poverty « Washington Policy Watch

January 19, 2012 • 8:25 am 0

Seattle Business Magazine: Keep the Minimum Wage High

From the Seattle Business Magazine | By John Levesque

Now is not the time for Washington state to scale back on providing a decent living wage.

You probably heard this one before: Having a job is the new raise.

True enough. In this desultory economy, few workers are likely to barge into the boss’s office demanding a raise and a company car. They’re just happy to have a boss. But some jobholders in Washington state actually got a sweet pay hike this month. On January 1, the state’s minimum wage went from $8.67 an hour to $9.04 an hour—the highest minimum wage among the 50 states.

Woo-hoo! For minimum-wage earners lucky enough to work a 40-hour schedule, that pencils out to an extra 15 bucks a week. Those keeping score at home will note that this latest increase takes the annual gross for a minimum-wage worker in Washington from $18,033 to $18,803 a year. A family of three is officially “poor” in this country if its income is $18,530 or less, so one way to look at the 37-cent pay raise is that it lifted at least some people out of “official” poverty and into, well, the outskirts of poverty.

As ridiculous as it sounds, that’s something to be proud of. Elsewhere in this issue, an academician suggests that forgoing this year’s increase in the minimum wage might create more jobs and help jump-start the economy. He may be right, but do we really need to rescue the economy on the backs of those who can least afford to carry out the offensive?

Filed under: minimum wage, business, economy, Employment, job, Minimum wage, poverty, washington state

December 19, 2011 • 10:57 am 0

Report: Working Women Falling Behind in WA

Washington's Working Women 2012

From the Washington News Service:

SEATTLE – For women in the workforce in Washington, 2011 could be summarized as a year of treading water – or even sinking a bit. According to a new report, women’s wages and benefits in the Evergreen State continue to lag behind those of men. Even in the same job and age range and with similar education, a woman’s average monthly pay is 63 percent of what a man earns per month.

When the recession began, men were laid off at a faster pace than women. But Tatsuko Go Hollo, policy associate with the Economic Opportunity Institute (EOI), says now that the recovery is officially under way, that trend has reversed.

“Men are returning to work – slowly, but they are starting to gain jobs again – whereas we’re seeing women actually have continued to lose jobs. A big factor in that is that women are concentrated in a lot of the public-sector jobs.”

She notes that two of the hardest-hit professions, teachers and administrative personnel in state government, are largely comprised of women. The report says almost 15 percent of Washington women live in poverty – many as single mothers.

The state minimum wage will top $9 an hour for the first time starting in January. For full-time work, that means an annual income of about $19,000. Go Hollo says it will be a big help for low-wage and part-time workers, but even people who make almost twice that amount have a hard time supporting a family in the Seattle area.

“Even though $35,000 might sound okay for maybe one person, when you factor in taking care of those two children – their child care costs and what it takes to prepare them for school and keep them healthy – those bills really start to add up.”

Two-thirds of Washington children in single-parent families now live in poverty, the report says.

It also covers workplace benefits, which are eroding for all full-time workers. For example, only 54 percent of employers in Washington offer health insurance, down from 76 percent 10 years ago. In the same time period, the number of companies that offer retirement benefits dropped from 60 percent to 36 percent.

The report, “Washington’s Working Women 2012,” is available at www.eoionline.org.

Filed under: state economy, poverty, washington's working women, women

November 21, 2011 • 1:30 pm 0

More rough economic seas ahead for Washington’s women unless legislators act

Policy Brief: Rough Seas for Washington Women

With the official end of the Great Recession two and a half years behind us, few people have seen any economic gains – and many are worse off than at the height of the recession, including women and children.

There’s no doubt men have experienced higher unemployment rates than women throughout the recession and recovery. However, antiquated workplace policies have put women at greater economic disadvantages than their male counterparts. As a result, economic downturns tend to exacerbate the vulnerabilities experienced by women and their families.

Read the rest of this entry »

Filed under: state economy, work and family, American Community Survey, benefits, children, economy, poverty, unemployment, united states, Washington, women

October 7, 2011 • 12:08 pm 0

IMF: Income inequality is bad for economic growth

From the Washington Post’s Wonkblog:

As the Occupy Wall Street protests swell in size and people pay closer attention to the gap between the wealthiest Americans and everyone else, one question is why this divide even matters. One way to look at income inequality, after all, is that it’s no big deal. If a country is growing at a healthy clip and everyone is steadily getting richer, then it’s hardly an outrage that a few titans at the very top are doing freakishly well, right?

But a recent study from the International Monetary Fund suggests that this conventional view is misguided. Excessive income inequality, the authors find, can actually inflict a lot of harm on a country’s long-term economic prospects.

In the IMF’s Finance & Development magazine, the authors, Andrew Berg and Jonathan Ostry, summarize their recent research (see also Josh Harkinson’s piece for Mother Jones). It’s relatively common, the authors note, for countries to experience small growth spurts here and there. But sustained, long-term economic growth, of the sort that the United States and Britain enjoyed after World War II, is rare. Plenty of poorer countries — say, Brazil or Jordan or Cameroon — don’t ever seem to be able to maintain that momentum.

For sustained growth to occur, Berg and Ostry found, the most important factors are a relatively equal income distribution and trade openness. (See the chart on the right.) Having healthy, democratic political institutions matters quite a bit, too. Conversely, having a lot of foreign investment or keeping debt under control, among other factors, aren’t nearly as crucial. In the end, the most important factor is inequality: “a 10 percentile decrease in inequality… increases the expected length of a growth spell by 50 percent.”

Why would inequality be so crushing for a country’s economy? For one, the authors note that inequality tends to be associated with financial crises. When inequality runs rampant, people on the lower end tend to borrow more to keep up, which increases the risk of a major crisis. (Earlier IMF research suggested that this may have contributed to the 1929 and 2008 financial crashes in the United States.)

Washington Policy Watch

Seattle Business Magazine: Keep the Minimum Wage High

Report: Working Women Falling Behind in WA

More rough economic seas ahead for Washington’s women unless legislators act

IMF: Income inequality is bad for economic growth

Budget and Taxes

Social Security

Family-wage Jobs

Government

More Info

State Economy

Paid Sick Days

Paid Family Leave

Early Learning

Twitter Updates

Follow “Washington Policy Watch”