Background on Jobs

Jobs issues in 2024 election cycle

• Post-COVID unemployment
• Soft Landing
• Unionization
• Re-shoring
• Topics prior to 2024 election:
• Minimum Wage
• Green jobs
• Unemployment rate
• NAIRU (for serious economic policy wonks)
• Pay Equity
• Card Check
• Right-to-Work
• Union Issues

Post-COVID unemployment

The post-pandemic recovery was fast because the massive unemployment was due to temporary closures rather than any underlying systemic economic problems. Workplaces accommodated "work-from-home," which has become the post-pandemic norm, and numerous other accommodations. The new normal work-from-home led to millions of people moving to the suburbs since they no longer had to commute -- leading to a massive increase in housing prices. Accommodations included moving to other states -- the most charming political TV ad of the 2024 election cycle featured Governor Kristi Noem dressed as an electrician to lure out-of-state residents to move to South Dakota, claiming that "South Dakota stayed open for business during the pandemic; now we've got more jobs than people."

Republican take on post-COVID unemployment:
• Kristi NOEM (R-SD): AdWatch: S.D. accepts out-of-state professional licenses (Aug 2023)
• TRUMP: Worst inflation in history due to energy & food costs (Feb 2023)
• Nikki HALEY (R-SC): Retrain workers for post-AI, like when textiles went abroad (Jan 2024)
• VANCE: Spending like American Rescue Plan drove up costs (Oct 2022)
• TRUMP: Immigrants are taking black jobs and Hispanic jobs (Jun 2024)

Soft Landing

In particular, Biden/Harris accomplished the low-unemployment half of the "soft landing" by stimulus spending that enhanced employment -- ARPA and the IRA -- which inevitably led to inflation. Yes, it was well-balanced -- but Trump successfully labeled ARPA and IRA as "inflationary," and voters believed Trump because it was true.

Democratic take on post-COVID unemployment:
• BIDEN: We created 15M jobs in 3 years: a record (Mar 2024)
• BIDEN: 12 million new jobs in 2 years; the most ever (Feb 2023)
• WALZ: $24M for job training and economic development programs (Jul 2022)
• HARRIS: $100M for manufacturers and labor unions in EV industry (May 2024)
• WALZ: Vetoed minimum wage for rideshare drivers (May 2023)

Unionization

• BIDEN: First sitting president to join a union picket line (Sep 2023)
• Nikki HALEY (R-SC): Fought unionization; new jobs in 45 of 46 counties (Jan 2013)
• Vivek RAMASWAMY (R-OH): I have sympathy for workers but no patience for union bosses (Sep 2023)
• WALZ: Minnesota Miracle: expanding workers' rights (Jun 2023)
• BIDEN: Strengthen union organizing rules; increase 6% unionization (Dec 2021)
• BIDEN: Support union organizing at Amazon and elsewhere (Feb 2021)
• Kristi NOEM (R-SD): Keep right-to-work laws instead of labor unions (Aug 2018)

• HARRIS: Will sign PRO Act: Public Service Freedom to Negotiate Act (Sep 2024)
• VANCE: Opposed the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act (Jul 2024)
• BIDEN: Old Rust Belt now revitalizing American manufacturing (Mar 2022)

Re-shoring

• TRUMP: America First includes gas-powered cars made in Detroit (Sep 2023)
• VANCE: Put more people to work by rebuilding our industrial base (May 2024)

Jobs issues in 2020 election cycle

Minimum Wage

• TRUMP: Don't raise minimum wage; it makes us non-competitive. (Nov 2015)
• BIDEN: $15 an hour is too little for healthcare workers. (Sep 2020)
• PENCE: Blocked statewide & local minimum wage increase. (Jul 2016)
• HARRIS: Raise the federal minimum wage to $15/hour.. (Jul 2019)
• NEWS: Latest statements on Minimum Wage from presidential candidates and political pundits

• Minimum Wage: There are 21 states where the $7.25 federal minimum applies. Those states contain about 39% of all U.S. wage and salary workers--roughly 58 million people. In other states and DC, minimum wages range from $8.25 to $16.39. (Pew Research)
  Democrats favor some version on increasing the minimum wage as a raise for lowest rung workers. Republicans argue that raising the minimum wage costs jobs by pricing workers out of the market. (OnTheIssues)
• PRO-Minimum Wage: The House passed a bill to hike the federal minimum wage to $15 per hour. The measure would gradually hike the U.S. pay floor to $15 by 2025, then index further hikes to median wage growth. (CNBC 2019)
• ANTI-Minimum Wage: The immediate issue with a higher minimum wage, if you're an employer, is the potential for your labor costs to increase. A second problem with the minimum wage is that it might increase unemployment. That's an argument free-market economists often put forward. Also, classical economic theory also predicts that when wages go up, prices go up. (Small Business Chronicle)

Green jobs

• TRUMP: Rebuilding America will create 13 million jobs. (Nov 2015)
• BIDEN: Working on climate change can create 10 million jobs. (Sep 2019)
• PENCE: Government mandates on energy kill jobs. (Oct 2020)
• Click for more environmental details on Green Jobs

• Green Jobs: Green jobs are either: Jobs that produce goods or provide services that benefit the environment or conserve natural resources. Or jobs in which workers' duties involve making their establishment's production processes more environmentally friendly or use fewer natural resources. (BLS)
• PRO-green Jobs: For promoting green jobs (): We estimate that the more conservative $25 carbon tax would boost U.S. employment by 1.4 million jobs each year between 2020 and 2030, which is nearly a 1% increase above the reference�case forecast of 160 million jobs in 2030. (Scientific American)
• ANTI-green Jobs: Against promoting green jobs (): As many as 10 million Americans currently employed directly or indirectly in the oil, gas and coal industries are likely to lose their jobs, while manufacturers, transportation companies and steel producers will see factories chased out of the U.S. (IBD)

Unemployment rate

• TRUMP: FactCheck: Unemployment under Trump is lowest in decades (Feb 2019)
• BIDEN: Extending unemployment benefits is the American way. (Dec 2010)
• PENCE: Indiana's unemployment rate was cut in half since 2013. (Oct 2016)
• HARRIS: Women are still only paid 80 cents compared to $1 for men. (Nov 2019)
• NEWS: Latest statements on Unemployment from presidential candidates and political pundits
• Click for more budgetary details on coronavirus recession

• Ideal rate of unemployment: The ideal real unemployment rate for the United States is 3.5% - 4.5%. Zero unemployment wouldn't be ideal, also almost impossible, because it would indicate a severely overheating economy. (The Balance)
• NAIRU: NAIRU stands for the Non-Accelerating Inflation Rate of Unemployment, and the idea is that inflation will accelerate if the unemployment rate falls below the NAIRU level. The Congressional Budget Office "estimates the NAIRU using the historical relationship between the unemployment rate and changes in the rate of inflation." In other words, they look backwards at past changes in inflation and changes in unemployment to estimate how future falls in unemployment would influence inflation. (Vox.com)
  

Jobs issues in 2016 election cycle

• Unemployment Rate:
• People who are jobless, looking for a job, and available for work are unemployed (the unemployment rate only counts people who are looking)
• The labor force is made up of the employed and the unemployed; people who are neither employed nor unemployed are not in the labor force (the labor participation rate does not count people who are not looking).
• Underemployment measures whether the labor force is being fully utilized in terms of skills and experience: additionally counting highly skilled workers in low skill jobs and part-time workers that would prefer to be full-time. The official unemployment rates do not count underemployment.

• Minimum Wage:
• The minimum wage is currently $7.25, increased from $5.15 in 2009, by an act of Congress.
• The last increase took place in three stages over a period of years; another increase will require another act of Congress.
• Some candidates want to increase it again now, and automatically increase it to keep up with inflation (known as "indexing").
• President Obama has proposed (and by 2014, some states have already adopted) a new minimum wage of $10.10 per hour.

• Pay Equity: In 2015, female full-time workers made only 79 cents for every dollar earned by men doing equivalent work, a gender wage gap of 21%. Pay equity may be affected by the segregation of jobs by gender: jobs predominantly done by women pay less on average than comparable jobs predominantly done by men. The gender gap widens further for minority women.

Jobs issues from 2014 election cycle

• Card Check: refers to a unionization process where potential union members sign (or check off) a card indicating they would join the union. When a majority of workers have checked their cards, the union forms. Most Republicans argue that Card Check inappropriately replaces a secret ballot process, and is inherently coercive. Most Democrats argue that Card Check protects workers from corporate anti-union tactics during unionization efforts.

• Right-to-Work: refers to a state law against requiring union membership. The opposite is a "union shop" (or "closed shop"), where employees are required to pay union dues as a condition for working. 22 states are "right-to-work" states (mostly in the South and West) and 28 are not. A "national right-to-work law" would abolish union shops, and convert them all to "open shops," where employees may join the union voluntarily but are not required.

• American Jobs Act: refers to a series of legislative proposals made by President Obama beginning in Sept. 2011. Initially, the legislation was proposed as one large bill (S. 1549 and H.R. 12), but the bill stalled in Congress. Hence Obama broke up the bill into numerous smaller pieces. The key components are:
  • $245 billion for Payroll tax cut extension (maintaining a reduction in the Social Security FICA deduction).
  • $57 billion for extending unemployment benefits
  • $65 billion for direct hiring of municipal employees, focusing on teachers, police, and firefighters
  • $65 billion for infrastructure construction.
  • The term "shovel ready" refers to the previous round of stimulus bills, which focused on projects which could start immediately.

• �Job Creators� is the 2012 campaign�s term for business owners and other wealthy people who �create jobs.� Generally, conservatives refer to �job creators� as a euphemism for cutting taxes for the wealthy, based on the �trickle-down� theory that doing so will create jobs. Liberals use the term �the Top 1%� as an opposing euphemism, implying that the wealthiest top 1% should pay more taxes than the rest of the 99%.

Unemployment Issues

• Unemployment insurance is paid by all employees as "state UI taxes", at a rate of 0.8% of income for the first $7,000 of annual income.
• As a result of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act passed by Congress in February 2009 (known as "The Stimulus Bill"), many unemployed people can receive up to 99 weeks of unemployment benefits.
• Normally, unemployment payments are taxable income; but the Stimulus Bill exempted the first $2,400 worth of unemployment income received during the 'tax year' of 2009 will be exempted from being considered as taxable income on the Federal level, when American taxpayers file their 2009 IRS tax return paperwork in early 2010.
• Many candidates in 2011 push for extending unemployment benefits beyond 99 weeks, since 7 million people have maxed out (known as "99ers").

Union Issues

• Total union membership stands at about 16 million workers, or 14% of the workforce.

• Union membership has been falling steadily since 1958, when it stood at 35% of the workforce.

• 22 states in the US are right-to-work states. In the other 28, if a business is a union shop, you have to join the union if you want to work there. There is no federal right-to-work law; it's determined by each state.

• H-1B Visas, a key issue in the immigration reform debate, refer to visas for "specialty occupations." Generally, H-1B visas are issued in the fields of science, technology, engineering, or other professional services. H-1B visa holders are non-residents but may apply for permanent green cards.

• Gov. Scott Walker (R-WI) pushed a �union-busting� bill in early 2011, restricting collective bargaining rights of all public employees, including teachers. The bill passed, but large-scale protests led to a recall election in 2012. Gov. Walker survived the recall, and got re-elected in 2014. In July 2014, the Wisconsin Supreme Court upheld the law.
• NEWS: Latest statements on Unionization from presidential candidates and political pundits

Casino gambling

Casino regulations are made by states, not by the federal government. Casino gambling is an interesting issue because politicians determine their issue stances on any of several different grounds:
• Morality: casinos are wrong because they prey on poorer people.

• Economic: casinos earn tax revenue for the state and the gambling would take place anyway, somewhere else.

• Employment: casinos create jobs during their construction, and create permanent jobs to operate the casino.

• Local development: Often a state will seek a casino because a neighboring state has one, with revenues lost to the home state,

The Farming Crisis

• The U.S. agricultural sector faced strong foreign competition in a weakened global trade setting from the 1990s into the new millineum. The value of U.S. agricultural exports has been reduced, falling from a record of almost $60 billion in fiscal 1996 to $51 billion in 2000. Exports recovered to over $60 billion by 2004 and increased to $136 billion in 2011.

• Farm income has fallen: Although somewhat buffered from further declines by increases in government payments (counter cyclical marketing loan benefits and emergency/disaster assistance payments), net farm income fell from $55 billion in 1996 to $40 billion in 2000; but recovered since then. USDA-reported growth in gross farm income and net income are:

The Farm Bill

• The annual Farm Bill provides for numerous subsidies to numerous classes of farmers. The Farm Bill is heavily supported by Senators from farm states.

• Since 2000, the farm bill has cost taxpayers more than $168 billion per decade, using loans, price supports, and payments to protect family farmers from fluctuations of weather, price, and economic conditions. One of its controversial programs pays farmers NOT to grow crops -- to avoid over-supply which would drive down prices.

• About 75% of farm subsidies go to the biggest 10% of farming companies, such as Archer-Daniels-Midland (ADM), a major employer in farm states.

• Farm subsidies originated during the Great Depression in the 1930s, when Pres. Roosevelt initiated the Agricultural Adjustment Act. Its original intent was a temporary solution for the Dust Bowl crisis, but it was made permanent in 1949 and has been renewed for six decades since.

• In 1996, the Freedom to Farm Act proposed removing price supports and letting the free market determine prices. But the farm lobby -- big agribusiness like ADM who contribute generously to congressional campaigns -- has stopped Congress from killing the subsidies.

• The farm lobby primarily funds Republican Party candidates, but Democrats also support the farm bill because it contains food stamp funding. In 2013, Republicans attempted to separate food stamps from the farm bill but Pres. Obama threatened to veto any farm bill which did not include food stamps.

Foreign trade and import regulations are covered on the Free Trade page.
Corporate welfare issues are covered on the Government Reform page.
Earned-income Tax Credits are covered on the Tax Reform page.