An empty newsroom at The Denver Post as layoffs were being announced in March 2018. (Aaron Ontiveroz/The Denver Post via Getty Images)
Layoffs continue to pummel U.S. newspapers. Roughly a quarter of papers with an average Sunday circulation of 50,000 or more experienced layoffs in 2018, according to a new Pew Research Center analysis.
The layoffs come on top of the roughly one-third of papers in the same circulation range that experienced layoffs in 2017. What’s more, the number of jobs typically cut by newspapers in 2018 tended to be higher than in the year before.
Mid-market newspapers were the most likely to suffer layoffs in 2018 – unlike in 2017, when the largest papers most frequently saw cutbacks. Meanwhile, digital-native news outlets also faced continued layoffs: In 2018, 14% of the highest-traffic digital-native news outlets went through layoffs, down slightly from one-in-five in 2017.
The following analysis examines layoffs at large newspapers and digital-native news outlets during the full 2017 and 2018 calendar years. An earlier analysis by the Center looked at layoffs at news organizations covering the period from January 2017 to April 2018.
Donte Small turns in his final exam to his professor, Jill Zimmerman, at Goucher College in Towson, Maryland. (Marvin Joseph/The Washington Post via Getty Images)
Racial and ethnic diversity has increased among college faculty in the United States over the past two decades, but faculty are still much more likely than students to be white.
In fall 2017, about three-quarters of postsecondary faculty members in the U.S. were white (76%), compared with 55% of undergraduates, according to the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES). In contrast, around a quarter of postsecondary faculty were nonwhite (24%), versus 45% of students. (Postsecondary faculty includes all faculty across institutions that grant associate degrees and higher.)
Kindergartners listen as teacher Bertha Picasso reads a book in Spanish at Marjorie Veeh Elementary School in Tustin, California. (Jeff Gritchen/Digital First Media/Orange County Register via Getty Images)
Today’s kindergartners offer a glimpse of tomorrow’s demographics. The number of states where at least one-in-five public school kindergartners are Latino has more than doubled since 2000, according to a new Pew Research Center analysis of Census Bureau data.
In 18 states and the District of Columbia, Latino children accounted for at least 20% of public school kindergarten students in 2017 (the most recent year available), up from eight states in 2000. However, only two states – Massachusetts and Nebraska – and the District have joined this list since 2010, while one state (Idaho) dropped off. This reflects the fact that Hispanic population growth has slowed over the past decade or so due to a declining number of births and a decrease in immigration, particularly from Mexico.
At nearly 60 million, Hispanics are the nation’s largest racial or ethnic minority group. They make up 18% of the U.S. population and have dispersed across the country widely since the 1980s. The states where at least one-in-five kindergartners are Hispanic include some with historically few Hispanics, such as Massachusetts, Nebraska and Washington.
Since 2014, the number of K-12 public school students from racial and ethnic minority groups – including Hispanic, black and Asian Americans – has been higher than the white student population nationwide, according to the U.S. Department of Education. In fall 2019, children from racial and ethnic minority groups are projected to make up 52.9% of public K-12 students. That’s a sharp increase from 1995, when minority groups accounted for just 35.2% of these students.
By a wide margin, Americans say they favor raising the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour. But there is a deep partisan divide in views of this proposed policy – a version of which recently passed the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives, though it is unlikely to be taken up by the GOP-controlled Senate.
Two-thirds of Americans (67%) support raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour, including 41% who say they strongly favor such an increase, according to a Pew Research Center survey conducted this spring.
Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents are largely united in backing a $15 an hour federal minimum wage: 86% favor this, including nearly six-in-ten (59%) who say they strongly support it.
Republican opinion on this issue is more divided, but a majority of Republicans and Republican leaners – 57% – oppose raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour, including nearly three-in-ten (29%) who say they are strongly against it.
There were more 27-year-olds in the United States than people of any other age in 2018. But for white Americans, the most common age was 58, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of Census Bureau data.
In the histogram above, which shows the total number of Americans of each age last year, non-Hispanic whites tend to skew toward the older end of the spectrum (more to the right), while racial and ethnic minority groups – who include everyone except single-race non-Hispanic whites – skew younger (more to the left).
The most common age was 11 for Hispanics, 27 for blacks and 29 for Asians as of last July, the latest estimates available. Americans of two or more races were by far the youngest racial or ethnic group in the Census Bureau data, with a most common age of just 3 years old. Among all racial and ethnic minorities, the most common age was 27.
Four years ago, technology companies were widely seen as having a positive impact on the United States. But the share of Americans who hold this view has tumbled 21 percentage points since then, from 71% to 50%.
Negative views of technology companies’ impact on the country have nearly doubled during this period, from 17% to 33%, according to a new Pew Research Center survey. Nearly one-in-five (18%) now volunteer their impact has been neither positive nor negative or that it is mixed, or they offer no opinion.
The survey, which asks about the impact of seven major institutions and groups – including banks, universities, the news media and religious organizations – finds that no more than about half of U.S. adults say any of them are having a positive effect on the country.
There are substantial partisan differences in these views, but the gap between Democrats and Republicans is relatively modest when it comes to technology companies: Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents are 10 percentage points more likely than Republicans and GOP leaners to say these firms have a positive effect on the way things are going in the country (54% vs. 44%). Since 2015, there have been similar declines in positive views among members of both parties.
From national laws regulating religious dress to local laws banning public worship by Muslims, religious restrictions have in recent years become more common in Europe. Indeed, while the Middle East-North Africa region had the highest levels of religious restrictions in the world, Europe saw some of the biggest increases over the last decade in certain types of restrictions.
These findings come from a recent Pew Research Center report that analyzes restrictions on religion (by both governments and private individuals or social groups) from 2007 to 2017. The report measures various types of government restrictions and social hostilities across eight different categories on a scale from zero to 10.
In one of these categories – government limits on religious activity – Europe’s score doubled over a 10-year period. This was one of the largest increases in any of the five global regions analyzed. (An explanation of the methodology is available here.)
The population of Puerto Rico stood at 3.2 million in 2018, its lowest point since 1979 and down sharply from 2017, when hurricanes Maria and Irma hit the island, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data. The 3.9% decline in 2018 represents the largest year-to-year drop since 1950, the first year for which annual data is available.
The number of people in Puerto Rico has dropped by 632,000 since its peak in 2004. Even before the hurricanes hit, Puerto Rico’s population was expected to drop to less than 3 million by 2025, according to projections published in 2017. The mid-2000s marked a turning point for the island’s economy, when it entered a recession from which it has not recovered. Since then, many Puerto Ricans have left the island for the U.S. mainland, in particular for Florida, often citing job- and family-related reasons.
(Photos by Justin Sullivan and Bill Pugliano/Getty Images)
Three years after Hillary Clinton became the first woman to be a major U.S. political party’s nominee for president, a historic high of six women are running for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination. But how do Americans feel about the prospect of a woman in the White House? And what barriers do they see for women in politics?
A Pew Research Center survey conducted in 2018, before any of the current contenders announced their candidacy, found that more than four-in-ten Americans (45%) said they personally hoped a woman would be elected president in their lifetime. About half of all women (51%) said they personally hoped this would happen, compared with 38% of men.
Overall, Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents were more likely than Republicans and Republican leaners to say they hoped a woman would be elected president in their lifetime (63% vs. 24%). But Democratic women were particularly likely to say this (68% vs. 56% of Democratic men). And in a survey conducted this spring, Democratic women were more likely than Democratic men to express enthusiasm at the prospect of the party’s nominee being a woman.
As the next round of the Democratic presidential debates approaches, Democrats are largely united in the belief that the federal government has a responsibility to make sure all Americans have health care coverage. However, they are internally divided over how this should be achieved.
Overall, 53% of Americans say it is the responsibility of the federal government to make sure all Americans have health care coverage, while 44% say the government does not have this responsibility. The share saying the government is responsible for ensuring all Americans have health care coverage has declined from 60% in September 2018.
Republicans and Democrats continue to hold opposing views on whether or not it is the responsibility of the federal government to ensure health care coverage. While about eight-in-ten Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents (81%) say the federal government has a responsibility to make sure all Americans have health coverage, a similar share of Republicans and Republican leaners (77%) say the government does not have this responsibility.
Those who say the government is responsible for making sure all Americans have health coverage are divided over how health insurance should be provided. While 27% of adults support a single national government program, a similar share (24%) say universal health care should be provided through a mix of private insurance companies and government programs.
The layoffs come on top of the roughly one-third of papers in the same circulation range that experienced layoffs in 2017. What’s more, the number of jobs typically cut by newspapers in 2018 tended to be higher than in the year before.
Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents are largely united in backing a $15 an hour federal minimum wage: 86% favor this, including nearly six-in-ten (59%) who say they strongly support it.
Negative views of technology companies’ impact on the country have nearly doubled during this period, from 17% to 33%, according to a new Pew Research Center survey. Nearly one-in-five (18%) now volunteer their impact has been neither positive nor negative or that it is mixed, or they offer no opinion.
The population of Puerto Rico stood at 3.2 million in 2018, its lowest point since 1979 and down sharply from 2017, when hurricanes Maria and Irma hit the island, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data. The 
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Republicans and Democrats continue to hold opposing views on whether or not it is the responsibility of the federal government to ensure health care coverage. While about eight-in-ten Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents (81%) say the federal government has a responsibility to make sure all Americans have health coverage, a similar share of Republicans and Republican leaners (77%) say the government does not have this responsibility.