Tag: Prosperity Watch

Prosperity Watch: State’s employment looking for growth in all the wrong places

October 31, 2012 at 3:55 pmCategory:NC Budget and Tax Center

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As seen in the latest issue of Prosperity Watch, North Carolina’s persistently high unemployment rate is not only the result of having 3 workers for every available job, but also due to weaknesses in those industries that employ the majority of the state’s workers.  Only a fraction of the state’s employment base is concentrated in industries that are poised for long-term growth and pay decent wages, while the overwhelming majority of North Carolina’s workers are employed in industries experiencing long-term decline–a serious problem for ensuring the long-term economic competitiveness of the state. For details, see this week’s Prosperity Watch.

 

Prosperity Watch: Income inequality grows in North Carolina, likely slowing economic growth

October 10, 2012 at 12:03 pmCategory:NC Budget and Tax Center

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Income inequality in America has been building for decades. Just last year, income inequality set a  modern record—and the roots of the problem are the jobs deficit, the acceleration of low-wage jobs, and the tax code. As discussed in the latest issue of Prosperity Watch, income inequality is widespread and growing in North Carolina, with the top fifth of households holding over half of all state income. For more details, visit Prosperity Watch.

Prosperity Watch: Climbing jobs deficit presents clear need for policy solutions

October 3, 2012 at 4:56 pmCategory:NC Budget and Tax Center

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We are entering a season of intense debate over the challenges facing North Carolina.  As discussed in the latest issue of Prosperity Watch, the new jobs numbers released by the NC Division of Employment Security last week confirmed what North Carolina’s workers have known from first-hand experience—the state is just not experiencing enough job creation to keep pace with the demands of its growing population. Dealing with this problem is one of the defining challenges of our time and presents a clear call for concrete policy solutions.  For more details, visit Prosperity Watch.

Prosperity Watch: 2000s-era economic recovery failed to reduce poverty prior to the Great Recession

September 26, 2012 at 12:45 pmCategory:NC Budget and Tax Center

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As North Carolinians are learning the hard way, not all recessions are followed by robust economic recoveries.  For all our concern over the current recovery, however, the years between the 2001 recession and the Great Recession of 2007-2009 also generated historically unprecedented negative economic trends. As the latest issue of Prosperity Watch demonstrates, the nation’s (and state’s) poverty rate failed to drop in the years of the formal recovery following the 2001 recession–the first time since the 1930s that post-recession economic growth proved unable to reduce poverty across the United States.  For more details, see Prosperity Watch.

Big decline in high-wage jobs, big boom in low-wage jobs since 2000s

September 12, 2012 at 12:15 pmCategory:NC Budget and Tax Center

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With unemployment in North Carolina at 9.6%, policy makers are rightfully focused on ensuring that the state’s economy creates more jobs for Tarheel workers. But as this week’s Prosperity Watch demonstrates, the state also needs to focus on creating better jobs, as well, jobs that pay decent wages and allow workers to support their families. Creating these good jobs would reverse the troubling reality of low-wage job creation seen during the 2000s.  As the new issue points out, North Carolina’s economy lost hundreds of thousands of high-wage jobs from 2001 to 2011, and in their place, saw a boom in low-wage employment instead. What caused this shift from high-wage to low-wage work? For more details, see this week’s Prosperity Watch.