Weekly Economic Snapshot 3/13 - 3/17
Economic Facts for this Week
- The Republican healthcare plan will increase costs for the average enrollee by $2,409 in 2020, according to new analysis. Costs will increase by $6,971 in 2020 for older individuals and by $4,061 for poorer individuals.
- The Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center says that repealing the Affordable Care Act’s taxes will give the richest families around an additional $200,000 a year in after-tax income, while low-income families will lose $205 a year. That’s like 960 low-income families giving up a month of groceries to pay for one wealthy family’s membership at President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort.
- The Republican plan would take $370 billion away from states over 10 years by cutting Medicaid funding. Only 5 percent of children in America remain uninsured—an all-time low due in large part to the Medicaid expansion Republicans are now targeting.
Chart of the Week:
The percentage of Americans lacking insurance has dropped in recent years, thanks to the Affordable Care Act. The uninsurance rate for adult men was 13 percent in 2015, down from 21 percent in 2010, when the ACA was passed (for women, the uninsurance rate dropped to 9 percent from 16 percent). For children, it fell from 9 percent in 2008 to 5 percent in 2015.
ICYMI
- Economists have found that more immigrant workers make firms more productive. They also find that employing more immigrants increases the wages of native-born workers.
- Undocumented immigrants pay 8 percent of their income in state and local taxes, compared to the top 1 percent of taxpayers who only pay 5.4 percent.
- Economists stress that it is not necessarily a good thing that initial unemployment insurance claims are now so low if that decline is due to people being shut out of the unemployment insurance system.
- New research suggests that women are more likely to volunteer for (or be volunteered for) tasks with low promotability, which may affect their ability to progress in their careers.
Coming This Week
- Monday 10:00am: State Employment and Unemployment (Monthly) – https://www.bls.gov/news.release/laus.toc.htm
- Wednesday 8:30am: Consumer Price Index and Real Earnings – https://www.bls.gov/news.release/cpi.nr0.htm; https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/realer.pdf
- Wednesday 2:00 pm: FOMC press statement (where Fed announces any interest rate movements) https://www.federalreserve.gov/monetarypolicy/fomccalendars.htm
- Thursday 10:00am: Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey – https://www.bls.gov/news.release/jolts.htm
- Friday 10:00am: Employer Costs for Employee Compensation – https://www.bls.gov/news.release/ecec.nr0.htm
