When it comes to raising the minimum wage, most of the action is in cities and states, not Congress
The $7.25 federal minimum wage is used in just 21 states, which collectively account for about 40% of all U.S. wage and salary workers.
Numbers, Facts and Trends Shaping Your World
The $7.25 federal minimum wage is used in just 21 states, which collectively account for about 40% of all U.S. wage and salary workers.
To mark Labor Day, here’s what we know about who American workers are, what they do and the U.S. working environment in general.
Veterans of prime working age generally fare at least as well as non-veterans in the U.S. job market, though there are differences in the work they do.
The government shutdown has squeezed the daily flood of data from federal agencies down to a trickle. Take a look at what data are and are not available.
Most Americans like labor unions, at least in the abstract. A majority (55%) holds a favorable view of unions, versus 33% who hold an unfavorable view, according to a Pew Research Center survey from earlier this year. Despite those fairly benign views, unionization rates in the United States have dwindled in recent decades. As of 2017, just 10.7% of all wage and salary workers were union members, matching the record low set in 2016, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Despite some ups and downs over the past several decades, today’s real average wage in the U.S. has about the same purchasing power it did 40 years ago. And most of what wage gains there have been have flowed to the highest-paid tier of workers.
Although manufacturing jobs have fallen over the past three decades, improved productivity has kept manufacturing output rising – contrary to what many Americans believe. But over the past few years, productivity growth has been sluggish at best.
From Social Security to national parks, a look at long-range trends in federal outlays relative to the U.S. economy
Much of U.S. job growth over the past 25 years has been in occupations that require higher levels of education, training and experience – a trend that seems likely to continue, based on our analysis of official government job-growth projections.
Assuming all of President-elect Donald Trump’s Cabinet nominees are confirmed, he will have one of the most heavily business-oriented Cabinets in U.S. history. Five of the 14 people Trump has nominated to be Cabinet secretaries have spent their entire careers in the business world, with no public office or senior military service on their resumes.
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