Fact Tank - News In Numbers | Pew Research Center

A teacher helps a student review for her geometry final at Northridge High School in Greeley, Colorado. (Melanie Stetson Freeman/The Christian Science Monitor via Getty Images)

Classes have ended for the summer at public schools across the United States, but a sizable share of teachers are still hard at work at second jobs outside the classroom.

Among all public elementary and secondary school teachers in the U.S., 16% worked non-school summer jobs in the break before the 2015-16 school year. Notably, about the same share of teachers (18%) had second jobs during the 2015-16 school year, too, according to the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES). This makes teachers about three times as likely as U.S. workers overall to balance multiple jobs, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data. (Multiple jobholders have made up a small but steady portion of the U.S. labor force since 1970.)

On average, a teacher’s summer job earnings account for 7% of their total annual income, according to the NCES data. Earnings from a second job during the school year make up an average of 9% of their income.

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Business and Labor Education Work and Employment

By Michael Lipka

The Canadian province of Quebec recently enacted a new law that bans many public employees – including teachers, police officers and judges – from wearing religious symbols in the workplace. While advocates of the measure say it promotes the separation of church and state, opponents already have challenged the law in court, saying it targets Muslim women and erodes religious freedom.

Quebec is not the only jurisdiction to enact restrictions on religious dress in public. In fact, France, which once ruled Quebec as part of a large North American colony known as “New France,” banned head scarves and other religious symbols in public schools in 2004, and banned full-face veils in all public places in 2011. A ban on face veils is also in force in several other European countries. Although Pew Research Center has not asked Canadians for their opinions on these laws, most people across Western Europe favor at least some restrictions on Muslim women’s dress.

Here are five facts about religion in Canada, based on Pew Research Center data:

1A declining share of Canadians identify as Christians, while an increasing share say they have no religion – similar to trends in the United States and Western Europe. Our most recent survey in Canada, conducted in 2018, found that a slim majority of Canadian adults (55%) say they are Christian, including 29% who are Catholic and 18% who are Protestant. About three-in-ten Canadians say they are either atheist (8%), agnostic (5%) or “nothing in particular” (16%). Canadian census data indicate that the share of Canadians in this “religiously unaffiliated” category rose from 4% in 1971 to 24% in 2011, although it is lowest in Quebec. In addition, a rising share of Canadians identify with other faiths, including Islam, Hinduism, Sikhism, Judaism and Buddhism, due in large part to immigration. The 2018 Pew Research Center survey found that these five groups together make up 8% of Canadian adults.

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Religion and Society Religious Affiliation North America

By Aleksandra Sandstrom

New York recently became the fifth state – after California, Maine, Mississippi and West Virginia – to enact a law requiring children in public school to be vaccinated unless they have a valid medical reason. Legislatures in several other states are considering similar legislation. Most states (44), however, allow children to be exempt from vaccinations due to religious concerns, according to a Pew Research Center analysis. And one state, Minnesota, allows for a broader exemption based on personal beliefs but does not explicitly mention religion.

The action in New York came after the state became the center of a nationwide measles outbreak that has sickened more than 1,000 Americans in 28 states so far this year. Many of the cases in New York have been in Orthodox Jewish communities where vaccination rates are low.

Supporters of ending all but medical exemptions contend that vaccines are safe and that allowing children to go unvaccinated puts many people at risk for measles, rubella and other diseases. Opponents say the laws infringe on parental rights, as well as religious and other personal liberties.

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Religion and Government State and Local Government Health Care

By Ana Gonzalez-Barrera and Jens Manuel Krogstad

There were 11.6 million immigrants from Mexico living in the United States in 2017, and fewer than half of them (43%) were in the country illegally, according to Pew Research Center estimates. Mexico is the country’s largest source of immigrants, making up 25% of all U.S. immigrants.

As President Donald Trump’s administration has taken a variety of steps to reduce the number of unauthorized immigrants in the U.S. – including through the increase of law enforcement agents at the southern border – here’s what we know about illegal immigration from Mexico.

1The number of Mexican immigrants living in the U.S. illegally has declined by 2 million since 2007. In 2017, 4.9 million unauthorized immigrants from Mexico lived in the U.S., down from a peak of 6.9 million in 2007. Mexicans now make up fewer than half of the nation’s 10.5 million unauthorized immigrants (47% in 2017).

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Unauthorized Immigration Immigration Trends Mexico Global Migration and Demography Migration Latin America Immigration

By Drew DeSilver

Morgan Jackson, 18, scoops ice cream while working at Beals Ice Cream in Portland, Maine, on April 26. Last July, 33.8% of working teens were in accommodation and food services, up from 22.6% in July 2000. (Shawn Patrick Ouellette/Portland Press Herald via Getty Images)

School’s out for summer, and U.S. teens are headed for … where, exactly? Probably not to a paying job, according to Pew Research Center’s latest analysis of federal employment data.

As recently as two decades ago, roughly half of U.S. teens could expect to spend at least part of their summer vacation lifeguarding, selling T-shirts, dishing up soft-serve ice cream or otherwise working for pay. But the share of teens working during the summer has tumbled since 2000: Only about a third of teens (34.6%) had a job last summer, despite some recovery since the end of the Great Recession. And when teens do get summer jobs these days, they’re more likely to be busing tables or tending a grill than staffing a mall boutique or souvenir stand.

To understand what’s happened to the Great American Summer Job, the Center looked at the employment rate – or, more formally, the employment-population ratio – for 16- to 19-year-olds over the past seven decades. We took the average employment rate for June, July and August of each year as our measure of summer employment. (We used non-seasonally adjusted data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics for this analysis, since teen employment rises sharply in the summer months and typically peaks in July.)

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Teens and Youth Business and Labor Work and Employment National Economy

By Mason Walker and Jeffrey Gottfried

As fact-checking organizations are increasingly being tapped to fight against misinformation, Republicans appear to have serious concerns about the fairness of these groups. Democrats, on the other hand, mostly think they are fair to all sides.

Overall, Americans are split in their views of fact-checkers: Half say fact-checking efforts by news outlets and other organizations tend to deal fairly with all sides, while about the same portion (48%) say they tend to favor one side, according to a Pew Research Center survey conducted Feb. 19 to March 4, 2019.

But members of the two parties do not see eye-to-eye on this question. Seven-in-ten Republicans say fact-checkers tend to favor one side, compared with roughly three-in-ten Democrats (29%) – a 41 percentage point difference. Conversely, most Democrats (69%) say fact-checkers deal fairly with all sides, a view shared by just 28% of Republicans. Independents are more split, with 47% saying fact-checkers tend to favor one side and 51% saying they deal fairly with all sides – though independents who lean toward the Democratic Party and those who lean toward the Republican Party diverge sharply (65% vs. 37% say fact-checkers deal fairly with all sides, respectively).

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Trust, Facts and Democracy News Audience Trends and Attitudes Emerging Technology Impacts

By Christine Tamir and Christine Huang

Leaders from the G20 nations will meet in Osaka, Japan, this week at a time when some of the core values of the organization, such as free trade and an environmentally sustainable future, are being challenged. The forum, originally established to ensure global financial stability, will feature discussions around eight main themes this year, including the global economy, women’s empowerment, and energy and the environment.

Pew Research Center conducted public opinion surveys in many of the G20 member nations in 2018. Based on these surveys, here is a look at the way people in these countries view some of the central issues that will be addressed at this year’s summit.

Women’s empowerment

G20 leaders previously committed to a 25% reduction in the gap between the shares of men and women participating in their countries’ labor forces by 2025. At this year’s summit, the focus is on including more women in the labor force, enhancing STEM education for women and continuing engagement with women business leaders.

Across the G20 nations surveyed in 2018, people are strongly in favor of increased gender equality in their country. The Center asked respondents whether they thought equality between men and women had increased or decreased in their country over the past two decades, followed by a question evaluating whether they saw this as a good or bad thing for their nation. (For more, see “How people around the world view gender equality in their countries.”)

Around three-quarters favor more gender equality in India, Australia, South Korea and France. But many among the populations surveyed also see the gender equality landscape as unchanged over the past 20 years. In Japan, for instance, around one-third say that equality between men and women has remained unchanged over the past two decades.

The labor force participation rate among women has risen in most G20 countries over the past two decades. In Brazil, for example, 54% of working-age women participated in the labor force in 2018, up from 48% in 1998. Still, in three G20 countries – including the United States – labor force participation among women has declined during this span. Overall, women’s participation in the labor force remains appreciably lower than men’s participation in all G20 members.

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Global Balance of Power International Threats and Allies International Organizations International Governments and Institutions

By J. Baxter Oliphant

Sri Vasamsetti was watching at the Comet Tavern in Seattle as Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton lost the 2016 presidential election. Now, Democrats are looking ahead to the 2020 race as debates begin. (Jason Redmond/AFP/Getty Images)

The race for the Democratic presidential nomination enters a new phase this week with the first debates taking place in Miami, starting with 10 candidates who will face off tonight and another 10 on Thursday. Those who will appear are a diverse group – by background, age, gender, race and ethnicity and ideology – and reflect the competition of ideas within the party about its strategy and future.

Here are six facts about Democrats today.

1Self-identified liberals make up a larger share of the Democratic Party than they once did. Nearly half of all Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents (46%) describe their political views as liberal, an increase of 17 percentage points since 2003. Today, 39% of Democrats say they are moderate, while just 14% are conservative.

2Democratic voters have become much more racially and ethnically diverse over the past two decades. The next generation of Americans will be the country’s most diverse yet. Democrats are changing to reflect the nation’s growing racial and ethnic diversity more quickly than Republicans. In 2017, 59% of Democratic and Democratic-leaning registered voters were non-Hispanic whites, down from 75% two decades earlier. The share of Democratic voters who are black, Hispanic, Asian American or of another race has increased from 24% to 39% over this period. Non-Hispanic whites made up an overwhelming share of Republican voters in 2017 (83%); in 1997, 92% of GOP voters were white non-Hispanics.

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Presidential Approval U.S. Political Parties Political Attitudes and Values

By A.W. Geiger

Cannabis buds are shown to a customer at a dispensary in Desert Hot Springs, California, on Jan. 1, 2018 – the day recreational marijuana sales became legal in the state. (Robyn Beck/AFP/Getty Images)

Illinois this month became the latest U.S. state to legalize recreational marijuana. The legislation signed by Gov. J.B. Pritzker permits recreational use of the drug for adults 21 and older and allows for the expungement of minor marijuana-related convictions. Illinois had previously legalized marijuana for medical purposes.

Nationwide, public support for cannabis legalization has steadily grown in recent years. As support has risen, a growing number of states have legalized or decriminalized the drug. Here are five facts about Americans and marijuana:

1A majority of Americans support marijuana legalization. About six-in-ten Americans (62%) say the use of marijuana should be legalized, according to a fall 2018 survey. Public opinion on marijuana legalization was essentially the opposite nearly two decades ago: In 2000, a similar majority (63%) said the use of marijuana should be illegal.

2Views of marijuana legalization differ by generation and political party, though support has increased across demographic groups over time. Majorities of Millennials (74%), Gen Xers (63%) and Baby Boomers (54%) say the use of marijuana should be legal, up sharply from earlier years. And while a smaller share of the Silent Generation (39%) currently favors legalization, support among these Americans has also increased.

Democrats are more likely than Republicans to support the legalization of marijuana (69% vs. 45%). Around two-thirds of independents (68%) also favor legalization. Support has increased among all three groups over the last decade.

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Drugs Domestic Affairs and Policy

By Hannah Hartig

Republicans express intensely negative views of “socialism” and highly positive views of “capitalism.”

By contrast, majorities of Democrats view both terms positively, though only modest shares have strong impressions of each term.

Overall, a much larger share of Americans have a positive impression of capitalism (65%) than socialism (42%), according to a new survey by Pew Research Center.

There are large partisan differences in views of capitalism: Nearly eight-in-ten Republicans and Republican-leaning independents (78%) express somewhat or very positive reactions to the term, while just over half of Democrats and Democratic leaners (55%) say they have a positive impression.

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Capitalism Political Polarization U.S. Political Parties Political Attitudes and Values

NEWS IN THE NUMBERS

5 facts about religion in Canada

Amid measles outbreak, New York closes religious exemption for vaccinations – but most states retain it

What we know about illegal immigration from Mexico

Republicans far more likely than Democrats to say fact-checkers tend to favor one side

How people in G20 nations see key issues ahead of this year’s summit

Women’s empowerment

6 facts about Democrats as the party holds its presidential debates

5 facts about marijuana

Stark partisan divisions in Americans’ views of ‘socialism,’ ‘capitalism’

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