About 7 years ago

03/28/2017 - Midnight Reads – Americans Agree on Paid Leave, but Not on Who Should Pay

Americans Agree on Paid Leave, but Not on Who Should Pay

– The New York Times 

Most people say workers should get paid leave to take care of a baby, a sick family member or themselves, according to two new surveys. But they disagree on the details: who should pay, and whether it should be mandatory or optional. This ambivalence helps explain a paradox: why a policy with so much bipartisan support has nonetheless failed to be enacted. The United States is the only industrialized country that doesn’t mandate paid leave.

 

Family and Parental Leave Policies Are New Front for Labor Supporters

– The Seattle Times 

In Washington, among the most liberal states in the U.S., employee advocates on both the city and state levels say family and parental leave is a next top priority, with some business groups saying they want to avoid a patchwork of local measures. This could be the model for future action all over the country.

 

Study Finds White Working Class Increasingly Dying ‘Deaths of Despair’

– The Chicago Tribune 

A new paper by two Princeton University economists concludes that less-educated middle-age white Americans are dying disproportionately from suicides, drug overdoses and alcohol-related diseases. The paper argues that the trend is driven by the loss of steady middle-income jobs for those with a high school diploma or less, dynamics that helped fuel the rise of President Donald Trump who won widespread support among this demographic.

 

The Era of Massive Low-Skilled Immigration May Already Be Over

– The Wall Street Journal 

The flow of foreign workers without a college education into the U.S. is likely to dwindle in the coming decades due to demographic and other forces, new research suggests, even if President Donald Trump doesn’t carry out his pledge to build a wall on the southern border. The dilemma facing the United States is not so much how to arrest massive increases in the supply of foreign labor, but rather how to prepare for a lower-immigration future.