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Economic Policies That Raise Wages, Part II

Posted by Mark Price on November 2, 2015 2:15 pm

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Below is the fifth and final excerpt in a series reprinting The State of Working Pennsylvania 2015 report, released by Keystone Research Center on Sept. 2:

KRC/PBPC Insider News for the Week Ending Oct. 23, 2015

Posted by Shelley Aragoncillo on October 26, 2015 11:19 am

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State House Majority Leader Dave Reed told Patriot-News/Pennlive.com Editorial Page Editor John Micek last week that the next few weeks will be critical in the ongoing state budget negotiations. Leader Reed said there is bipartisan support for more funding for education and a lot of interest in property tax relief. But there isn’t agreement yet on how these should be achieved. "We want to fix the structural deficit.

Economic Policies That Raise Wages

Posted by Mark Price on October 21, 2015 3:08 pm

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Below is the fourth in a series of excerpts from The State of Working Pennsylvania 2015 report, released by Keystone Research Center on Sept. 2, which will appear on Third and State in the coming weeks:

Raise the Minimum Wage

The most direct route to raising wages for low-wage workers is to raise the minimum wage. Federally the campaign to raise the minimum wage remains blocked by a Republican majority in the U.S. House and Senate.

KRC/PBPC Insider News for the Week Ending Sept. 4, 2015

Posted by Shelley Aragoncillo on September 8, 2015 10:05 am

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The Associated Press reported that Gov. Wolf is trying a new strategy as the state budget impasse extended into its ninth week – negotiating in private meetings with top Republican leaders instead of in brief but large gatherings with dozens of legislators and their staff. On Sept. 1, Gov. Wolf met at his official residence with Senate Majority Leader Jake Corman and House Majority Leader Dave Reed.

Some bodice-ripping prose from the State of Working Pennsylvania you may have missed!

Posted by Mark Price on September 8, 2017 8:26 am

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Ok, a bodice-ripping romance novel is not how anyone would describe the State of Working Pennsylvania, but now that we have your attention hopefully you will continue reading about four key decision points facing Pennsylvania policymakers considering changing Pennsylvania’s Minimum Wage Act: subminimum wages, local preemption, indexing, and wage theft.

State of Working Pennsylvania 2017

Posted by Mark Price on September 1, 2017 3:51 pm

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On Thursday we released the 22^nd edition of the State of Working Pennsylvania in which we review the current state of the economy with an eye towards changes in the standard of living for working families in the commonwealth. One of the new pieces of information we present in this year’s report, with the help of the crack staff at the Economic Policy Institute, is the median wage for full-time full-year workers in Pennsylvania since 1968.

OP-ED: Pennsylvania needs a fairer tax system

Posted by Marc Stier on January 4, 2017 4:44 pm

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State of Working PA

This piece originally appeared in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, December 26, 2016.

Pennsylvania faces another budget crisis. The combined deficit for this year and next is roughly $3 billion. It’s time all Pennsylvanians — and especially the members of our General Assembly — recognize that recurrent budget crises won’t stop until we fix our upside-down tax system.

SWPA 2016: College No Longer Guarantees Rising Wages—Degree Holders Need Agenda to Raise PA’s Pay Too

Posted by John Neurohr on October 28, 2016 8:13 am

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State of Working PA

The post below is one of a series of posts about specific trends examined in the recently-released annual edition of The State of Working Pennsylvania.

We’ve already laid out how Pennsylvania men without a college degree have not shared in Pennsylvania's economic gains over the past few decades and how women without a college degree are still playing catch up. What about Pennsylvanians with a college degree, though?

For years, having a bachelor’s degree was the key to unlocking jobs with rising wages. Up until 2000, male college graduates in Pennsylvania fared better than those without a four-year college degree when it came to increasing wages. Hourly earnings climbed for white and black men with at least a bachelor’s degree by 23 percent and 14 percent respectively between 1979-81 and 2000-02.

SWPA 2016 Highlight: Non-College Pennsylvania Women Still Playing Catch Up

Posted by John Neurohr on September 23, 2016 2:49 pm

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State of Working PA

The post below is one of a series of posts about specific trends examined in the recently-released annual edition of The State of Working Pennsylvania.

We’ve already laid out how Pennsylvania men without a college degree have not shared in Pennsylvania's economic gains over the past few decades. What about women?

White women with less than a bachelor’s degree in Pennsylvania have fared a little better than similarly-educated men, experiencing a 13 percent increase in hourly earnings since 1979-81 -- a one third of one percent increase annually. Black women with less than a bachelor’s degree saw their inflation-adjusted hourly earnings decline 1 percent in the last 36 years.

An Extraordinary Year of Income Growth in Pennsylvania

Posted by Mark Price on September 16, 2016 9:11 am

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Yesterday the Census Bureau released data from the American Community Survey showing that median household incomes in Pennsylvania rose by just over $2,400 in the last year, strong evidence that an economy nearing full employment generates rising wages for workers. Higher-income families have now surpassed their pre-Great Recession incomes but the lower-income half of families have not.

Third and State