Updated Long-Term Projections for Social Security

[Excerpt] The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) regularly prepares long-term projections of the future paths of revenues and outlays for the Social Security program. This latest report presents projections for the 75-year period from 2008 through 2082. (All years referred to in this report are calendar years.) The projections differ somewhat from earlier results because of newly available programmatic and economic data, updated assumptions about future demographic and economic trends, and improvements in CBO’s models. Such long-term projections are necessarily uncertain; nevertheless, the general conclusions presented here hold true under a wide range of assumptions

The Effects of a Minimum-Wage Increase on Employment and Family Income

[Excerpt] Increasing the minimum wage would have two principal effects on low-wage workers. Most of them would receive higher pay that would increase their family’s income, and some of those families would see their income rise above the federal poverty threshold. But some jobs for low-wage workers would probably be eliminated, the income of most workers who became jobless would fall substantially, and the share of low-wage workers who were employed would probably fall slightly

Estimated Impact of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act on Employment and Economic Output From April 2010 Through June 2010

[Excerpt] The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA) contains provisions that are intended to boost economic activity and employment in the United States. Section 1512(e) of the law requires the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) to comment on reports filed by recipients of ARRA funding that detail the number of jobs funded through their activities. This CBO report fulfills that requirement. It also provides CBO’s estimates of ARRA’s overall impact on employment and economic output in the second quarter of calendar year 2010. Those estimates—which CBO considers more comprehensive than the recipients’ reports—are based on evidence from similar policies enacted in the past and on the results of various economic models

Estimated Impact of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act on Employment and Economic Output from October 2011 Through December 2011

[Excerpt] The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA) contains provisions that are intended to boost economic activity and employment in the United States. Section 1512(e) of the law requires the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) to comment on reports filed by recipients of ARRA funding that detail the number of jobs funded through their activities. This CBO report fulfills that requirement. It also provides CBO’s estimates of ARRA’s overall impact on employment and economic output in the fourth quarter of calendar year 2011, as well as over the entire period since February 2009. Those estimates—which CBO considers more comprehensive than the recipients’ reports—are based on evidence from similar policies enacted in the past and on the results of various economic models

What Is Happening to Youth Employment Rates?

Cbo11_18_youthemployment.pdf: 155 downloads, before Oct. 1, 2020

Comparing the Compensation of Federal and Private-Sector Employees

[Excerpt] The federal government competes with private-sector employers and state and local governments to attract and retain workers with the talents, skills, and experience that it needs to operate effectively. Recently, however, concern about the federal budget and about equity between the public and private sectors has focused greater attention on the costs that the federal government incurs to compensate its employees. This Congressional Budget Office (CBO) study—prepared at the request of the Ranking Member of the Senate Budget Committee—presents a statistical analysis of the differences between federal and private sector compensation. The study is accompanied by two CBO working papers, Comparing Wages in the Federal Government and the Private Sector and Comparing Benefits and Total Compensation in the Federal Government and the Private Sector, which explain in detail the methodology underlying this analysis. In keeping with CBO’s mandate to provide objective, impartial analysis, the study and the working papers do not contain any recommendations

A Guide to Understanding the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation

Although the federal government\u27s Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC) has been providing pension insurance for nearly 30 years, the agency\u27s financial situation has been particularly volatile over the past decade and has deteriorated significantly during the past several years. At the end of 2000, the total value of assets held by PBGC exceeded the estimated present value of its liabilities by $10 billion. But by the end of 2004, the agency\u27s estimated liabilities were$23.5 billion more than the value of its assets. As attention focuses on that situation, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has prepared this paper, which aims to provide a basic understanding of federal pension insurance, the operations of PBGC, and the financial condition of and the outlook for the agency over the next 10 years. In accordance with CBO\u27s mandate to provide impartial analysis, the paper makes no recommendations

CBO and JCT’s Estimates of the Effects of the Affordable Care Act on the Number of People Obtaining Employment-Based Health Insurance

[Excerpt] This document responds to questions that the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) and the staff of the Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT) have received regarding their estimates of the effects of the Affordable Care Act (ACA). In their original analysis of the impact of the legislation, CBO and JCT estimated that, on balance, the number of people obtaining coverage through their employer would be about 3 million lower in 2019 under the legislation than under prior law. As reflected in CBO’s latest baseline projections, the two agencies now anticipate that, because of the ACA, about 3 million to 5 million fewer people, on net, will obtain coverage through their employer each year from 2019 through 2022 than would have been the case under prior law. ... The analysis presented here explains two of the key assumptions about employers’ behavior that affect CBO and JCT’s estimates of the effects of the ACA and presents a range of estimates of sources of insurance coverage and federal budgetary outcomes that would result from the ACA under certain alternative assumptions. The analysis also shows how CBO and JCT’s estimates might differ if firms were able to, and ultimately decided to, undertake more widespread restructuring of their workforces than is reflected in the baseline projections—through strategies such as shifting more of their lower-wage workers into separate firms, contracting for the services of more such workers from other companies, or shifting their workforces toward part-time workers instead of fulltime workers

Updated Estimates of the Effects of the Insurance Coverage Provisions of the Affordable Care Act, April 2014

[Effects] This report describes the insurance coverage provisions of the ACA and CBO and JCT’s current estimates of the budgetary effects of those provisions. That discussion is followed by an explanation of how and why those estimates differ from the interim estimates in CBO’s February 2014 baseline. The report concludes with a discussion of the ways in which current estimates of the ACA’s coverage provisions differ from those made when the law was enacted in March 2010

CBO\u27s 2011 Long-Term Projections for Social Security: Infographic

[Excerpt] By 2035, the growing number of beneficiaries due to the aging of the baby-boom generation will cause scheduled spending to climb to 6.1 percent of GDP, CBO estimates. However, there is uncertainty inherent in CBO\u27s projections; in 10 percent of the simulations, outlays in 2035 are below 5.3 percent of GDP and in 10 percent they exceed 7.3 percent of GDP. In most simulations, outlays in 2035 are projected to account for a much larger share of GDP than the share in 2010