This week marks the 99th anniversary of the adoption of the 19th Amendment, granting women (though not black or native women, in many cases) the right to vote. Read this op-ed in the Beckley Register-Herald. This date has become known as Women’s Equality Day, but nearly a century later, women – and particularly women of…
Income and Work
Everyone gets sick, but not everyone gets paid time off work to get better. Nearly half of West Virginia’s private sector workers, 46 percent, lacks paid sick leave, and people of color and low-income workers are the least likely to have access to this benefit. This means that those who have the most to lose by…
Governor Justice once again drew attention to a strong quarter of personal income growth for the state, with WV having the highest 2019Q1 personal income growth in the country. But, as was the case the last time the governor highlighted this particular statistic, there is more to the story than one quarter's worth of data…
Governor Justice is touting recently released state unemployment figures to conclude that West Virginia has the "best job rate in 11 years" and "record-setting job growth". A clear understanding of the data tells a very different story, where West Virginia's economy is performing worse than the rest of the country since he took office and…
While a number of states took action recently this year to increase their minimum wages and expand overtimes protections, West Virginia moved in the opposite direction. SB 377, which passed and was signed by the governor, exempted seasonal amusement park workers from being eligible for overtime pay, while HB 2048, which was introduced by not taken…
Revised job figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics show that West Virginia has experienced relatively strong job growth over the last year thanks to the construction industry. In particular, the growth in natural gas pipeline construction has fueled not only this job growth and but also the state’s short-term revenue surpluses—especially during the last…
Working families with low- and moderate-incomes often struggle to keep afloat and many childless adults are often taxed into poverty. On April 10, 2019, Senators Sherrod Brown, Michael Bennet, Richard Durbin, and Ron Wyden introduced the “Working Families Tax Relief Act” that aims to expand both the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) as well as…
Last month, the Department of Labor published a proposal to set the salary threshold under which almost all workers are entitled to overtime pay to $679 per week, or $35,308 for a full-year worker, in 2020. While an increase in the overtime salary threshold is long overdue, the current proposal would leave behind millions of workers…
West Virginia has a unique opportunity to lead the way in providing paid leave benefits to all workers. A bipartisan group of Senators has introduced SCR 41, which would instruct the legislature to study the costs, benefits, and implementation of creating a paid family and medical leave program in West Virginia. Although there is bipartisan…
West Virginians who work should be able to support their families and afford their basic needs. Unfortunately, too many jobs in West Virginia pay too little for workers and their families to make ends meet. 23% of workers in West Virginia are employed in low-wage jobs and over a quarter of those live in poverty.…