Posts tagged unemployment rate
Protect Worker Freedom to Best Help Black Women, All Workers
August 21, 2025 // The removal of DEI positions and programming under the second Trump Administration is also credited with having a disparate impact on Black women. This argument might sound reasonable to regular people, but data doesn’t prove it. Black women are overrepresented in federal jobs compared to private sector employment. They comprise 6.6% of the civilian workforce but 12.1% of the federal workforce, the largest differential among racial demographics.
Op-ed: New Economic Study Finds California’s $20 Fast Food Minimum Wage Caused 18,000 Job Losses
July 16, 2025 // As the Globe warned, thousands of fast food employees lost jobs, employees’ hours were cut, and business owners had to do more with less. The data comes just over one year after AB 1228’s implementation, and as Los Angeles considers a drastic union-backed $30 wage hike for hotel and tourism workers that would follow the fast food wage law’s precedent of economic destruction, EPI reports.
California’s fast-food minimum wage is super-sizing job losses
July 15, 2025 // The damage for California doesn’t stop at job losses, as CEI has noted previously. The vast majority of California’s fast-food workers, 89 percent, have had their work hours reduced. Another 35 percent have seen their supplemental benefits reduced. Customers suffer as well. Menu prices for Golden State restaurants rose 14.5 percent between September 2023 and December 2024, nearly double the national rate of 8.2 percent for restaurants. Prices jumped 3 percent in the month after the minimum wage hike went into effect. Americans across all income groups eat fast food, but the core consumers are low-income families according to the Morning Consult. Any price increase is going to hit them the hardest.
US labor unions fight to contain AI disruption
June 5, 2025 // The threat extends beyond manufacturing. The CEO of Anthropic, which created Claude as a competitor to ChatGPT, warned last week that generative AI could eliminate half of all low-skilled white-collar jobs, potentially driving unemployment rates up to 10-20 percent. "The potential displacement of workers and elimination of jobs is a significant concern not just for our members, but for the public in general," said Peter Finn of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, America's largest union.
Trump and Vance shouldn’t give in to European-style labor regulation
July 30, 2024 // Economists have proposed a variety of unique ideas to protect workers, ranging from the earned-income tax credit to pursuing some variation of a negative income tax policy. American unions could also be transformed by eliminating their government-granted exclusive-negotiator status so that multiple unions could represent workers for any given employer. Doing so would increase union membership and give workers a more diverse set of institutions and protections or benefits to seek in the workplace. Donald Trump and J.D. Vance are correct that conservatives should pursue a pro-worker agenda. But it must lean into what has traditionally made the U.S. labor market vibrant—entrepreneurial dynamism, not rigid European-style labor policy.
Union Election Requests Hit Their Highest Level In A Decade
July 18, 2024 // Workers file petitions with the labor board when they want to hold a vote on whether to unionize, typically after a strong majority of workers have signed union cards. Employers can also request an election be held after workers have demanded a union be recognized. The labor board said unions have won 79% of the elections so far this fiscal year when workers have filed the petitions. Unions have prevailed in 70% of the cases where employers filed the petitions.
Dam restoration jobs will be union gigs, Deluzio says
May 6, 2024 // The restoration project is part of President Joe Biden’s $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill and will require approximately 28,000 construction jobs. It’s expected to cost $857 million. To comply with a Biden executive order, federally funded projects totaling more than $35 million require project labor agreements, identified as pre-hire collectively bargained agreements negotiated between contractors and construction unions. These agreements establish the terms and conditions of employment. Deluzio’s news release, however, states that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers was not initially complying with this order. So the congressman stepped in to coordinate with local unions, the Biden administration and the Army Corps to make sure PLAs were in place for all work on the Montgomery Lock and Dam.
From Hollywood to auto work, organized labor is flexing its muscles. Where do unions stand today?
November 9, 2023 // There are also limits for organizers under current labor law. That means that what worked in auto workers' labor campaign, for example, may not look the same or be possible in other industries. Larger, more established unions typically have more bargaining power — and that's reflected in new contract wins seen today. “We have a labor law that was designed in the era in the 30s and 40s, when auto plants of 10,000 workers (were organizing)," he said. Starbucks is “split into these small coffee shops of 15 workers. ... They need to join together to have any kind of bargaining power against a big employer. But our labor law isn’t structured to help them do that,” Colvin said. Service jobs can also be hard to organize due to part-time work and high turnover rates. The same can be said for Amazon warehouses, where there have been pushes for unions.
Unions’ power ebbs and flows
November 6, 2023 // Unionization efforts have expanded but many are taking place where there is little history of organized labor, creating a higher bar for workers. Colvin points to Starbucks workers who have seen union drives clipped in the last year. Starbucks has been accused of chilling organization by closing unionized stores and firing pro-union workers. There are also limits for organizers under current labor law. That means that what worked in the auto workers' labor campaign, for example, may not be possible for other industries.
Connecticut: Private and Public Jobs Recovery Suffers Setback, Still Short of Pre-Pandemic Totals
July 26, 2023 // Despite the decrease, Connecticut has reportedly gained 14,100 jobs in 2023, which is “more jobs than added in the first six months of any pre-pandemic year since 2006.” But the report also revealed that ‘Finance’ has “lost more than 7,000 jobs since March 2020,” and there are nearly 90,000 jobs available in the state.