Introduction In December 2018, Finland’s Social Insurance Institution, KELA, terminated their two-year Universal Basic Income (UBI) experiment that aimed to “increase employment and simplify the Social Security system” citing insignificant changes in the employment rate of participants. Despite this outcome, prominent U.S. figures–such as Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg– and the California Democratic Party still … Continue reading
Three months after his inauguration, President Donald Trump signed an executive order enacting a trademark promise of his campaign: “Buy American, Hire American.” Among other things, the order directed his administration to review the current immigration system and determine policies for the United States to promote higher wages and employment for American workers. One the … Continue reading
by Finn D. Reynolds On April 6th, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) announced it had reached the 65,000 H-1B visa cap for 2019, as well as the 20,000 cap for advanced degree petitioners. This comes just five days after USCIS started accepting H-1B petitions, and marks the sixth consecutive year that it reached the … Continue reading
The single strongest indicator of the opioid crisis is drug overdoses, which have grown rapidly in recent years due to opioid dependency. The rise in overdose deaths has been driven by opioid dependency, fueled by over prescription. Between 1999 and 2015, prescription opioid sales per capita rose 356 percent[1]. During that period, opioid-related deaths quadrupled. … Continue reading
In my previous blog, I discussed different ways to measure the skills gap. Main findings reveal that middle-skills jobs compromise the largest gap followed by high-skills jobs, and that soft-skills gap exists across the skill levels. Suppose we are able to find a consistent and quantifiable measurement to prove this. The next step would be … Continue reading
In the United States, the number of unemployed and number of open jobs has remained above 6 million since June 2017. Most recently in September 2017, the United States had 6.8 million unemployed people while there were 6.2 million open jobs. Thus, it is evident that the current problem is not unemployment but a “broken … Continue reading
Is the Skills Gap Real? On July 28th, Labor Secretary R. Alexander Acosta announced in his blog that there are about 6 million open jobs in the U.S, and it is estimated that American companies are missing out on nearly USD 250 billion due to these unfilled jobs. This number is large compared to 6.9 … Continue reading
