[NJFAC] Baker: Will deficits from Trump’s tax cuts prevent fiscal policy for a recession?

Will the Deficits from Trump's Tax Cuts Leave Us Unprepared to Deal with a Recession? Dean Baker June 9, 2025

The May jobs report indicated that the labor market is still solid, even if there are some concerning signs like the rise in unemployment among Black women and the sharp fall in labor force participation. Whatever problems the Trump administration's policies on tariffs, immigration, and funding science might be causing; to date they do not seem to have pushed us into a recession.

Nonetheless we do need to recognize that we always have a risk of a recession, if not now, then at some point in the future. This fact is worth mentioning because we need to consider this risk in the context of the budget bill passed by the House which the Senate is now considering.

If some version of the House bill passes without major changes, we are looking at annual deficits of close to $2 trillion or nearly 7.0 percent of GDP. If the economy falls into a recession, reduced tax collections and increased payouts for unemployment insurance and other programs will raise the deficit by another 1.5 to 2.0 percentage points of GDP.  This means that we could be staring at annual deficits that are close to 9.0 percent of GDP, or more than $2.5 trillion.

The question to be concerned about is whether in that context Congress would be prepared to pass a stimulus to boost the economy out of recession, knowing that this will raise the deficit even further. Big stimulus packages were crucial for lifting the economy out of recession and getting the unemployment rate down in both 2008-09 and again in 2020-21.

We can hope that a future recession will not be as severe as these last two, but even a more typical recession can still push the unemployment rate above 6.0 percent, putting millions of people out of work. At least as important, when the labor market weakens, workers have less bargaining power. They are less able to quit jobs they don't like or that pay poorly.

Also, the economy can be very slow to rebound from even a mild recession without some additional stimulus. Following the 1990-91 recession we did not get back to the pre-recession level of unemployment until six and a half years. We had the crash of the housing bubble and another recession before getting the unemployment rate back down to levels close to what we saw before the 2001 recession. Automatic stabilizers like unemployment insurance are great for helping workers get through the recession and limited the downside, but by themselves they will not get us back to full employment.  

As a result, they are less able to get wage gains that keep pace with inflation. This is especially the case for workers at the middle or bottom of the wage distribution, who are dependent on a tight labor market for the ability to secure real wage gains.

In posing the question about whether Congress would be willing to spend the money needed to boost the economy out of recession in a context where the deficit is already large, I am not asking about what is the right policy. I know what I would recommend, but Congress is not likely to be turning to me for advice on how to deal with the next recession. That is reason for asking now what Congress is likely to do when we get in this situation.

There is also an important point about the country's economic stability that really needs to be asked in the context of this budget bill. Many of us have been dismissive of the risks of large debts and deficits because the United States, as the world's strongest economy, did not have to fear investors fleeing from its debt and the dollar.

There is less basis to be confident about this point in the current political climate. The Trump administration is showing complete contempt for the building blocks of the science and technology that has made us the world's leading economy. The arbitrary cut off of billions of dollars in research funding, and the slashing of future budgets, will drastically slow the pipeline of innovations that have been a major driver of economic growth.

Attacking the university system and the inflow of foreign students will deprive the country of the sort of talented and hardworking individuals who have contributed enormously to making the United States a technological leader. On top of this, we now have an administration that boasts openly about awarding and denying massive government contracts for political purposes rather than merit. 

This way of doing business is a sharp departure from past practices. It makes the United States looks more like a politically unstable developing country rather than the rock solid island of stability it has been for more than a century. In that context, running large deficits is a problem. It can lead to a plunging currency, soaring interest rates, and soaring inflation. We should not have to be facing this situation, but the reality is that we do, and Congress needs to recognize this fact.

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[NJFAC] The New Gender Gaps: What to do as men and boys fall behind

The New Gender Gaps What to do as men and boys fall behind by Nina Pasquini  https://www.harvardmagazine.com/2025/05/harvard-men-gender-gap-education-employment

The election made clear that certain parts of the country were struggling more than others. Just how much became clearer in 2018, when three Harvard economists—Eliot University Professor Lawrence H. Summers, Glimp professor of economics Edward Glaeser, and then-doctoral student Benjamin Austin—mapped the geography of male joblessness (see "Fixing America's Heartland," September-October 2018, p. 8). The phenomenon was concentrated in what they called the "eastern heartland," the stretch of states from Mississippi to Michigan.

The level of variation they uncovered was astonishing. In 2016, just 5 percent of men in Alexandria, Virginia (a wealthy suburb of Washington, D.C.), were not employed. In Flint, Michigan, that figure was 51 percent. The costs extend far beyond lost paychecks, Glaeser says, because "for men, the correlation between life satisfaction and not working is just enormous." For those aged 25 to 54, not having a job strongly predicts unhappiness, suicide, divorce, and opioid use—more than it does for unemployed women, or even men in low-wage jobs.....

In 2015, Furman believed the main reason for male joblessness was simple: not enough jobs. Now, he's not so sure. When the pandemic began in 2020, women's employment fell more than men's, since they were overrepresented in the hard-hit service industry and took on more childcare. But today, prime-age women's employment rate has surpassed pre-pandemic levels. Prime-age men's employment continues to lag—despite a "huge number of job openings" through 2021 and 2022, Furman says.

"Even if there are help wanted signs in their town, why are they not signing up for those jobs?"

To understand why, Furman thinks research should further examine regional variability in employment opportunities. There are also questions for sociologists and psychologists to explore, he says: "Even if there are help wanted signs in their town, why are they not signing up for those jobs?"....

I am forwarding this article and message from a GoodJobs member. He says, "Employment does not have only economic dimensions- the psychological dimensions are at least as important.  A guaranteed annual income does not cut it."

i'd give more weight than the article does to the ever-present problem of unemployment. This begins with teens, where there is also a male/female disparity. The teen years are when non-college people enter the labor force. If that is difficult, potential workers get less experience of the workplace. There was an upward trend of male teen U through 2010. In April 2025, the last month available, 15% of young men were unemployed vs 9.5% for young women, with an overall rate of 4.2%. There are additional problems posed to young people--miserable pay and transport issues--many communities have no public transportation. How many young people can afford a car? A working person has costs--clothing and its upkeep and transportation. How much is left after a minimum wage and perhaps only part-time work? jz

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[NJFAC] Now bosses come for tech workers, too Cory Doctorow

Pluralistic: The enshittification of tech jobs Cory Doctorow, April 27, 2025

"Take Google, where founder Sergey Brin just told his workers that they should be aiming for a "sweet spot" of 60 hours/week. Brin returned to Google to oversee its sweaty and desperate "pivot to AI," and like so many tech execs, he's been trumpeting the increased productivity that chatbots will deliver for coders. But a coder who picks up their fired colleagues' work load by pulling 60-hour work-weeks isn't "more productive," they're more exploited.

Tech workers are workers, and they once held the line against enshittification, refusing to break the things they'd built for their bosses in meaningless all-nighters motivated by vocational awe. Long after tech bosses were able to buy all their competitors, capture their regulators, and expand IP law to neutralize the threat of innovative, interoperable products like alternative app stores, ad-blockers and jailbreaking kits, tech workers held the line....

There've been half a million US tech layoff since 2023. Tech workers' scarcity-derived power has been vaporized. Tech workers can avoid the fate of the factory, warehouse and delivery workers their bosses literally work to death – but only by unionizing....."

link at nakedcapitalism

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[NJFAC] Mfg jobs decline from imports not only productivity--Dean Baker

Trump's Tariffs Address Yesterday's Problem Dean Baker May 13, 2025

Contrary to what some economist types tell you, trade really was a huge hit to large chunks of the working class. While manufacturing jobs have been dropping as a share of total employment since the 1970s, it was only in the decade of the 00s, when the trade deficit exploded, that we actually lost large numbers of manufacturing jobs.

In the 00s we lost 5.8 million jobs, or one-third of all the manufacturing jobs that existed at the start of the decade. States like Michigan and Ohio lost more than 40 percent of their manufacturing jobs. That looks like a pretty big deal.

It's also worth pointing out that most of these jobs were lost before the onset of the Great Recession. We had lost almost 4 million jobs by December of 2007, the official start date of the Great Recession. In the 30 years from 1970 to 2000 we lost just 200,000 manufacturing jobs.

We also have gained back a modest number of manufacturing jobs since 2010 as the trade deficit declined. This means that the economists who tell us the loss of manufacturing jobs was just due to productivity growth, and not trade, have some very strange ideas about productivity growth. It only seems to lead to job loss when the trade deficit rises. (There is an obvious link between trade deficits and productivity growth, but I will leave that one as a homework assignment.)

The story of a massive loss of relatively good-paying manufacturing jobs is a really big deal and the economists who trivialize it are not being honest. But we can't change the past. The question is the best policy going forward.

As I and other economists have pointed out, Trump's trade policy is unlikely to lead to any substantial increase in the number of manufacturing jobs. Even countries like Japan and Germany, with large trade surpluses, have seen a big decline in the shares of the workforce in manufacturing.

Furthermore, the wage premium that workers in manufacturing used to enjoy also has largely gone away. The main reason is that the unionization rate in manufacturing is no longer much higher than in the rest of the private sector. And given the hostility of Donald Trump and Elon Musk to unions, there is not much reason to think that any substantial share of new jobs created in manufacturing will be unionized.

Also, if we are worried about the trade deficit as a problem in itself, Trump is again fighting yesterday's battle. The trade deficit peaked at 6.0 percent of GDP in 2005. It had fallen back to 3.0 percent of GDP last year, although front running of Trump tariffs sent it soaring in the first quarter of this year. Anyhow, if we go to bed at night worried about the trade deficit we have much less to keep us awake today than we did two decades ago.

Even the trade deficit in goods with China, Trump's arch-nemesis, has come down. It was $295.4 billion last year, or 1.0 percent of GDP. That compares to a deficit of $342.6 billion, or 1.6 percent of GDP in 2019. The deficit with China had peaked at $418.2 billion, 1.7 percent of GDP, the prior year. So even if we consider the goods deficit with China to be a big problem, we had gone far towards reducing it before Trump took office.

The big question here is what problem does Trump think he is solving with his tariffs? Based on the pronouncements from Trump and people in his administration, he seems to believe all sorts of crazy things about the world. He seems to think that 20 million people who claim to be over 115 years old are getting Social Security. His Attorney General says that more than half of us would have died from a fentanyl overdose since Trump took office, if not for his seizures of the drug. And we know that he insists global warming is not happening.

It's impossible to know what craziness might motivate Trump's big tariff push. We can be quite certain that it does not address any real-world problems. Although, as many have noted, tariffs create great opportunities for bribes from those seeking exemptions. And we know that Trump has made it as clear as possible, he is open for business.

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[NJFAC] What the Economy Is Really For — And Why Tariffs Miss the Point

New at INET: What the Economy Is Really For — And Why Tariffs Miss the Point Article by Lynn Parramore The money to support well-paid American jobs exists—it's just being hoarded at the top. Economist William Lazonick argues that this is not just unfair; it's a failure of the whole economic system. Excerpt: "For the last 40 years, millions upon millions of hard-working Americans have been clocking in, doing their part — and getting less in return. They are very upset, as well they should be. Wages have stalled. Job security's a joke. Yet corporate profits are sky high. Just look at the scoreboard: In 2024, Apple raked in $93.7 billion, Alphabet (Google's parent company) pulled in $100.1 billion, and ExxonMobil reaped $33.6 billion. Yet the workers powering these companies aren't seeing much of the immense value they have created. Some of Alphabet's contract workers only recently fought their way up to $14.50 an hour. That's not even close to a fair share of over $100 billion in profit. So where's the money going?" Learn More

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[NJFAC] Working and Homeless

Working Homeless People: Laboring Without a Roof  Jocelyn Figueroa, Black Agenda Report 23 Apr 2025

Despite holding jobs, a growing number of Americans are being pushed into homelessness by low wages, soaring rents, and systemic neglect—shattering the myth that employment guarantees housing.

For millions, a job is no longer enough to afford housing—yet the myth that homeless people don't work still dominates public opinion.

Originally published in Invisible People .

While homeless and living in a shelter, one of my neighbors was a woman not much older than my Mom. One day, I learned that she was a certified full-time medical assistant. Her husband, disabled, was not able to work. Due to rising rents in New York City, they couldn't afford to pay their rent anymore. That's how they eventually landed a few doors down from me.

At the time, it just seemed so unbelievable that a medical professional wasn't able to afford a place to live. Eventually, I realized that most of us in that shelter, aside from those who were disabled or elderly, were working.

The Myth That Homeless People Don't Work

While it's true that many homeless people do work, it's also true that a lot of people don't believe it. Many instead think homeless people don't work or don't want to work. This is by far one of the most misleading stereotypes about homeless people.

According to a 2021 97-page study from the Becker-Friedman Institute for Economics at the University of Chicago, 53% of homeless shelter residents are employed.  Additionally, the study found that at least 40.4% of unsheltered homeless people are employed.

In an interview with the University of Chicago News, poverty scholar Professor Bruce Meyer explained how homeless people are frequently left out of vital poverty statistics:

"People experiencing homelessness are among the most deprived individuals in the United States, yet they are neglected in official poverty statistics and other surveys," he said. "As a result, policymakers and others interested in understanding this have never had complete or reliable information from which to guide decision-making."

Moreover, Brian Goldstone, author of There Is No Place For Us , shared in a recent essay  that not only are working homeless people excluded from official homeless counts, but policymakers also ignore them and have been for decades. This means that official homeless counts, which many policy decisions are based on, are completely inaccurate.

"These workers aren't 'falling' into homelessness. They are being pushed," Goldstone said.

Where the Stigma Began

Goldstone leads us back to the Reagan administration to help us understand where and how this all began.

The message that "homeless people just need to get a job" was actually deliberately put into motion decades ago. As homelessness surged in the 80s, the Reagan administration carefully began shaping the public's perception of the homeless crisis.

"Officials downplayed its severity while muddying its root causes. Federal funding for research on homelessness was steered  almost exclusively toward studies that emphasized mental illness and addiction, diverting attention from structural forces — gutted funding for low-income housing, a shredded safety net," said Goldstone.

Before long, many Americans believed that drug addiction and an unwillingness to work were the root causes of homelessness. It quickly became about the personal failings of homeless people and not about the true cause – deeply-rooted systemic efforts to defund affordable housing and social services, which ultimately made way for a sudden surge of homelessness in America.

Homelessness Is Being Manufactured, Not Chosen

Even now, decades later, many still believe this lie to be true. That is because government officials and policymakers continue to distort and downplay the severity of the homeless crisis even today. For example, homeless counts are notorious for being inaccurate , as it's extremely difficult to get a reliable count. But it's far beyond that. Official counts don't properly include all forms of homelessness.

"Recent research suggests that the true number of people experiencing homelessness — factoring in those living in cars or motel rooms, or doubled up with others — is at least six times as high as official counts," Goldstone said.

More and more working people are being pushed into homelessness every single day. You're probably wondering, well, how could that be true while government officials claim that employment is at an all-time high and the job market is booming ? Let me tell you, it sure does not feel like it, and that is probably because it is not true. Since 1985, rent prices have exceeded income gains by 325% . Low-income earners are severely cost-burdened.

Gig Work, Low Wages, and No Safety Net

Like many homeless people, I was also employed and working while I was homeless. But here's another thing: even now, years later, I have never had a "normal" full-time job with benefits. Not once. In the times I have tried, it was always me versus several thousand other applicants.

So, yes, there is an abundance of work – freelance work, contract work, side gigs, even main gigs. But that safe and steady full-time job with benefits? Not really. Full-time jobs with benefits that pay a living wage? Those are scarce. Many employers hire and promote from within; when they don't, the competition for these jobs can be outrageous.

In today's America, the norm is working multiple jobs to get by. Maybe one job doesn't offer stable, regular hours, and the other only pays minimum wage. Your Uber driver likely works another job, maybe even two. Your Instacart shopper, too. There are so many people who are working like this, and they don't have sick leave, they don't have insurance benefits, and working hard does not in any way translate to job safety or stability.

Do We Only Deserve Housing if We Work?

Today, work is no longer something we can count on, and safe, affordable housing is also out of reach. Once upon a time, we were taught that anyone could make an honest living by doing honest work. And that was probably (mostly) true a long time ago. Today, we know that is not the case.

Perhaps we shouldn't have taught this in the first place. Do we deserve housing only if we can produce enough labor? What about those who cannot work and who cannot generate capital? Our worth being measured by our labor is a sentiment that is not only ableist but has also led to ableist policy decisions, with SSI payments being capped at $967 a month, which is not enough to live anywhere.

"We have the resources and historical precedents (as well as models in America's peer countries) to ensure that everyone has a home — what we lack is the political will. Homelessness persists not because we don't know how to solve it but because the structures of power in this country benefit from maintaining the status quo," Goldstone told Invisible People.

Housing should not be considered a luxury but a right for all. Housing should not be something to capitalize on that only the privileged few can access and the richest can profit from.

As Goldstone eloquently said in his essay, "When millions of people are one medical bill, one missed paycheck, one rent hike away from losing their homes — who, exactly, is safe?"

The answer is no one. No one is safe.

Jocelyn Figueroa studied Creative Non-Fiction at The New School and is a blogger and freelance writer based out of New York City. Formerly homeless, she launched her own blog discussing shelter life in New York City. Today, Jocelyn is on a mission to build connections through storytelling and creative writing. Check out her book about homelessness at https://ko-fi.com/scartissueproject.

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[NJFAC] workday grows with AI

As AI's power grows, so does our workday Wei Jiang Junyoung Park Rachel Xiao Shen Zhang/ 28 Mar 2025

Technological progress is typically expected to lighten the burden of work. But as artificial intelligence has been integrated into workplaces, early evidence suggests a paradox: instead of reducing workloads, many AI-equipped employees are busier than ever. This column examines the relationship between AI exposure, the length of the workday, time allocation, and worker satisfaction. Though AI-driven automation and delegation allow workers to complete the same tasks more efficiently, the authors find that employees in AI-exposed occupations are working longer hours and spending less time on socialisation and leisure.

....

Two key mechanisms help explain this result. First, AI raises worker productivity, creating incentives for longer hours. When AI complements human labour rather than replacing it, the process makes each hour of work more valuable. This effect is strongest in jobs where AI helps employees perform tasks more efficiently, such as finance, research, and technical fields. Employers may expect more output; workers, incentivised by productivity-linked pay, may extend their hours. AI-exposed occupations have indeed seen wage increases, suggesting that firms are sharing some productivity gains. However, higher wages have not translated into more leisure time. Instead, workers appear to be substituting additional earnings for longer hours, a pattern consistent with the economic principle that when work becomes more rewarding, people may choose to do more of it.

....

The second mechanism is AI-driven performance monitoring. Digital surveillance tools have expanded, particularly in remote and hybrid work environments. AI enables real-time tracking of employee effort, leading to longer working hours. Our study examines the COVID-19 period as a natural experiment, when AI-driven monitoring surged due to remote work. Jobs that were more 'remote-feasible' at the onset of COVID-19 experienced dramatic improvement in remote work monitoring during the next two years.  Occupations with high exposure to AI surveillance technologies – such as customer service representatives, stockers and order fillers, dispatchers, and truck drivers – experienced longer work hours post COVID even after workers returned to the office. This effect was absent among the self-employed, confirming that it is not simply the nature of AI-exposed jobs but the principal-agent dynamics of employment that drive longer work hours. Monitoring increases employer oversight and tightens performance expectations, often at the cost of work-life balance. Some AI-intensive roles saw the introduction of automated performance scores, leading employees to work harder to avoid falling behind peers in algorithm-driven assessments.

jz: AI use has other problems. For example, a doctor reports on AI write-up of patient visit notes:

"From his e-mail: The visits are now being recorded and about 10 minutes later – the AI generated visit notes appear in the chart. On almost 2/3 of the charts that are being processed, there are major errors, making stuff up, incorrect statements, etc. Unfortunately – as you can see it is wickedly able to render all this in correct "doctorese" – the code and syntax we all use and can instantly tell it was written by a truly trained MD.

I have noted to my dismay that most of my colleagues do not even look at these – they simply sign off on them."

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[NJFAC] Worker-Owned News Outlets Are Changing Media Industry

How Worker-Owned News Outlets Are Changing the Media Industry

By Damon Orion Local Peace Economy Project

....

Rather than relying on corporate funding, outlets like 404 Media and Defector earn revenue from paid reader subscriptions. Many employee-owned media companies also take little or no money from advertisers. For instance, in 2023, Morning Brew reported that Defector got 95 percent of its revenue from subscribers during its first year [2020], and "outside of a few small, DTC brands, the company was focusing on other areas of the business rather than advertising; a year later, Defector said it had 'largely stopped' running ads on its site and in its newsletters."

In 2025, Brett White, the editor-in-chief of the employee-owned entertainment news outlet Pop Heist, told Poynter he was "very adamant against on-site advertising." He added, "Just as much as corporate interests and the Google algorithm notification of everything has ruined pop culture journalism, I think ads have as well."

Besides helping journalists avoid pressure from advertisers and corporate overseers, employee ownership can boost job security. According to a 2022 study published by IZA World of Labor, worker-owned companies "have more stability, higher survival rates, and fewer layoffs in recessions."....

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[NJFAC] No tax on tips will harm more workers than it helps--EPI

No tax on tips will harm more workers than it helps
Proposals in Congress and now 20 states could encourage harmful employer practices and lead to tip requests in virtually every consumer transactionWhen President Trump proposed exempting tipped income from taxation during his 2024 presidential campaign, many viewed it as a politically expedient gimmick to win support among tipped service workers. Unfortunately, then-Vice President Harris soon followed suit, and since the election, a federal "no tax on tips" bill has been reintroduced and lawmakers in at least 20 states have proposed similar bills (see map below).

Now that lawmakers in a multitude of states have supported the idea, it's worth unpacking just how incredibly foolish and dangerous these proposals are. In summary, exempting tips from taxes would:

1. help very few workers and undermine pay increases for many more;
2. expand the use of tipped work—a system rife with discrimination and worker abuse— potentially leading to consumers being asked to tip on virtually every purchase; and
3. deplete state and federal budgets and create new avenues of tax avoidance, especially for high earners.....

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[NJFAC] 73% of employees surveyed struggled to afford anything beyond basic living expenses

New research reveals financial stress is hurting the morale, motivation, and productivity of U.S. workers.

A recent survey by Resume Now reveals that financial stress has reached a breaking point for American workers, with 73% of employees struggling to afford anything beyond their basic living expenses. 

The 2025 Wage Reality Report reveals a growing dissatisfaction with salaries, rising living costs, and the toll these challenges are taking on workplace morale. Based on responses from 1,065 U.S. workers surveyed in December 2024, the report sheds light on the widening gap between wages and the cost of modern living.

So, what are the real impacts of this financial stress on workers' lives, and how are they coping with the challenges of rising costs and stagnant wages?

Key Findings

• 12% often cannot afford basic living expenses, and 24% struggle to cover essentials.
• Only 6% are able to save for the future.
• One-third of workers say their salary has not kept up with inflation.
• 55% think their salary is lower than it should be.
• 29% have moved to lower-cost areas or housing to navigate financial strain.
• 3 in 10 have taken on debt to cover living expenses.
• Only 4% of workers feel truly valued in their role.

 link from nakedcapitalism.com

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June Zaccone
National Jobs for All Network
http://www.njfac.org

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[NJFAC] Dean Baker on the importance of low unemployment

Full Employment: One Last Time for the Road

"....There is no better way to give large benefits to tens of millions of people, especially groups facing discrimination in the labor market like Black workers and people with criminal records.....

In the Biden years, many pundits argued that unemployment doesn't matter much because a one percentage point drop in the unemployment rate just means another 1.6 million people have jobs. That doesn't seem like a very big deal in a workforce of 160 million.

But this reasoning is badly confused. Full employment matters not just because it reduces the number of people who are unable to find jobs, but also because it improves the bargaining position of tens of millions of workers. The point is simple, but huge.

In a normal month 5-6 million people lose or leave their job, with the vast majority looking for new ones. That translates into 60-70 million people over the course of the year coming into direct contact with the state of the labor market. For these people it matters enormously if there is a strong labor market near full employment or a sagging labor market where people struggle to find jobs.

In a strong labor market these workers will be able to move to better jobs that pay more and offer better working conditions. It's not an accident that we saw a record level of workplace satisfaction in 2023 after we had record rates of job switches the prior year.

The ability to leave for a better job also leaves workers better positioned to get pay raises at their current job, if they decide not to leave. This is especially true for workers at the lower end of the wage distribution. They have far more bargaining power than in a weak labor market.....

The Black-White wage gap was also reduced during this period. The 13 percent gap in 2023  is the lowest level on record....."

ps In the article, Baker calls it "low" unemployment, a far better description than full employment, at a time when the lows of 3.4 to 4.0% unemployment mean that in December 2024, for example, when the official rate was 4.1%, 6.9 million people were unemployed and another 9.9 million were involuntarily part-time or wanting a job but not looking for a variety of reasons, including discouragement, or lack of childcare or transportation. And these numbers do not indicate the economic distress of the wider circle which includes their families. jz

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June Zaccone
National Jobs for All Network
http://www.njfac.org

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[NJFAC] Working Without Health Insurance

Chronic Condition: Working Without Health Insurance

Jan 10, 2025 By Emma Curchin, John Schmitt, CEPR

...."...even after the full implementation of the ACA, more than 27 million US residents still remain without health insurance.¹ As we document here, almost 16 million of the uninsured are workers in full-time jobs, part-time jobs, or unemployed and actively seeking work. Over 10 million of these uninsured workers hold year-round, full-time jobs.

Workers between the ages of 18 and 64 have long been less likely than the average US resident to have health insurance (see Figure 1). Many workers fall through the holes in the patchwork of health insurance coverage, which includes employer-provided plans, individually purchased coverage through state-level health exchanges, and Medicaid (which is especially important for low-income workers). The vast majority of workers are ineligible for key government health insurance programs that provide higher rates of coverage for other populations. Workers under the age of 65, for example, are not eligible for the Medicare program, which provides nearly universal coverage for the US population 65 and older. Workers are also generally too old to qualify for the Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP), which, together with Medicaid, produces uninsured rates for children that are about half those of adult workers.² Finally, a sizable share of the workforce lives in households with incomes that push them above the thresholds where they would qualify for Medicaid and other forms of need-based coverage.....

As the data show, some groups of workers are much more likely than others to be uninsured. Workers who experience any spell of unemployment during the course of a year are the most likely to be without insurance (18.7 percent), followed by part-time or part-year workers (14.4 percent). But even a large share of full-time, full-year workers (10.5 percent) go without any health insurance coverage from any source during the course of the year.....

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June Zaccone
National Jobs for All Network
http://www.njfac.org

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[NJFAC] "salting" the workplace

"What Is Salting, the Organizing Tactic Spicing Up the Labor Movement?" [Kim Kelly, Teen Vogue]. "The resurgence of the American labor movement is being led in no small part by a cohort of young, diverse, fired-up workers around the country. Union density remains embarrassingly low overall, but last month the National Labor Relations Board, or NLRB, released some genuinely inspiring numbers that suggest the perceived upswing in union activity is more than just a vibe. During the 2024 fiscal year, which ended in September, the number of union petitions filed jumped 27% compared with 2023 — and was more than double what the agency received in 2021. Why does this matter? Basically, filing these petitions is a concrete sign that more people are trying to unionize their workplaces… This new generation of organizers is embracing all sorts of strategies, including one of the oldest tactics in the pro-union handbook: salting. Salting is an organizing tactic in which a person gets a job at a specific workplace with the goal of unionizing their coworkers. This kind of shop-floor organizing has a long history within the labor movement, and was once so common it was thoroughly unremarkable; if you were a young worker with socialist or progressive ideas in, say, the early 1900s, it was the most normal thing in the world to start talking to your coworkers about unionizing as soon as you'd learned their names." • It's great that Teen Vogue has a labor beat, but why only Teen Vogue? quote from nakedcapitalism.com

June Zaccone
National Jobs for All Network
http://www.njfac.org

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