The Great Recession that began December 2007 and ended in June 2009 preceded one of the weakest economic recoveries on record, with both wages and employment stagnating well into the following decade. The public sector in particular—local, state, and federal employment—failed to rebound to pre-recession levels for many years after the recession ended, and in […]
Published May 14, 2020 as part of the UC Berkeley Labor Center’s Covid-19 Series: Resources, Data, and Analysis for California. The economic consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic have been severe: at least 30 million people have lost their jobs and millions of others have seen their incomes decline. Governments are spending billions of dollars on public health and the safety net. […]
I spoke with an sfgate.com reporter recently about how the COVID-19 crisis could impact Bay Area local governments. As always, there is a lot I said that didn’t make it into the article so here’s a bit longer ramble. I’m working on updating the numbers and data underlying these thoughts, so this is just some […]
“In every recession, it’s true that you’re losing revenue at the same time as you want to be able to spend more money,” Hinkley says. “Counties and cities have to be spending more on public health, on housing people, on emergency equipment, on ensuring that people are staying at home. It’s difficult to manage spending […]
The Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) is now the primary anti-poverty program in the U.S., but it has not kept up with wage stagnation. Berkeley faculty recently proposed an increase in the federal EITC, California has adopted an expansion of its own state EITC, and Congress passed a tax bill that fails to help EITC […]