WSJ: The Hurdles to Getting U.S. Workers Off the Sidelines
The share of Americans participating in the U.S. job market has nudged up lately after years of decline. Don’t look for the trend to last.
The labor-force participation rate, which stood at 66% on the eve of the recession, is a closely watched measure of the economy’s vitality. Its long slump to a 38-year low of 62.4% last fall became a potent symbol of the incomplete recovery and a sign that actual joblessness may be worse than the official unemployment rate suggests.
Now the strongest run of hiring since the end of the 1990s is drawing would-be job seekers off the sidelines, pushing the rate steadily up since September. It hit 62.9% in February.
Sun-Times: The key players who will guide Emanuel’s 2nd term
Mayor Rahm Emanuel has long maintained that he doesn’t have just one inner circle but a bunch of them on issues pertaining to business, labor, politics and ethnic issues.
It’s a good thing Emanuel is not relying solely on the team that surrounds him at City Hall as he struggles to regain his political footing after the police shooting of Laquan McDonald. That supporting cast has changed dramatically.
Two months after replacing Lisa Schrader as Emanuel’s chief of staff, Forrest Claypool was dispatched to the Chicago Public Schools to clean up a contracting scandal that swallowed Schools CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett and straighten out a financial mess that has the system on the brink of bankruptcy and another teachers strike.
Chicago Tribune: Chicago Public Schools won't stop pension payments until talks completed
Chicago Public Schools CEO Forrest Claypool said Friday that the district will continue to pick up a major chunk of pension contributions for teachers until the final phase of contract negotiations is completed, easing the threat of an April 1 strike.
At a subsequent news conference, Chicago Teachers Union President Karen Lewis said the union will stage a “Day of Action” on April 1 but was vague on details. “It could be just a nice big rally downtown, it could be a whole lot of things,” Lewis told reporters.
Asked if the union was backing off the threat of an April 1 strike, which would be outside a timetable prescribed by state law, Lewis said: “I’m not not saying it, either. It’s still on the table, just like that 7 percent pension pay cut is still on the table.”
Financial Times: US public pension deficits squeeze city and state budgets
The health of the US public pensions system is deteriorating. The latest figures reveal that retirement plans have less than three-quarters of the assets they need to pay current and future retirees.
The growing pension deficit is putting “enormous” pressure on US cities and states, said Amin Rajan, chief executive of Create Research, a consultancy. It also raises concerns that some public retirement funds might not be able to pay out in future.
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According to Wilshire Consulting, an institutional investment advisory company, state-sponsored pension plans in the US had just 73 per cent of the assets they needed in mid-2015, down from 77 per cent in 2014.
Herald Whig: Illinois budget battle explained through ugly math of a dysfunctional state
When spending bills were passed in the Illinois House last week, Rep. Randy Frese, R-Paloma, called them “empty promises.
“The spending plan would have required the state to pay nearly $3.7 billion to higher education, student grants and human resources. Another bill would have paid for those expenditures by forgiving $454 million the state raided from special funds last year.
Yes, that’s how the math was supposed to work — spend $3.7 billion financed by forgiving a $454 million loan from the previous year.
KMOV: Illinois drivers may be paying more for tickets
A national study shows speeding tickets have a bigger financial impact on some Illinois drivers.
In the study, several Illinois communities spend more money than any other drivers in the country.
The study is from NerdWallet. And it points not necessarily to the tickets themselves, but the costs associated with insurance rate hikes after a driver gets ticketed.
Chicago Tonight: CPS, CTU Back Off Threats
The Chicago Public Schools and the Chicago Teachers Union seem to be engaged in a game of “chicken,” where the both sides continue to decelerate before collision.
Today, CPS CEO Forrest Claypool backed off of a threat that the district would immediately end the teacher pension pickup and force teachers to pay their full 9-percent pension contributions. Claypool says he believes CPS is on solid legal ground to end the pickup anytime, but says he wants to wait until after an independent arbiter completes a fact-finding mission on April 18 as part of stalled contract negotiations.
CTU President Karen Lewis said she was “pleased” with the announcement and insists that the unilateral move to end the pension pickup would be illegal. In a counter move, Lewis backed off of the threat of a teachers strike starting April 1. Instead, she says, union members will engage in a “day of action.”
Crain's: Illinois heads backward on income inequality
Be it expressed by Bernie Sanders, Donald Trump or noted French economist Thomas Piketty, income inequality—and what to do about it—has emerged as a huge topic of public policy debate. Now a new study is bringing that debate home to Illinois.
The study by the Illinois Economic Policy Institute, a somewhat left-of-center research group that receives major funding from the construction industry, will surely find more agreement from liberals than conservatives, particularly in its prescriptions. But some of the data and conclusions in the report ought to raise anyone’s eyebrows.
One example: The wage gap between whites and African-Americans in Illinois, after narrowing for decades, now is almost as wide as it was when Dwight Eisenhower was president. The report also notes that almost all the state’s economic and population growth in recent decades has been in metropolitan areas, especially Chicago, with rural districts rapidly emptying out. The share of Illinoisans who hold factory jobs is only 40 percent of what it was in 1970.
Chicago Tribune: Jail culinary program preaches power of food
“Oh. My. God!” Chef Bruno Abate exclaims, as he tastes a bite of lasagna, made from scratch by his group of student cooks. “When you eat this today you’re going to say “Oh. My. God. Oh. My. God.”
This is Chef Bruno’s kitchen, but these are not his hired hands. These are inmates at the Cook County Jail, all serving terms or awaiting trial for nonviolent offenses.
The program is Recipe for Change, a course that teaches these men everything from knife skills and kitchen sanitation to recipes for pastas, sauces and desserts — key job skills they can use when they’re released and looking for work.