For some job seekers, repeated rejection by potential employers may be traceable to an unlikely source: their credit report.
Regulators are cracking down on some of the methods companies are using to screen candidates (two major companies this week were accused of using background checks to discriminate against black applicants.) But employers’ use of credit checks during the hiring process is legal and fairly common.
Evelyn Coke was a Jamaican-born, single mother of five who worked for decades providing care for sick and frail people in their homes. She came to the United States in her thirties and ultimately brought her children to live with her in New York City.
Last month Nevada joined a growing number of states and cities that are forbidding companies from using credit checks to make employment decisions. But the practice is still legal under federal law. [...]
The retail sector has been a star of recent jobs reports. May's numbers from the Department of Labor say it was responsible for adding 28,000 positions to the overall economy. It's on an upward trend – the monthly retail employment number has averaged 20,000 for the past year.
Considering one in nine Americans work in, for or in stores ranging from the corner grocery to big box behemoths, this should be great news. And it would be – if these jobs paid anything resembling a living wage. But all too many of them don't. [...]
Costco pays its workers wages well-above the industry standard, offering a reported average of $20.89 per hour plus affordable health coverage, vacation time, and a matched 401(k). This investment pays off in terms of a shockingly low rate of employee turnover.
“Welfare” as it now exists in the United States aims to provide a short-term safety net for very needy families with children and prepare adults to get jobs. The Temporary Assistance for Needy Families law passed by Congress in 1996 said that cash assistance should be limited to no more than five years (sixty months) over a lifetime.
As members of the class of 2013 stepped on stage to receive their diplomas, the unemployment rate in America stood at 7.6 percent — a bit better than the past four years, but that ain't saying much. Before the financial crisis, students graduating in 2007 faced a much rosier jobless rate of only 4.7 percent. The fact of the matter is that the past four years of high unemployment numbers represent the worst economy the country has suffered in 70 years, and young adults are shouldering a hefty part of the burden.
Yesterday, Senator Jeff Merkley (D-OR) got off to an auspicious start as chair of the Banking Subcommittee on Economic Policy by doing something that is all too novel—inviting people with the most at stake in economic policy decisions to testify in Congress.
When fast food workers went on strike recently in Washington State, they weren't just protesting low wages. They were also protesting the lack of enough work hours and reliable schedules.
Like low-wage employers everywhere, restaurant chains in Washington go to great lengths to limit their workers to under 30 hours a week. Once an employee goes over that threshold, they qualify for benefits that even low road employers feel they have must offer.
(New York, NY) – In light of Walmart’s illegal retaliation and intimidation tactics against the members of the Organization United for Respect at Walmart (OUR Walmart), who recently announced their plans to strike for better work place practices, Demos Vice President of Policy and Outreach Heather McGhee issued this statement in support:
With a contracting retirement income system, rapidly rising health-care costs, and the prospect of long-term care expenses, one would have thought that people approaching retirement would be paying off their credit card debt and closing out their mortgages. But surveys suggest that people are entering retirement with more debt than ever before and relying on borrowing to cover expenses in retirement.
Around the world, wealthy countries might be creating jobs but they’re worse jobs that pay lower wages and offer fewer benefits. In the United States, one of the largest employers of low-wage workers is Walmart. About 1.4 million Americans work for Walmart — the company has about two million employees worldwide. And the average hourly wage for a Walmart associate? An estimated $8.81 an hour.
Worried about your ability to set money aside for retirement? You should also worry about what happens to the money you do manage to put away. According to a report fromDemos, the typical two-earner family with an employer-sponsored account will end up paying some 30 percent of its retirement nest egg – a total of $155,000 – to Wall Street money managers in 401(k) fees and charges.
It’s hard enough for any specific anti-poverty policy to achieve its mission, let alone work in tandem with other policies to tackle a problem that tends to be complex and entrenched. That's why Washington State’s food stamp program is remarkable, and a candidate for national expansion, if only Congress could agree not to slash SNAP funds in the latest iteration of the Farm Bill.
The fight to raise wages for fast food workers has now spread to the American West, with employees of a Seattle Taco Bell walking off the job on Wednesday night, forcing the store to close.
Workers at other fast food restaurants in the city walked off their jobs on Thursday.
In the study Robert Hiltonsmith and I recently completed, we find that taxpayers underwrite nearly 2 million poorly-paid jobs through federal contracts and other funding streams that channel our public dollars to private companies that perform work on behalf of America, but treat their employees in a very un-American way, failing to pay enough to support a family.
Apparently Justin Bieber has nothing to do with the new Los Angeles billboard that uses his image and name to oppose raising the minimum wage, on the grounds that such a hike would keep the teenage unemployment rate high.
Apple always seemed like the perfect company. Not so fast. When CEO Tim Cook testified before Congress on May 25, he didn’t come to talk about Apple’s latest amazing gadget or the need to grant more visas to computer programmers. Rather, in his maiden voyage to Capitol Hill as Steve Jobs’s successor, Cook had to defend the company’s tax-avoidance efforts. What should have been a triumph for Cook was instead an awkward encounter. [...]
It used to be that many Americans entered retirement having paid off their mortgages and most of their other debts. This should have been senior citizens' Golden Years.
Nowadays, more and more people over the age of 65 are struggling with mounting debt levels, fueled primarily by mortgages and credit cards. The average debt held by senior citizens has ballooned to $50,000 in 2010, up 83% since 2001, according to Federal Reserve data crunched by the Employee Benefit Research Institute. [...]
On May 21, I had the opportunity to testify before a Congressional Progressive Caucus meeting on how federal dollars drive inequality by paying contractors who pay too many of their workers too little. The hearing was driven by a study from Amy Traub and her colleagues at Demos, a New York based think tank, that issued a report exposing the many ways that federal contracting often adds to the burden of the low income, especially those who earn less than $12 an hour, or less than $25,000 a year.