Category: Labor and Workforce
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Trailing Spouse Benefit Proving of Minimal Impact
Virginia’s unemployment insurance (UI) trust fund continues to show improved balances despite dropping tax rates, reflecting a strengthening economy. The most recent semi-annual report, released at a legislative meeting yesterday, projects half as many initial claims during 2018 as there were five years ago: 134,000 this year versus the earlier 276,000. It the trend holds…
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Shrinking Community Colleges Looking to Pivot
Nothing like losing a quarter of your customers to get your attention. That basically is what has happened to Virginia’s Community College System, with last term’s enrollment down 57,000 (actually only 22 percent) from its peak six years ago during the early days of the economic recovery. That drop exceeds the total enrollment at the…
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Washington Metro Downsizes Board
Succumbing to political pressure from Virginia, the Washington Metro board has voted to reduce the participation of so-called “alternate” board members. The move, which will enhance the power of the eight “principal” board members, was necessary to comply with the Commonwealth’s demand for board restructuring as a condition for receiving $500 million a year in…
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Virginia’s Hidden Deficit: the Unemployment Trust Fund
There are many measures for gauging a state’s fiscal condition. The most commonly cited is the condition of its General Fund: Is the state balancing its budget? Digging deeper, one can examine the degree to which a state is funding (and falling short of) its pension obligations. And one can track the extent to which…
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Virginia’s Housing Shortfall
Between 2000 and 2015, 23 states fell 7.3 million units short of meeting the housing needs of their growing populations — equivalent to about 7.3% of the housing stock of the United States, according to a new study, “Housing Underproduction in the U.S.,” published by the Up for Growth Coalition. Although not the worst offender,…
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About those Student Loan Default Rates…
The distinction of having the highest student-loan default rate of any higher-education institution in Virginia goes to Everest College in Chesapeake. The default rate at the for-profit college (now doing business as Altierus Career College), which prepares students to be dental assistants, HVAC technicians and the like, is 36%, reports WVTF Radio IQ. In absolute…
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Here’s an Idea, Let Maryland Have Amazon
Maryland legislators approved Wednesday an $8.5 billion incentive package to lure Amazon’s second headquarters to Montgomery County. Governor Larry Hogan (R), who proposed the plan, is expected to sign the bill. I love it! This is the best of all worlds for Virginia. Amazon has estimated that the headquarters will invest $5 billion and employ…
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Is Mo’ Money the Solution to the STEM Job Shortage?
Speaking at the Charlottesville Regional Chamber of Commerce yesterday, Governor Ralph Northam enumerated the main challenges he sees for Virginia’s business environment: diversifying regional economies, creating more opportunity in rural communities, providing dedicated funding for the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority, and reforming state taxes and regulatory structures. Reports the Daily Progress: The Democratic governor tied most of…
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Is Training a Better Investment than Education?
In his book, ‘The Case against Education: Why the Education System is a Waste of Time and Money,” George Mason University professor Bryan Caplan argues, as the title of his book suggests, that much of secondary school and some 80% of time and expense dedicated to earning a college degree is wasted. Most of the…
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Northam, Cox Agree to Roll Back State Regs
Governor Ralph Northam and House of Delegates Speaker Kirk Cox announced legislation yesterday that would launch a pilot program to “remove burdensome and unnecessary regulatory requirements facing hard working Virginians.” “We have a responsibility to constantly evaluate every regulatory requirement and policy to ensure that it is doing its job in the least restrictive way…
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Laborers Union Recruits, Trains Pipeline Workers
I’ve been critical of labor unions on many occasions, but I’m not anti-union out of general principle. Unions can play a positive role in the economy. As an example, look at the partnership between the Laborers’ International Union of North American (LIUNA) and the Virginia Community College System. LIUNA and VCCS have signed a memorandum…
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Virginia’s Top 10 Stories (Told and Untold) of the Year
Phew! I finally made it through the all-consuming Christmas season, and I’m still alive to tell the tale. Christmas is a wonderful but grueling time of year for the Bacon family, marked by numerous feasts, expanding waistlines, excessive gift giving, shrinking bank accounts, and considerable out-of-town travel to distant relatives. But I’m back in the…
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Fewer Young People, More Geezers Working These Days
The percentage of young people (ages 16 to 25) participating in Virginia’s workforce has been sliding over the past 15 years, while the percentage of old-timers (65 years or older) in the workforce has been increasing. The percentage change of geezers in the workforce increased 59% between 2001 and 2016, according to data published by…
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Plugging “Mercy” into the Judicial System
Just when it looked like the country was so locked in partisan gridlock that no one could agree about anything, along came the Republican-dominated General Assembly, the Democratic governor, and the Virginia Supreme Court to put into place reforms that make it easier for people owing court fines to keep their drivers licenses and continue…
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Corporations Tapping Virginia’s Under-Employed Labor Market
A fascinating trend in the national job markets appears to be benefiting Virginia. A front-page Wall Street Journal article today is date-lined Richmond, Va.: Pressed for workers, a New Jersey-based software company went hunting for a U.S. city with a surplus of talented employees stuck in dead-end jobs. Brian Brown, chief operating officer at AvePoint, Inc.,…