Did Immigrants in the U.S. Labor Market Make Conditions Worse for Native Workers During the Great Recession?

Did the presence of immigrant workers in the United States labor market—including both documented and undocumented workers—significantly affect conditions for low-wage native workers during the Great Recession of 2008-09?�� Building from the methodology developed by Card (2005), our basic finding is straightforward: the presence of immigrants in the U.S. labor market did not contribute in any significant way to the severe labor market problems faced by native workers during the recession. We do emphasize that our conclusion remains provisional until a broader set of data are brought to bear in investigating the question.

Comments on Aaron Yelowitz, "Santa Fe's Living Wage Ordinance and the Labor Market"

In a new study by Yelowitz “Santa Fe’s Wage Ordinance and the Labor Market,” dated September 23, 2005 (published by the Employment Policies Institute) Yelowitz claims to have demonstrated that the Santa Fe living wage ordinance is responsible for significant, negative consequences for Santa Fe’s least educated residents, including a 9.0 percentage point increase in the city’s unemployment rate among such workers. However, he derives these findings through a presentation of evidence that is misleading and incomplete, misusing the available data. We replicate and extend Yelowitz’s model to look at job growth specifically, and, using the same data as Yelowitz, we find that the Santa Fe ordinance did not produce any decline at all in the availability of jobs. Moreover, our estimates suggest that the living wage ordinance did increase earned income for the average worker affected by the ordinance, even if we accept Yelowitz’s estimates on reduced hours of work. In short, even while relying on Yelowitz’s own model and estimates, we find that, to date, the Santa Fe ordinance has succeeded in achieving its main aims: to improve the quality of jobs for low-wage workers in Santa Fe without reducing their employment opportunities.

The Work Environment Index: Technical Background Paper

The vast majority of Americans work for a living. The track record of different states varies widely when it comes to providing decent opportunities for working people. The Work Environment Index (WEI) captures these differences and provides a basis for evaluating how well each state does in creating an economy that supports its working population. The purpose of this article is to detail the construction of the WEI and to explain the design of the Index. This paper serves as a technical companion to the report Decent Work In America: The 2005 Work Environment Index. Many factors contribute to a good environment for working people: quality jobs, adequate opportunities for employment, basic social protections, and being treated fairly. The WEI is a composite measure of these different dimensions and provides a basis for comparing the quality of the work environment in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. The WEI has multiple objectives: 1) to capture and quantify the various dimensions of the work environment on a state-by-state basis. 2) to provide a direct, relatively transparent, and easy-to-understand measurement that is firmly rooted in publicly available data sources. 3) to provide a basis for making comparisons between the states that are fair and objective. 4) to create a tool for analyzing other socio-economic issues at the state level: e.g. poverty rate differentials, job quality and quantity trade-offs, and patterns of economic growth.labor, work environment, business climate, decent work, poverty, job growth, economic growth, business start-ups

Indigenous Correctional Paraprofessionals: Bourgeois Nigger or Empathetic Worker? - A Brief Position Paper

Employment of paraprofessionals in correctional settings is no longer considered to be a controversial experiment. Their involvement in institutional and community-based programs is expected today. To utilize only professionals such as social workers, psychologists, psychiatrists, and penologists is considered to be an outdated waste of available personnel. A number of recent, comprehensive reports have borne this out (Gartner, 1971; Sobey, 1970; Arnhoff & Rubenstein, 1969; Grosser, Henry & Kelly, 1969)

Decent Work in America: The 2005 Work Environment Index

What are the factors that make for a decent work environment and how do the conditions of work vary in different parts of the United States? To address these and similarly important questions in a clear and accessible way, we have developed a new approach for measuring the work environment on a state-bystate basis throughout the United States (including the District of Columbia) – the Work Environment Index (WEI). This is the first installment of the WEI, and we intend to update it every year. The WEI is a unique social indicator that brings together in one measure a range of factors that, in combination, define the quality of our working lives in the U.S. today. The WEI examines three basic dimensions of the U.S. work environment: job opportunities, job quality and workplace fairness. We rank the 50 states and the District of Columbia according to these three categories. Based on our measures of job opportunities, job quality, and workplace fairness, we find that, overall, Delaware offers the best relative work environment in the United States. Other states with high WEI rankings include New Hampshire, Minnesota, Vermont and Iowa. The states with the lowest WEI rankings are Louisiana, Texas, Arkansas, Utah, South Carolina and Mississippi. Our state-by-state WEI ranking enables us to consider a crucial and widely-discussed issue: Do the states that provide a relatively decent work environment end up paying a penalty in terms of their overall economic climate? For example, do states that rank high according to the WEI score poorly in terms of their overall growth rate, the pace at which new businesses are being formed in the state, or their rate of new job creation? In fact, we find that overall economic conditions in states with a high WEI rank are at least as favorable, if not somewhat more favorable, than those with low WEI rankings. Along with this, we also find that poverty rates in states with high WEI rankings are consistently lower than states with low WEI rankings.labor, work environment, business climate, decent work, poverty, job growth, economic growth, business start-up

Pharmacological Dissociation of Anxiety Model in the Chick Separation Stress Paradigm

The chick separation stress paradigm has been validated as an anxiolytic screening assay. However, whether the paradigm better models Panic Disorder (PD) or Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD) is unknown. To pharmacologically dissociate the chick separation stress paradigm as a model of PD or GAD, subjects were administered drug probes that were either: 1) only effective in the treatment of PD (phenelzine 3.125-25.0 mg/kg), 2) effective in the treatment of both PD and GAD (alprazolam 0.065-0.5 mg/kg; clonidine 0.1-0.25 mg/kg; imipramine 1.0-15.0mg/kg), 3) only effective in the treatment of GAD (buspirone 2.5-10.0 mg/kg; trazodone 0.1-3.0 mg/kg), or 4) capable of exacerbating symptoms of PD in humans (yohimbine 0.1-3.0 mg/kg). At 7-days post hatch, chicks received either vehicle or drug probe intramuscular 15 min prior to social separation under a Mirror (low-stress) or No-Mirror (high-stress) condition for a 180 sec observation period. Dependent measures were distress vocalizations to index separation stress and sleep onset latency to index sedation. Phenelzine, alprazolam, imipramine, and clonidine showed significant anxiolytic effects at doses without significant sedation in the model, while buspirone and trazodone did not show significant anxiolytic effects. Paradoxically, yohimbine produced modest anxiolytic effects. These results suggest the chick separation stress paradigm better models PD than GAD as an anxiolytic screen

The Resilient Clinician

Reviewed by Peter Yuichi Clark

The Actor / Audience Relationship: Vibrating With Purpose in Venus

The subsequent document examines the vibratory connection that can be shared between an actor and an audience and uses the role of Uncle, in Suzan-Lori Parks’ Venus, as a practical case in which to examine and reflect on this area of research. This document investigates what is meant by a “vibratory connection,” and how increased vibration enhances the sensate experience both for the sender and receiver. The paper will analyze methods of reducing vibration-dampening tensions, increasing resonating chambers of the oral and nasal cavities, and enhancing the con- nection between an actor and a live audience. The ultimate goal is to develop a practice indepen- dent of a rehearsal process that increases the vibrational capacity of an actor

Green Prosperity: How Clean-Energy Policies Can Fight Poverty and Raise Living Standards in the United States

This study, co-commissioned by Natural Resources Defense Council and Green For All, considers the employment and other policy effects of a $150 billion annual investment in clean-energy specifically in terms of its ability to raise living standards for lower-income workers and families. This report shows that investments in clean energy can benefit lower-income families first by expanding job opportunities, and also by lowering household utility bills through energy efficiency investments and transportation costs by making public transportation more accessible. >> Read more about the study and download state and regional fact sheets here

Measuring the Impact of Living Wage Laws: A Critical Appraisal of David Neumark's How Living Wage Laws Affect Low-Wage Workers and Low-Income Families

Drawing on data from the Current Population Survey (CPS), David Neumark (2002) finds that living wage laws have brought substantial wage increases for a high proportion of workers in cities that have passed these laws. He also finds that living wage laws significantly reduce employment opportunities for low-wage workers. We argue, first, that by truncating his sample to concentrate his analysis on low-wage workers, Neumark’s analysis is vulnerable to sample selection bias, and that his results are not robust to alternative specifications that utilize quantile regression to avoid such selection bias. In addition, we argue that Neumark has erroneously utilized the CPS data set to derive these results. We show that, with respect to both wage and employment effects, Neumark’s results are not robust to more accurate alternative classifications as to which workers are covered by living wage laws. We also show that the wage effects that Neumark observes for all U.S. cities with living wage laws can be more accurately explained as resulting from effects on sub-minimum wage workers in Los Angeles alone of a falling unemployment rate and rising minimum wage in that city.