• Unemployment tops 10 percent again _ and it’s tougher off the job than a generation ago, By Jeannine Aversa (AP), November 7, 2009, Chicago Tribune: “It hurts more to be unemployed now than the last time the jobless rate hit 10 percent. Americans have more than triple the debt they had in 1982, and less than half the savings. They spend 10 weeks longer off the job. And a bigger share of them have no health insurance, leaving them one medical emergency away from financial ruin. For these reasons, the unemployed are more vulnerable today to foreclosure and bankruptcy than they were a generation ago…”
• Debt levels leave low paid at risk of homelessness, By Nick Mathiason, November 11, 2009, The Guardian: “Britain’s 14.3 million low earners are in danger of being sucked into a whirlpool of poverty as official figures are expected to show today that the number of unemployed has passed through 2.5 million for the first time in 15 years. Research by the insurance tycoon Clive Cowdery’s thinktank, Resolution Foundation, shows low-income households - with an average of £15,800 at their disposal - are walking an increasingly precarious financial tightrope. It has found that 24% of low-wage households spend more than a quarter of their monthly income on debt - twice the number from three years ago. The study shows nearly a third of low-income households have high loan-to-value mortgages and are in negative equity, making them vulnerable to homelessness if they lose their job…”

Study finds working poor hardest hit by income tax, By Phillip Rawls (AP), November 5, 2009, Montgomery Advertiser: “A national study released Wednesday showed Alaba­ma makes families living in poverty pay higher income taxes than any other state. The study by the Center on Budget and Policy Priori­ties comes a few days after a U.S. Census report showed Alabama residents and busi­nesses overall pay less in state and local taxes than their counterparts in any other state. In the 2007 fiscal year, the average of state and local taxes collected per person in Alabama was $2,909. Missis­sippi finished 49th at $2,989. The national median was $4,011. That doesn’t mean every­one in Alabama is enjoying low taxes…”

Colorado minimum wage set to fall, By Aldo Svaldi, October 13, 2009, Denver Post: “Colorado’s minimum wage is set to decline next year due to a decrease in the inflation rate during the first half of the year, according to an order from the Colorado Department of Labor and Employment. The new order would lower the state’s current hourly minimum of $7.28 to $7.24 on Jan. 1. Most employers, however, will still have to meet the federal minimum wage, which rose to $7.25 in July. For a full-time worker, going from $7.28 to the federal hourly minimum will result in a loss of $62.40 in income during the course of a year…”

Study finds high rate of imprisonment among dropouts, By Sam Dillon, October 8, 2009, New York Times: “On any given day, about one in every 10 young male high school dropouts is in jail or juvenile detention, compared with one in 35 young male high school graduates, according to a new study of the effects of dropping out of school in an America where demand for low-skill workers is plunging. The picture is even bleaker for African-Americans, with nearly one in four young black male dropouts incarcerated or otherwise institutionalized on an average day, the study said. That compares with about one in 14 young, male, white, Asian or Hispanic dropouts. Researchers at Northeastern University used census and other government data to carry out the study, which tracks the employment, workplace, parenting and criminal justice experiences of young high school dropouts…”

Low-wage workers are often cheated, study says, By Steven Greenhouse, September 1, 2009, New York Times: “Low-wage workers are routinely denied proper overtime pay and are often paid less than the minimum wage, according to a new study based on a survey of workers in New York, Los Angeles and Chicago. The study, the most comprehensive examination of wage-law violations in a decade, also found that 68 percent of the workers interviewed had experienced at least one pay-related violation in the previous work week. ‘We were all surprised by the high prevalence rate,’ said Ruth Milkman, one of the study’s authors and a sociology professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, and the City University of New York. The study, to be released on Wednesday, was financed by the Ford, Joyce, Haynes and Russell Sage Foundations. In surveying 4,387 workers in various low-wage industries, including apparel manufacturing, child care and discount retailing, the researchers found that the typical worker had lost $51 the previous week through wage violations, out of average weekly earnings of $339. That translates into a 15 percent loss in pay…”