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labor

More U.S. Factory Workers Are Saying ‘I Quit’

Jeffrey Sparshott The Wall Street Journal
The number of voluntary departures in manufacturing has outpaced the number of layoffs fairly consistently since 2011 and the gap between quits and layoffs is now the widest since 2007.

Will Trump's PR Triumph At Carrier Mean The Democratic Party's Demise?

Les Leopold Common Dreams
Sanders believes that neoliberalism is the heart of our problem ― that it leads to runaway inequality, a rigged political system, an exploitative Wall Street, and the full-scale assault on the living and working conditions of working people ― black, brown, white, gay, trans and straight. That system, he believes, also leads to the dramatic rise of incarceration, urban and rural poverty, and the stalling of real wages for the vast majority of the population.

Black-White Earnings Gap Returns to 1950 Levels

Patrick Bayer and Kerwin Kofi Charles Science Blog
More and more working-age men in the United States aren’t working at all. The number of nonworking white men grew from about 8 percent in 1960 to 17 percent in 2014. The numbers look still worse among black men: In 1960, 19 percent of black men were not working; in 2014, that number had grown to 35 percent of black men. That includes men who are incarcerated as well those who can’t find jobs.

The Case for More Government and Higher Taxes

Eduardo Porter The New York Times
Four out of every five - or more - have said the government makes them feel either angry or frustrated. These frustrated Americans may not fully realize it, but there's a strong case for more government - not less - as the most promising way to improve the nation's standard of living. The American government pretty much stopped growing when the civil rights movement forced whites to share public space with African Americans, then Latinos, Asians and Native Americans.

labor

A Superfund for Workers

Jeremy Brecher Dollars & Sense
How to Promote a Just Transition and Break Out of the Jobs vs. Environment Trap

In Virtually Every State, the Poverty Rate is Still Higher than Before the Recession

David Cooper Economic Policy Institute
New data shows no change in the poverty rate in most states for the past two years. Only two states have poverty rates below their 2007 level, before the state of the Great Recession. However, the data suggest that the lack of real income growth over the past decade and a half has been even more pronounced for households at the bottom of the income scale. Click below to see where your state stands (or doesn't).

books

`Rise of the Robots' and `Shadow Work'

Barbara Ehrenreich The New York Times
Even the most expensively educated - Lawyers, radiologists and software designers, among others - have seen their work evaporate to India or China. Tasks that would seem to require a distinctively human capacity for nuance are increasingly assigned to algorithms, like the ones currently being introduced to grade essays on college exams.
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