Newsroom employment across the United States continues to decline, driven primarily by job losses at newspapers. And even though digital-native news outlets have experienced some recent growth in employment, they have added too few newsroom positions to make up for recent losses in the broader industry, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Employment Statistics survey data.
From 2008 to 2018, newsroom employment in the U.S. dropped by 25%. In 2008, about 114,000 newsroom employees – reporters, editors, photographers and videographers – worked in five industries that produce news: newspaper, radio, broadcast television, cable and “other information services” (the best match for digital-native news publishers). By 2018, that number had declined to about 86,000, a loss of about 28,000 jobs.
The U.S. Hispanic population reached a record 59.9 million in 2018, up 1.2 million over the previous year and up from 47.8 million in 2008, according to newly released U.S. Census Bureau population estimates. Over the past decade, however, population growth among Hispanics has slowed as the annual number of births to Hispanic women has declined and immigration has decreased, particularly from Mexico.
Even so, Latinos remain an important part of the nation’s overall demographic story. Between 2008 and 2018, the Latino share of the total U.S. population increased from 16% to 18%. Latinos accounted for about half (52%) of all U.S. population growth over this period.
Here are some key facts about how the nation’s Latino population has changed over the past decade:
Andrew Kohut, the founding director of Pew Research Center and its president from 2004 to 2012, was one of the nation’s leading pollsters. He died in 2015. His work, over three decades, won him wide respect for his expertise and ability to craft stories about what people could learn from survey research. One of his particular talents was to reach back in time to take a snapshot of the mood of Americans in another era to show how much times had changed.
Here is one of those articles, originally published on Nov. 20, 2013.
As America marks the 50th anniversary of John F. Kennedy’s death, his life, family, strengths and weakness have been pored over in recent weeks, but little has been said about how the public viewed the country during the Kennedy years. The Gallup polls of that period illustrate how different a time this was. The mood of America then had few parallels with the modern era.
New York City’s 2017 Independence Day display. (Eduardo Munoz Alvarez/AFP/Getty Images)
Independence Day is a national celebration of freedom, fireworks, family, friends and frankfurters. It’s also, by one measure, the most dangerous day of the year.
On average, more than 45,000 people visit U.S. hospital emergency rooms for treatment of injuries on July 4 and 5 – nearly 91,000 in total, by far the highest daily numbers in the entire year. By comparison, the average daily number of injury-related ER visits over the summer months (June, July and August) is about 40,700. The holidays that bookend summer have somewhat higher averages – about 41,900 for the last week in May, covering Memorial Day weekend, and 42,200 for the first week of September, which typically includes Labor Day weekend – but even they are well below Independence Day.
The biggest reason for the Fourth of July spike in injury-related ER visits? No surprise: fireworks. On average, more than half of all the fireworks-related injuries Americans sustain each year occur during the first eight days of July – a total of nearly 4,900 last year.
(Education Images/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)
Americans ages 60 and older are alone for more than half of their daily measured time – which includes all waking hours except those spent engaged in personal activities such as grooming. All told, this amounts to about seven hours a day; and among those who live by themselves, alone time rises to over 10 hours a day, according to a new Pew Research Center analysis of Bureau of Labor Statistics data.
In comparison, people in their 40s and 50s spend about 4 hours and 45 minutes alone, and those younger than 40 spend about three and a half hours a day alone, on average. Moreover, 14% of older Americans report spending all their daily measured time alone, compared with 8% of people younger than 60.
While time spent alone is not necessarily associated with adverse effects, it can be used as a measure of social isolation, which in turn is linked with negative health outcomes among older adults. Medical experts suspect that lifestyle factors may explain some of this association – for instance, someone who is socially isolated may have less cognitive stimulation and more difficulty staying active or taking their medications. In some cases, social isolation may mean there is no one on hand to help in case of a medical emergency.
Last year’s Fourth of July Parade in San Gabriel, California. (Xinhua/Zhao Hanrong via Getty Images)
In a Pew Research Center survey in early 2018, around three-quarters of Americans (74%) said voting in elections was very important to what it means to be a good citizen, and around seven-in-ten said the same about paying taxes (71%) and always following the law (69%). But Democrats and Republicans – as well as younger and older adults – didn’t see eye to eye on all the traits and behaviors associated with good citizenship.
In addition to voting, paying taxes and following the law, a majority of Americans said several other traits were very important to good citizenship, including serving on a jury if called (61%); respecting the opinions of others who disagree (61%); and participating in the U.S. census every decade (60%). (The survey was conducted before the Commerce Department announced it would add a question about citizenship to the 2020 census – a decision blocked by the Supreme Court last week.)
Smaller shares said it was very important to good citizenship for Americans to volunteer to help others (52%), know the Pledge of Allegiance (50%), follow what happens in government and politics (49%) and protest when government actions are believed to be wrong (45%).
And although there will be plenty of them out on July Fourth, displaying the American flag ranked at the bottom of the list: A little over a third of U.S. adults (36%) viewed this as very important to good citizenship, though an additional 26% said it was somewhat important.
About six-in-ten U.S. Hispanic adults (58%) say they have experienced discrimination or been treated unfairly because of their race or ethnicity, though their experiences vary by skin color, according to a recently released Pew Research Center survey.
About two-thirds of Hispanics with darker skin colors (64%) report they have experienced discrimination or been treated unfairly regularly or from time to time, compared with half of those with a lighter skin tone. These differences in experiences with discrimination hold even after controlling for characteristics such as gender, age, education and whether they were born in the U.S. or abroad.
Latinos with darker skin are more likely than those with lighter skin to report a specific incident of discrimination. A majority of Latinos with a darker skin color (55%) say that, because of their race or ethnicity, people have acted as if they were not smart, compared with 36% of Latinos with a lighter skin color. Similarly, about half of Latinos with darker skin (53%) say they have been subject to slurs or jokes, compared with about a third of those with a lighter skin color (34%).
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.
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.
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.
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.
Newsroom employment across the United States continues to decline, driven primarily by job losses at newspapers. And even though digital-native news outlets have experienced some recent growth in employment, they have added too few newsroom positions to make up for recent losses in the broader industry, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Employment Statistics survey data.
