Money Culture

December 7, 2021

The pandemic exposed inequities in the U.S. healthcare system. It also revealed a related shortcoming in our workplaces: the lack of mandated paid family and medical leave for most Americans – and especially lower-paid workers.

The United States is the only developed country that does not have a national policy of paid time off for an extended period for illness or maternity leave. In that way, we are keeping company with places like Micronesia and Tonga.

Many major employers do offer sick time and paid or unpaid maternity leave. Even so, 60 percent of the highest-paid workers, who tend to work in larger companies, don’t have access to paid leave for themselves or a family member for extended periods for a severe illness, according to the National Partnership for Women and Families. The situation is much tougher for lower-paid workers, who are concentrated in small business: 93 percent lack access to paid leave.

Last month, the House approved a reconciliation bill that would mandate four weeks of paid leave for all workers in the event that they or family members become ill. It’s uncertain whether this provision of the reconciliation bill will clear the Senate.

The National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) has opposed paid leave in the past, arguing that workers who take extended time off strain under-staffed small employers. Although the federal government would pay a supplement to employers for the leave under the House bill, NFIB said the required paperwork creates administrative headaches.

But this position isn’t supported by small business owners, according to a new study. Even prior to the pandemic, they were in favor of a paid leave policy for employees to take care of family members – and COVID has only strengthened their resolve.

In the fall of 2019, 62 percent of small businesses in New Jersey and New York were very or somewhat supportive of paid family leave, the researchers found. By the fall of 2020 – after months of wrestling with how to handle employees whose family members had contracted COVID – small employers’ support had jumped to 71 percent. …Learn More

March 4, 2021

Largely missing from the debate about raising the federal minimum wage is how much its value has eroded over the past 50 years.

The current federal minimum is $7.25 an hour. If the 1968 wage were converted to today’s dollars, it would be worth about $12 an hour.

At $7.25 an hour, a full-time worker earns just over $15,000 a year before taxes, which is less than the federal poverty standard for a family of two. The Biden administration has proposed more than doubling the federal minimum to $15 by 2025, and one proposal in Congress would begin indexing the minimum wage to general wages so it keeps up with inflation.

A $15 an hour minimum isn’t enough, said one sympathetic Florida contractor who voted in November to gradually increase the state’s mandatory minimum wage to $15. “I’d like to see some of the American people go out there and try to make a living and put a roof over their head and raise a family,” he told a reporter. “It’s literally impossible.”

But small businesses say raising the minimum wage would increase their financial pressures at the worst time – during a pandemic. At least 100,000 U.S. small businesses closed last year as governments restricted public gatherings to suppress the virus, and the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates a higher federal minimum could eliminate 1.4 million jobs.

This evidence ignores the complexity of low-wage workers’ situations. Employee turnover is extremely common in low-wage jobs in fast food establishments, for example, and workers frequently have bouts of unemployment that further reduce their already low earning power. Raising the minimum wage could somewhat compensate for their spotty employment and provide more money for essential items. And while the CBO warns of job losses, it also predicts that a higher federal minimum wage would lift 900,000 million workers out of poverty.

Many states have approved incremental automatic annual increases, and a $15 minimum wage has been approved in eight states, including Florida. Voters – over the objections of the Florida Chamber of Commerce – approved raising the state’s minimum wage from $8.65 this year to $15 in 2026.

“We won’t get fifteen for another five years. We need that now,” an Orlando McDonald’s worker, Cristian Cardona, told The New Yorker.

Once again, inflation is a problem. “By the time we get fifteen, it’s going to be even less,” he said. …Learn More

On the Web

February 16, 2021

The toughest part of Paul and Cathy Brustowicz’s decision to relocate from New Jersey to Summerville, South Carolina, was leaving behind their two grandchildren. The retirees also miss the theater and dinners in Manhattan.

A big advantage of South Carolina, though, is “more house for the money,” Paul Brustowicz said. The couple also had a few old friends who were already living there, and the warm weather is nice, though it, too, involves a tradeoff: high summer humidity and hurricane season. As for amenities, it’s a quick drive to Charleston for dinner, the airport, and the Medical University of South Carolina.

“Overall, it was the right move for us,” he said about the 2012 relocation.

South Carolina ranked a very respectable 14th in WalletHub’s 2021 report on the best and worst states to retire. New Jersey, on the other hand, is squarely in last place because of its steep cost of living.

Also at the bottom of the ranking are New York – another very high-cost state – and Mississippi, which is ranked as having a subpar health care system.

Wallet Hub’s 50-state rankings are based on three categories: affordability, quality of life, and health care. A chart displays each state’s ranking overall and in each category.

Florida, with its year-round sun, golf, and very large retiree community, came out on top. Housing is a relative bargain there, and taxes are low. The tradeoff is the state’s mediocre health care system.

After Florida comes Colorado, which gets high marks all around, and Delaware, which is an affordable retirement spot. …Learn More

Money Culture

September 15, 2020

The economy shows some signs of improving. More than 1 million people went back to work last month, pushing the unemployment rate down to 8.4 percent.

But housing experts say a sure sign of trouble ahead is the crisis unfolding among the third of U.S. households who are renters. Things can only get worse for them, because so many were already vulnerable prior to the pandemic after many consecutive years of rising rents that strained their budgets.

Prior to the pandemic, Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies estimates that more than 40 percent of U.S. renters paid more than 50 percent of their incomes for rent – far more than is affordable for most workers. And these rent-burdened households aren’t confined to the lower-income brackets; they extend into the middle class.

The end of the federal government’s $600 weekly supplement to unemployment benefits in July will increasingly strain renters too, said Whitney Airgood-Obrycki, a researcher at the center.

COVID-19 and the resulting recession “is piling on top of an existing affordability crisis,” she said.

This gloomy assessment is backed by other evidence that residents of the four largest metropolitan areas – New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Houston – are running out of resources and face “serious financial problems,” warns a report by NPR and Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

Over a third of the households in these four cities have already plowed through most or all of their savings to cover rent, mortgages, credit card bills and necessities, raising concerns they will not be able to “weather long-term financial and health effects of the coronavirus outbreak.” The situation is particularly bad for low-income families. …Learn More