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Data for Pre-Citizen Voting Debate in City Council

May 9, 2013. Should legal immigrants who are not yet citizens be permitted to vote in New York City elections? The NYC City Council will debate this question beginning on Thursday, May 9, in connection with Intro 410, which would allow pre-citizens to vote in New York City municipal elections. It wouldn’t be the first time noncitizens could vote in New York elections. School board elections, before they were abolished, were open to all parents of children in New York City schools, regardless of citizenship [...]

Anthony Troia2013-05-09T18:36:37-04:00May 9th, 2013|Blog, Migration|

The Gilded City of New York

April 18, 2013. In a special issue of The Nation that includes over 20 stories about New York City under Mayor Bloomberg, a picture is painted of a two-tiered urbanism. The lead story by The Nation's editors describes the heightened income polarization in New York City and cites data from various FPI analyses, including Pulling apart: The continuing impact of income polarization in New York State. Here is New York in 2013: a city of dazzling resurrection and official neglect, remarkable wealth and even more [...]

Anthony Troia2020-11-13T14:27:59-05:00April 18th, 2013|Blog, Labor Market & Workforce, Must Read|

Walmart and other large, low-wage employers will benefit financially from New York’s new Minimum Wage Reimbursement Credit.

April 5, 2013. Unless disclosure requirements are clarified, we’ll probably never know exactly how much Walmart and other large, low-wage employers receive in government subsidies under New York’s new Minimum Wage Reimbursement Credit (MWRC). But based on the best data available, we estimate that Walmart is likely to receive MWRC subsidies of between $53 million and $85 million over the next five years. New York’s new MWRC will provide employers a tax credit for the hours worked by students between the ages of 16 and [...]

Anthony Troia2020-11-13T14:58:53-05:00April 5th, 2013|Blog, Economic Trends & Policy, Labor Market & Workforce, Must Read, Tax & Budget, Tax Policy|

The Many Problems with New York’s Proposed Minimum Wage Reimbursement Credit

March 25, 2013. This was to have been the year New York caught up with the 19 other states and the District of Columbia with a minimum wage above the $7.25 an hour federal level. Minimum wage legislation that passed the Assembly also would have indexed the minimum wage in future years—as 10 other states do—so that inflation would not steadily erode its purchasing power. However, the agreement reached over the weekend in Albany falls far short. It increases the minimum wage to $8.00 an [...]

Anthony Troia2020-11-13T14:58:53-05:00March 25th, 2013|Blog, Economic Trends & Policy, Labor Market & Workforce, Tax & Budget, Tax Policy|

Revised NYS and NYC unemployment rates eliminate the mid-2012 spike and clear up what had been a confused picture

March 18, 2013. Earlier this month the NYS Department of Labor released its annual revisions to the employment and unemployment data. As noted in an earlier blog entry, New York’s private payroll employment growth was revised upward and government employment was revised to show the loss of 59,000 state and local government jobs between December 2010 and December 2012. In the revised unemployment data for 2011 and 2012 released by the Department of Labor, the unemployment trend replaces what had been a confusing spike in [...]

Anthony Troia2020-11-13T14:45:43-05:00March 18th, 2013|Blog, Economic Trends & Policy, Labor Market & Workforce|

Good news on private sector jobs front, but recovery would have been even stronger if it were not for government austerity measures.

March 8, 2013. The New York State Department of Labor (NYSDOL), in its press release yesterday on the latest employment data, emphasized some good news—that New York State has had 17 consecutive months of private sector job growth, and that the state gained an estimated 29,600 private sector jobs in January (on a seasonally adjusted basis.) Nothing wrong with reporting good news. There was more good news in NYSDOL’s annual payroll employment revision that was also released yesterday. The annual “benchmark” revision showed that the [...]

Anthony Troia2020-11-13T14:45:44-05:00March 8th, 2013|Blog, Economic Trends & Policy, Labor Market & Workforce|

Sequestration would cut human service spending in New York State

February 25, 2013. Last night, the White House released the following likely impacts from sequestration in New York State if Congress does not act to cut the deficit in a balanced way. Bringing in more revenue by closing tax loopholes along with smarter reductions in spending would allow the federal government to avoid the following cuts in New York State: Teachers and Schools: The loss of approximately $43 million in funding for about 120 primary and secondary schools placing almost 600 teacher and aide jobs [...]

Anthony Troia2013-02-25T17:39:08-05:00February 25th, 2013|Blog|

Op-ed: States lead the way on immigration reform

February 24, 2013. This op-ed piece by David Dyssegaard Kallick of FPI and Tanya Broder of the National Immigration Law Council ran in the Kansas City Star, the Denver Post, the Bradenton (Florida) Herald, the Anchorage Daily News, and other local papers around the country.

Anthony Troia2013-05-22T15:20:29-04:00February 24th, 2013|Blog, Letters, Migration|

With 9/11 as a guide, here are five ways to consider Hurricane Sandy’s economic impact

November 2, 2012. This piece on the economic impact of superstorm Sandy was written by James Parrott for Quartz, the new international business news site (Qz.com) published by The Atlantic Monthly. Since the October jobs report released today reflects employment conditions as of the second week of the month, it doesn’t tell us anything about the impact of Hurricane Sandy, the most devastating storm to hit the New York metro area in decades. What can we expect to see in job reports in the months [...]

Anthony Troia2020-11-13T14:48:29-05:00November 2nd, 2012|Blog, Economic Outlook, Economic Trends & Policy|

NYC’s Rising Poverty and Falling Incomes Since the Great Recession

September 27, 2012. The latest data from the Census Bureau on poverty and incomes in 2011 clearly show that New York City has a long way to go to make up for the erosion in living standards caused by the Great Recession of 2008-09. Since the start of the recession, 200,000 more city residents have fallen into poverty, bringing the total to 1.7 million out of a population of 8.1 million. For 2011, the federal poverty threshold for a 3-person family was $17,916. Poverty has [...]

Anthony Troia2020-11-13T14:48:29-05:00September 27th, 2012|Blog, Economic Outlook, Economic Trends & Policy, Labor Market & Workforce|

16 percent in the Empire State lived in poverty – two years running

September 12, 2012. Earlier today, the U.S. Census Bureau released its Current Population Survey (CPS) poverty estimates for 2011 for the nation and the 50 states. The release also included revised estimates for 2010. The overriding message of the poverty data released today is that the poverty rate remains much too high - demonstrating the continuing impact of the Great Recession and the tepid and tenuous economic recovery. (The poverty rate is the percentage of people living below the federal government's official poverty levels. In [...]

Anthony Troia2020-11-13T14:27:59-05:00September 12th, 2012|Blog, Economic Trends & Policy, Labor Market & Workforce|

A federal minimum wage hike would help 1.5 million New York workers and our economy

August 14, 2012. One of the best ways to speed up economic growth is to give a lift to the wages of the lowest paid workers. Legislation awaits action now in Washington, D.C., that would boost the federal minimum wage in three 85 cent steps from $7.25 to $9.80 an hour. According to new estimates released today by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), this proposal would benefit 1.5 million New York workers, raising their pay by $2 billion over three years. Nationally, more than 28 [...]

Anthony Troia2020-11-13T14:58:53-05:00August 14th, 2012|Blog, Economic Trends & Policy, Labor Market & Workforce, Must Read|