January 29, 2013. The Fiscal Policy Institute’s 23rd annual budget briefing. Briefing Book

January 28, 2013. A minimum wage increase included in Governor Cuomo’s budget proposal, released last Tuesday, would raise the paychecks of over 1.5 million low-paid New Yorkers, according to a new report from the Fiscal Policy Institute and the National Employment Law Project. The Governor’s proposal would raise the state’s minimum wage from $7.25 to $8.75 per hour on July 1, 2013, and the increased wages would generate more than $1 billion in new consumer spending, supporting the creation… (read more)

January 7, 2013. Frank Mauro will be stepping down as FPI’s Executive Director at the end of New York’s 2013 Legislative session. Mauro has long been one of Albany’s best known experts on budget and public policy issues from his work at FPI and earlier as Secretary of the NYS Assembly Ways and Means Committee, director of Assembly Speaker Stanley Fink’s Program Development Group, director of research for the last major revision of the New York City Charter, and Deputy… (read more)

January 7, 2013. The Fiscal Policy Institute seeks an Executive Director to build on an exceptional twenty-two year record of providing high quality research, analysis, and coalition building in support of progressive fiscal and economic policies that benefit all New Yorkers.

The Executive Director will be responsible for overall leadership of the organization, as well as leading, coordinating, and implementing its tax, budget and policy analysis work. The ED will oversee a staff currently consisting of 6-8 people, be a… (read more)

December 20, 2012. Prepared by FPI  for the  Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce, the latest issue of the BLMR looks at Brooklyn’s food chain including specialty food manufacturing, restaurants, and gourmet food stores. The report finds that when you look at the entire Brooklyn food chain—starting with food manufacturing and wholesale distribution, and including grocery stores, specialty food stores, restaurants and coffee shops—nearly 59,000 people are employed in 7,800 businesses. Thus, the food chain accounts for 16 percent of the 49,000 businesses… (read more)

December 13, 2012, Manhattan. Financial responsibility and risk have shifted from institutions and businesses to individual households over the last three decades. This trend, accelerated by recent state budget cutbacks in social service programs, means many families are left to navigate a more complex system on their own. Can cities use technology and policy innovation to bridge the gap? How are philanthropy and non-profit networks promoting new structures to enable hard working families to meet these challenges?

The program co-hosted… (read more)

December 7, 2012. Recognition of the crucial role played by front line workforce development workers led Workforce Professionals Training Institute and the Fiscal Policy Institute to undertake a study of this profession in New York City. The objective was to analyze the current state of these jobs and the workers who hold them, with a particular emphasis on issues such as job satisfaction, training, and advancement opportunities, for the purpose of improving the quality of outcomes that workforce professionals are… (read more)

November 15, 2012. A new report from the Fiscal Policy Institute shows that various income measures all point toward the same conclusions:  In recent years, polarization has intensified; and New York has been one of the national leaders in this undesirable trend. The top one percent share of income dipped during the recession, but has started to rise again in the recovery. Further, no state is more polarized than New York and no large city is more polarized than New York City, (using… (read more)

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… (read more)

November 1, 2012. For the past year, the conflicting trends exhibited by employment and unemployment data for NYS (and its major sub-areas including NYC) have confused analysts and have made it unusually difficult to get a clear reading on the state’s economy. Payroll employment has generally shown a rising trend, more or less in line with the national job recovery over the past two years. However, in New York State, unemployment has also been rising, and by more than can… (read more)