A majority of workers in only four out of the nine grouped industries studied say that, for the most part, the responsibilities of their job can be done from home, according to a Pew Research Center survey conducted in October. Within these sectors, based on definitions by the U.S. Census Bureau, those saying their job can be done from home include 84% in banking, finance, accounting and real estate, 84% in information and technology, 59% in education and 59% in professional, scientific and technical services.
Among workers in these four industries who say the responsibilities of their job can mainly be done from home, about half or more say they rarely or never teleworked before the pandemic, and this is especially the case among those in the education sector (75% say they rarely or never teleworked). But majorities in all of these industries who say their job can mostly be done from home report that they are now working from home all or most of the time. This includes 90% in the information and technology sector, 75% in professional, scientific and technical services, 74% in banking, finance, accounting and real estate and 61% in education.
The just-concluded 116th Congress wasn’t especially productive in terms of the number of substantive bills it passed during its two years in office. But it set several records for lawmakers’ use of social media, according to a new Pew Research Center analysis.
Voting members of the 116th Congress collectively produced more than 2.2 million tweets and Facebook posts in 2019 and 2020. That means the median member of Congress produced more than 3,000 posts across their profiles on the two social media platforms during this span.
In total, the 116th Congress produced roughly 738,000 more social media posts than the 114th Congress of 2015-2016, the first one for which the Center has data.
At the same time, there has been a change in how some parents feel about the amount of time they spend with their children. Specifically, fathers are now more likely to say they spend the right amount of time with their children than they were before the pandemic, when a majority said they spent too little time.
President Donald Trump signs a pardon for Alice Johnson, who was serving a life sentence on drug-related charges, on Aug. 28, 2020, in Washington. (Evan Vucci/AP)
Despite a burst of pardons and commutations in his last hours in office, Donald Trump used his executive clemency power less frequently than nearly every other president since the turn of the 20th century, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of U.S. Justice Department data.
Trump granted 237 acts of clemency during his four years in the White House, including 143 pardons and 94 commutations. Only two other presidents since 1900 – George W. and George H.W. Bush – granted fewer acts of clemency than Trump.
His predecessor, Barack Obama, granted clemency 1,927 times over the course of eight years in office, the highest total of any president going back to Harry Truman. Obama’s total was skewed heavily toward commutations (1,715) instead of pardons (212).
Kamala Harris is sworn in as vice president by Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor on Jan. 20, 2021, in Washington as Harris’ husband, Doug Emhoff, and Joe Biden look on. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)
Twelve years after Barack Obama made history as the first Black U.S. president, a Black woman was sworn in as vice president of the United States following the election of Joe Biden. Kamala Harris, who is of mixed Jamaican and Indian heritage, is the first Black American, first person of Asian descent and first woman to hold the second-highest office in the country. Harris’ election represented another advance in the slow but steady progress Black Americans have made in recent decades in gaining a greater foothold in political leadership, particularly in the U.S. House of Representatives and in the Cabinets of recent presidents. But they have lagged in the Senate and in governorships.
Online harassment is often subjective when it comes to how people perceive the unpleasant or offensive behaviors that they encounter. Indeed, a notable share of Americans who have personally been targets of troubling online behaviors would not label their experience as “online harassment,” according to a new Pew Research Center report.
The Center’s survey conducted last September measured online harassment by asking respondents if they had personally experienced any of the following: offensive name-calling, purposeful embarrassment, stalking, physical threats, sexual harassment and sustained harassment. But in order to get a better understanding of how subjective this concept is, targets of these behaviors were asked if they considered their most recent incident to be “online harassment.”
Post-general election meetings of Congress, which have become routine in recent decades, are commonly known as “lame-duck” sessions. The unflattering descriptor alludes to the senators and representatives who have lost reelection or whose terms are almost up but can still help make laws for a few more weeks.
Lame-duck sessions historically were used to wrap up pending business, and more recently to cut last-minute budget deals. But none in the nearly five decades for which data is available has been as legislatively productive as the lame-duck session of the 116th Congress, which wrapped up on Jan. 3.
More than four-in-ten bills that became law out of the 116th Congress (151 of 344, or 44%) were passed in the final two months of its two-year term. That’s the highest share of lame-duck legislation since at least the 93rd Congress of 1973-74, the first years of our analysis. Among the bills enacted during the recent lame-duck session was a $900 billion economic relief bill that had been the subject of a congressional standoff for months leading up to Election Day.
Although about one-in-five U.S. adults are Catholic and Catholicism has long been one of the nation’s largest religious groups, John F. Kennedy was the only Catholic president until Biden was sworn in on Jan. 20. Aside from Biden, only one other Catholic, John Kerry, has been a presidential nominee on a major party ticket since Kennedy’s assassination in 1963.
Donald Trump’s final job approval rating as president was 29% in a Pew Research Center poll released last week, the lowest of his presidency and a 9 percentage point drop since August, when 38% of U.S. adults approved. The decrease stood out because even some of the momentous events of the past four years did not affect Trump’s approval rating very much.
So it was difficult to predict how the events of Jan. 6 – when rioters rampaged through the U.S. Capitol – might affect the public’s view of Trump in the Center’s survey, which was conducted in the days afterward. The 9-point fall in approval was the largest change between two Pew Research Center polls since Trump took office.
Most of the decline occurred among Republicans, the majority of whom were strongly supportive of Trump. How can we know that the change reflected a real shift in public opinion and was not an artifact of the poll itself, such as the possibility that some Republicans were less willing to be surveyed because of the events of Jan. 6?
Following the passage of a second stimulus package in December in response to the impact of the coronavirus outbreak, 79% of U.S. adults say another economic assistance package will be necessary. Just 20% say another package will not be needed.
The level of support for an additional package today is nearly identical to the share of Americans (80%) who said more coronavirus aid was needed in the weeks leading up to passage of a $900 billion stimulus bill late last year, according to a new Pew Research Center survey.
While majorities of both Republicans and Democrats say they think another economic assistance package will be necessary, Republicans are less likely to say this.
