New York State has been reported to be one of the states most at risk of incurring a shortage of healthcare workers over the next decade. With a quickly growing population of adults over the age of 65 (“older adults”) and a movement towards “aging in place,” the demand for home care workers will rise dramatically over the next decade.
The Governor’s executive budget for fiscal year 2024 aims to increase funding for New York State’s public university system, in part through sharp tuition increases. For the State University of New York’s (SUNY) four university centers, the tuition increases could result in a 51 percent tuition increase over five years. Tuition hikes of this size would represent a generational shift in New York State’s higher education landscape, moving its public universities from among the most accessible in the U.S. to among the most expensive. In doing so, these hikes could jeopardize the universities’ role as engines of upward economic mobility.
The typical family that moves out of New York State saves 15 times more from lower housing costs than they do from lower taxes. Of the top twenty largest county-to-county moves out of New York State, annual mortgage costs are on average $18,300, or 34 percent, lower outside New York.
Shamier Settle, Policy Analyst with the Fiscal Policy Institute, wrote this article in the Gotham Gazette about the census count and what the numbers mean for New York. FPI started its census work in 2018 with this report, which estimates of how much funding community based organizations would need to conduct outreach for the census count in 2020. That same year FPI also began highlighting the importance of including investments in the census in the state budget. Through their participation on the steering committee of New York Counts 2020, [...]
New York State relies on fine, fee, and surcharge revenue to fund government operations- including the functions of the courts and state agencies providing criminal justice, public safety, and victim services. This funding is generated via a complex set of state statutes, including penal, vehicle and traffic, environmental conservation, judiciary, and finance laws and is spent through the General Fund and a bevy of State Special Revenue Funds. No one state government entity or agency is charged with comprehensively reporting on the imposition, collection, and [...]
Download the full report: "Domestic Workers Are Essential Workers: By the Numbers in New York" Throughout the coronavirus crisis domestic workers have been placed under a double pressure. Already underpaid, many have lost their jobs, or lost hours on the job, putting them under added financial stress. Even when on the job, however, domestic workers find themselves under added physical and psychological stress, acting as essential workers during a pandemic at some risk to their own health as they protect the health of others. Domestic [...]
Full-time employment in state government jobs grew by only 1 percent in New York State between 2010-2019, with the number of those employed totaling just over 236,000 in 2019. At the same time, local government employment decreased by 1 percent for full-time employees, with the number of employed totaling just over 882,000 in 2019, down from 893,000 in 2010. Full-time employment losses in both state and local government affected the areas of health, natural resources, and social and public welfare. Employment losses in health and [...]
December 2020 The coronavirus pandemic has exacerbated New York State’s affordable housing crisis. This year’s high unemployment has most affected our state’s minimum wage workers and gig economy workers and has intersected with our state’s lack of safe, decent, and affordable rentals, particularly for those earning at or below 50 percent of the Area Median Income (AMI). To help struggling renters and protect public health, the state legislature passed the Emergency Rent Relief Act of 2020 on May 28, 2020. It created a $100 million [...]
The Fiscal Policy Institute was honored to be part of the New York State chapter of the National Domestic Workers Alliance celebration of the 10th anniversary of the Domestic Workers’ Bill of Rights on Saturday, December 12th. The NDWA is a strong voice for domestic workers across the nation. Domestic workers provide essential work within our homes, from child-care and caregiving to keeping our homes clean and functioning. The majority of domestic workers are women, mostly immigrants, and women of color. FPI will be releasing [...]
December 2020 What do you call a loan that has been obtained for the purpose of financing the costs of higher education? A student loan. However, considering the fastest-growing age segment of student loan borrowers are over the age of 60 and are not students themselves, perhaps there is a more suitable term that can be used–education debt. Much like auto debt, mortgages, and credit debt, the term education debt places emphasis on what the debt has been used for, instead of who has used [...]
Economic Recovery Depends on Our Ability to Contribute to the Economy Read the report: “The Rising Burden of Education Debt on Older New Yorkers” December 3, 2020 (Albany, NY) The burden of education debt is not limited to students, it includes their parents and grandparents. Currently, the fastest-growing age-segment of the student loan market is age 60 and older. With New York looking for a speedy economic recovery, solving the education debt crisis means a healthier and more productive state. "Higher education has been portrayed as the key to unlock the door to opportunity [...]
October 14, 2020 Many of New York’s “essential workers,” people working in jobs deemed necessary throughout the COVID pandemic, rely on Medicaid for their own health care. They risk severe hardship if federal policymakers fail to provide appropriate increases in Medicaid funding or weaken protections for program enrollees, according to a new analysis from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. In New York State over half a million, 554,000, essential workers rely on Medicaid. The economic fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic led to a [...]
August 2020 Download the full brief Governor Cuomo has extended the state’s limited eviction moratorium until September 4, 2020 but the application window for the state’s $100 million COVID Rent Relief program closed on August 6, 2020. Many of New York State’s renters require assistance above and beyond the programs and protections currently in place. The COVID Rent Relief program has limitations. It will only provide up to four months of rental assistance for those earning below 80 percent of the area median income (AMI [...]
Strengthening Medicaid and protecting health coverage for New Yorkers is critical to ensuring that our state can respond effectively to the coronavirus public health crisis and the current economic recession. The Urban Institute has projected that Medicaid caseloads could increase by as much as 1,204,000, or 22.5 percent, through FY 2021—an unprecedented spike. New York needs help to cover those who are newly unemployed and expected to enroll in Medicaid and offset extra Medicaid costs related to coronavirus. Without proper funding, the state will be [...]
May 20, 2020 This time last year, New York celebrated its lowest rate of residents without health insurance to date at 5 percent. A historic low that is a continuation of nearly a decade of decline in people who lack health insurance, this record-breaking success set New York apart from the national trend of rising uninsured rates. The public health and economic crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic threatens past success in reducing the rate of the uninsured in New York State. We must strengthen [...]