.
Critics often call for scrapping the minimum wage because the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) provides a better way of helping low-wage workers. Belman and Wolfson have a more nuanced reading, more consistent with the views of those of us who think the minimum wage and EITC are complementary policies, not competing approaches, for achieving the same goal:
While not a stand-alone policy for resolving the issues of low income in the United States, the effectiveness of moderate increases in the minimum wage in raising earnings with few negative consequences makes it an important tool for labor market policy.
Policymakers have to consider many practical questions in crafting legislation to raise the minimum wage. But they shouldn't be swayed by arguments that it doesn't have the intended positive effects. The evidence is strong that it does.
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Many part-time workers were left behind by the economic recovery.
Nearly half of the 26.5 million Americans (46%) who work part-time are desperate to work full-time, according to a new report — "A Tale of Two Workforces: The Benefits and Burdens of Working Part Time" — by Rutgers University. The vast majority of the nation's 26 million part-time workers — from college students working in coffee shops between classes to freelance computer software designers working for multinationals — receive no benefits beyond their paychecks and almost one-third say their financial condition is flat out poor.
Nearly one-in-five American workers is employed in a part-time job, logging fewer than 35 hours a week. Some 20 million people, known as voluntary part-time workers, do so to supplement their income, pursue an education, or care for children, but another 6.5 million Americans, so-called involuntary part-time employees, want a full-time job but can't find one. The persistence of such large numbers of involuntary part-time workers is an indicator of underlying weaknesses in the U.S. labor market six years since the beginning of the economic recovery, the study found.
These part-time workers are also divided along ethnic lines. Voluntary part-time workers are disproportionately white, while involuntary part-time workers are disproportionately from a minority, especially Hispanic. Although white Americans make up around 63% of the general population, they comprise 72% of voluntary part-time workers, and just 54% of involuntary ones. Hispanics account for 23% of involuntary part-time workers, and African-Americans account for another 15%, for a total of 38%.....
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How self-checkouts, ATMs and airport check-ins are changing our economy. By CRAIG LAMBERT 5/15
Technology has knocked the bottom rung out of the employment ladder, which has sent youth unemployment around the globe skyrocketing and presented us with a serious economic dilemma. While many have focused on the poor state of our educational system or the "jobless" recovery, another, overlooked factor behind this trend is the phenomenon of "shadow work." I define shadow work as all the unpaid jobs we do on behalf of businesses and organizations: We are pumping our own gas, scanning our own groceries, booking our travel and busing our tables at Starbucks. Shadow work is a new concept, so as yet, no one has compiled economic data on how many jobs we, the consumers, have taken over from (erstwhile) employees. Yet it is surely a force shrinking the job market, and the unemployment it creates is structural. Thanks in part to this new phenomenon, widespread joblessness could become entrenched in the social landscape.
Consider what you now do yourself: You can bank on your cell phone, check yourself out at CVS or the grocery store without ever speaking to an employee, book your own flights and print your boarding pass at the airport without ever talking to a ticket agent — and that's just in the last few years. Imagine what's coming next.....
How Everyone Gets the 'Sharing' Economy Wrong Uber isn't the Uber for rides—it's the Uber for low-wage jobsChristopher Mims, Wall St.Journal, May 24, 2015
If you want to start a fight in otherwise polite company, just declare that the "sharing economy" is the new feudalism, or else that it's the future of work and all the serfs should just get used to it, already.....
In the minds of critics, perhaps the worst offender in how it controls its labor force is Uber. Uber sets the prices that its drivers must accept, and has lately been in the habit of unilaterally squeezing drivers in two ways, both by lowering the rates drivers are paid per trip and increasing Uber's cut of those wages….
Boosters of companies like Uber counter that they allow for relatively well-compensated work, on demand. When I asked them for comment, Uber officials pointed to previously released data suggesting just that. The most recent report, a collaboration between Uber and economist Alan Krueger, paints a fairly rosy picture of Uber's job-creation abilities. Uber has said in the past that world-wide it is hiring 20,000 new drivers a month, and in this report it claims that in major American cities like Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., drivers are averaging more than $17 an hour.
But this data doesn't reflect what Uber drivers actually make, for the simple reason that it doesn't include drivers' expenses. Work by investigative journalist Emily Guendelsberger, for example, shows that Uber drivers in Philadelphia, a fairly typical city for the service, are probably earning only a fraction of that. According to Ms. Guendelsberger's admittedly limited sample of 20 drivers, including herself, it was around $10 an hour after expenses.
It isn't minimum wage, but it's a far cry from Uber's previous claims about what drivers make, which reached the height of absurdity in May 2014, when the company claimed that the median income for drivers in New York was $90,000 a year. Months of investigation of that claim by journalist Alison Griswold yielded not a single driver in New York making that much.
What this all means is simple: Uber and its kin Lyft, which is more generous with its drivers but has a similar business model, are remarkably efficient machines for producing near minimum-wage jobs. Uber isn't the Uber for rides— it's the Uber for low-wage jobs.....
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And they're turning to payday loans and other lenders of last resort when crises occur. Kriston Capps May 29, 2015
....
"Forty-seven percent of respondents say they either could not cover an emergency expense costing $400, or would cover it by selling something or borrowing money," reads this year's annual report.
Maybe Americans are feeling better about their finances, as The Wall Street Journalputs it, but that figure is a downer. Several years into the recovery, almost half of all U.S. households could not withstand a minor financial shock without incurring debt or liquidating assets.
Forty-seven percent of respondents could not cover an emergency expense of $400, or would have to sell something or borrow money.
"Even prior to the [Great Recession], and more acutely after the recession, it's true, American households are vulnerable," says Gregory B. Mills, senior fellow at the Urban Institute. "Depending upon the measure you use, somewhere between one-third and one-half of households are at great risk—as in, they would be unable to fend off hardship."
Families' savings not where they should be: That's one part of the problem. But Mills sees something else in the recovery that's more disturbing. The number of households tapping alternative financial services are on the rise, meaning that Americans are turning to non-bank lenders for credit: payday loans, refund-anticipation loans, pawnshops, and rent-to-own services.
According to the Urban Institute report, the number of households that used alternative credit products increased 7 percent between 2011 and 2013. And the kind of household seeking alternative financing is changing, too.
(Urban Institute)
While that figure might seem small—it's an increase of about 750,000 households total—it's a significant figure for the economy in recovery. Families that are looking for credit aren't finding it in mainstream financial institutions. "You used to be able to get small loans for reasonable rates, below 36 percent," Mills says. "That's what's opened the door for more predatory products."
The nature of households looking for alternative financial products, including predatory loans, has morphed during the recovery. According to Mills's research, the share of households seeking non-bank credit with incomes above $30,000 increased from 42 to 48 percent between 2011 and 2013. And the share making more than $75,000 increased from 7 to 11 percent over the same span.
(Urban Institute)
It's not the case that every one of these middle- and upper-class households turned to pawnshops and payday lenders because they got whomped by an unexpected bill from a mechanic or a dentist. "People who are in these [non-bank] situations are not using these forms of credit to simply overcome an emergency, but are using them for basic living experiences," Mills says.
More middle- and upper-income households are using alternative financial products, including predatory loans.
Still, survey respondents who said they couldn't weather a $400 hit are bound to be some of the same folks who are turning to non-bank lenders for routine expenses. That's a huge problem nationwide. Alternative financial services come with steep interest rates, especially payday lenders, which lock borrowers into vicious lending cycles with interest rates north of 400 to 500 percent. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is moving to regulate the payday lender sphere—which is a good start.
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Long-term unemployment reached historically high levels following the Great Recession of 2007–2009. Both the number and share of the unemployed who are long-term unemployed typically continue to increase after a recession ends, before falling during a labor market recovery. Following this cyclical pattern, long-term unemployment has fallen in recent years, although it remains high by historical standards. Five years after the Great Recession ended, the number of long-term unemployed still made up a larger share of unemployment than during any previous recession.
This Spotlight on Statistics examines trends in long-term unemployment and the characteristics of people who have experienced it.
A good slide-show of data organized by categories--age, gender, race, education, etc.
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Once you're in the top 1 percent, your tax rate gets lower as you get richer Dylan Matthews June 2, 2015
The top 0.001 percent of US income tax filers — who account for only 1,361 returns and each earned over $62 million — paid an average federal tax bill of 17.6 percent in 2012. That's striking, because the top 1 percent had an average bill of 22.83 percent, according to IRS data. In fact, the richer the rich get, the lower their average tax rate:
It's important to distinguish the "average tax rate" here from the marginal tax rate. This was 2012, when the top marginal tax rate was 35 percent; it's since grown to 39.6 percent as part of the fiscal cliff deal that year.
No one actually pays that much as a share of income. For one thing, deductions, exemptions, and credits mean that taxable income is lower than actual income. For another, the lower brackets serve to reduce the overall burden for top earners. But the most crucial factor in reducing the tax burden of the ultra-rich relative to the merely rich is probably the preference the tax code gives to investment income. While earned income now faces a top rate of 39.6 percent, long-term capital gains and dividends are taxed at 20 percent. There's an additional 3.8 percent surtax that Obamacare added, but even throwing that in, there's a big discrepancy. (In 2012, the year the above data is from, the top capital gains rate was 15 percent and there was no surtax.)
And the uber-rich tend to make most of their money from capital gains and dividends. IRS data on the top 400 tax returns in 2012 — an even more select group than the top 0.001 percent — shows that the returns accounted for about $134.3 billion in adjusted gross income, total, and that $91.9 billion of that (68.4 percent) came from capital gains and dividends subject to preferential tax rates. A mere $10.1 billion (7.5 percent) came from salaries and wages.
There are plausible economic reasons to keep the discrepancy in tax rates in place, but it does have the perverse effect of making the federal tax code quite lenient on the richest of the rich.
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Every year Out of Reach, a program from the National Low-Income Housing Coalition, puts out a report demonstrating how unaffordable rents have become throughout the United States. Its 2015 report has just been released and it highlights some disturbing statistics: the federal minimum wage is $7.25, adding up to an annual income of $15,080. The 2015 Fair Market Rent is $806, meaning it would take 86 hours of work at minimum wage to afford rent. Government benefits are calculated as if renters spend 30% of their income on housing, but 10.3 million households have incomes at or below 30% of the Area Median Income. In other words, 1 out of every 4 renters can't afford their existing rent.
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The U.S. Department of Labor tracks how many people die at work, and why. The latest numbers were released in April and cover the last seven years through 2013. Some of the results may surprise you.
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"Adjusted for purchasing power and including taxes, the U.S. federal minimum wage is $6.26 an hour, slightly more than in South Korea and Japan but slightly less than in the United Kingdom, Canada and Germany. Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development" Washington Post, Wonkbook 5/7/15
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(Urban Institute)
(Urban Institute)
