According to the New York Times, full-time employees in retail generally make less than $33,000 a year. The same article states that “42 percent of retail workers earn a low hourly wage — defined as less than two-thirds of the median wage across the economy.”
Accumulating student loan debt has become a typical part of higher education for students. As of March 2018, nearly 44 million Americans owed over $1.48 trillion in student loan debt, a number expected to grow as tuition rates outpace inflation and wage growth. Few people experience the hardships of student loan debt more than students of color. Approximately 77.7% of all black students use federal student loans to pay for their education. That group also has the highest loan default rates and lowest graduation rates among college students.
Washington, D.C. – On Wednesday, Mick Mulvaney, acting director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), informed his staff that he would be shutting down the bureau’s Office for Students and Young Consumers and folding it into the Office of Financial Education. In response, Mark Huelsman, Senior Analyst and student debt expert at Demos, issued the following statement:
Rather than excluding students, progressive states like New Jersey have an opportunity to lead and expand the universe of the possible on issues like free college.
In Everyone’s America: State Policies for an Equal Say in Our Democracy and an Equal Chance in Our Economy, Demos lays out race-forward economic and pro-democracy policy agendas, centering the working class and people of color.
Six years ago today, on April 25, 2012, activists took to the streets to mark the country’s outstanding student-loan debt surpassing $1 trillion. And in the years since, many of the trends that pushed student debt levels to climb have persisted and in some cases gotten worse.
Mark Huelsman, a senior policy analyst at Demos, the left-leaning public policy organization, said he understands why debt-burdened students might take the risk of losing money in cryptocurrency markets. “The risk inherent in higher education now is higher than it ever has been," he said.
While the payoff for a good education remains, the costs are increasingly being borne by families. Debt, he said, is now basically required in order to earn a college degree.
While the United States has made strides to advance health access with the passage of the Affordable Care Act, health access remains a struggle for far too many families.
The Black Census Project is intended to “give us a better sense of who black people are, where we are, and what we hope and dream for,” says Alicia Garza who also helped start the Black Lives Matter movement.
Despite major gains with the passage of the Affordable Care Act, the United States remains a global outlier when it comes to delivering affordable health care for its people.
Instead of policies and agency practices that divide us by doubling down on the grave inequality created by historic and current discrimination, we should advance policies that repair these rifts and bring us together.
[A]ccording to our in-depth analysis of data from Demos and NCES, black and Hispanic students are paying more when it comes to student loans than white students. [...]
Demos’ new briefing book, Everyone’s Economy, offers an economic agenda that will enable all of us to thrive. Women’s History Month is an opportunity to dig into the ways that a race-conscious, populist economic agenda must elevate women. Over the next 2 weeks, Demos will share a series of blog posts that explore different ways that policy can impact women’s economic opportunity and stability. Today we look at why reproductive justice is vital to women’s economic well-being.
According to a new study by Demos, a progressive think tank, public colleges aren’t so public anymore, and that’s deepening America’s racial and economic rift, an article on MarketWatch reports. [...]