As we near the end of the month, we are nearing the expiration of the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA) program. This program issues a $600 weekly benefit for Americans that typically do not qualify for unemployment insurance. Those eligible include the individuals who are self-employed, part-time employees and others who do not have qualifying work … Continue reading
Category Archives: Labor Force
The Continued Costs of COVID-19 and Lack of Flights
Today, we are living in a historical period of the first “services recession.” This recession started with the invisible enemy, or better known as the COVID-19 virus, which interrupted our daily lives. With this widespread impact and unexpected conditions on our economy, it is difficult to detect any similarities or patterns from past recessions. As … Continue reading
The Vital Role of Marriage in our Society and Economy
Since the 1980s, divorce rates have gone down by thirty percent. On the contrary, marriage rates have decreased at an alarming rate. As a consequence, forty percent of children are born with unmarried mothers, while thirty percent of children live with one parent. These statistics draw to the underlying ill that marriage is no longer … Continue reading
Help Wanted: 5G Tower Climbers
On January 22, 2020, I was fortunate to attend a senate hearing administered by United States Senator and Chairman of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, Roger Wicker. Wicker’s agenda of the hearing pertained to the installation of the Fifth Generation (5G) wireless communication across the U.S. The installation of this new technology … Continue reading
Will the Raise the Wage Act Work?
Understanding Universal Basic Income
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
Trump’s H-1B Policies Are Neither Buying American Nor Hiring American
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
The Inefficiencies of Employer-Sponsored Visa Caps
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 Opioid Epidemic’s Age Blindness
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
How To Fix the Skills Gap
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
