Unhappy about the size of your paycheck?
A lot of folks in Delaware probably are.
Its nickname may be “the Diamond State,” but it’s the only state in the U.S. where nominal wages dropped between 2009 and 2014,according to The Economist.
That means people are earning less money even before inflation is taken into account. Wages are down 2 to 3 percent, according to the chart accompanying the British newsmagazine’s article.
Read more:
Editor’s note: Several Pennsylvania metro areas fared well on the list. Pittsburgh (26), Philadelphia (33) and Lancaster (38).
Continuing WalletHub’s theme of small business-related releases in honor of National Small Business Week (May 12-16), this study sought to identify the cities that are the most and least friendly to employees of small companies.
There is no shortage of commentary on the best and worst cities to start a small business, after all, and with such companies employing about 47% of the private workforce in this country, paying more than 40% of the private payroll, and creating more than 60% of the new jobs added over the past 20 years, according to the U.S. Small Business Administration, it bears asking what opportunities exist for the roughly 12.3% of people who are currently either unemployed or marginally attached to the labor force, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
More specifically, WalletHub’s used 10 different metrics – ranging from net small business job growth and industry variety to hours worked and average wages for new hires – to evaluate the state of small business in the 100 largest metropolitan areas in the United States. We then ranked the cities based on their overall attractiveness for job seekers.
Read more: http://wallethub.com/edu/best-cities-to-work-for-a-small-business/3768/
The year is starting with a social safety net disappearing for 86,900 unemployed Pennsylvanians.
Congress allowed the legislation authorizing emergency unemployment compensation, the federal extension of unemployment benefits, to expire as of Monday.
That means that the unemployment compensation debit cards issued by the state department of Labor and Industry will not be reloaded for people who have exhausted their original six months of unemployment payments.
According to the National Employment Law Project in New York City, the cuts will affect 1.3 million Americans immediately, 86,900 of them from Pennsylvania, which has the fourth-highest total of unemployed workers collecting the emergency long-term benefits.
Today’s alarming financial news is the rise in first-time unemployment claims to 385,000, up 28,000 and also above expectations. The U.S. Labor Department report shows the labor market is weakening, not that it was anything resembling strong in the first place. It makes me want to cry, because every piece of news like this makes me even more distraught about the future of the 4.8 million long-term unemployed.
I’ve covered unemployment issues or more than a decade and the future for those who are out of work beyond the normal six months funded by state benefits is very bleak. These aren’t lazy bums, but desperate people who are financially and emotionally devastated by their situation.
Read more: http://www.philly.com/philly/blogs/jobs/INQ_JobbingBlog_The-real-fiscal-cliff-The-millions-of-long-term-unemployed.html#ixzz2PVbVF6gR
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Seal of the United States Social Security Administration. It appears on Social Security cards. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
WASHINGTON – Social Security recipients shouldn’t expect a big increase in monthly benefits come January.
Preliminary figures show the annual benefit boost will be between 1 percent and 2 percent, which would be among the lowest since automatic adjustments were adopted in 1975. Monthly benefits for retired workers now average $1,237, meaning the typical retiree can expect a raise of between $12 and $24 a month.
The size of the increase will be made official Tuesday, when the government releases inflation figures for September. The announcement is unlikely to please a big group of voters – 56 million people get benefits – just three weeks before elections for president and Congress.
The cost-of-living adjustment, or COLA, is tied to a government measure of inflation adopted by Congress in the 1970s. It shows that consumer prices have gone up by less than 2 percent in the past year.
For the second consecutive year, the Social Security trustees have determined that a cost-of-living adjustment for social security recipients is not necessary as the cost of living has not increase enough to warrant a raise. An official announcement is expected on Friday when the Federal Bureau of Labor Statistics announces their inflation estimates.
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