Weekly Economic Snapshot 2/5 - 2/9
Economic Facts for This Week
- The decline in women’s labor force participation since 2000 potentially cost the U.S. economy more than $500 billion in 2016 alone. Access to paid leave increases women’s labor force participation, which helps the overall economy.
- The Treasury is on pace to borrow nearly $1 trillion this year, largely due to Republican’s deficit-busting tax cuts for the wealthy. The Congressional Budget Office now projects that the federal government will run out of cash in early March, about a month earlier than previously estimated. Past Republican debt ceiling brinkmanship has cost taxpayers billions of dollars.
- The Trump administration’s plan to shift the burden of infrastructure investment to states, cities, and the private sector will fail to meet the country’s infrastructure needs. States and localities already account for 77 percent of spending on transportation and water infrastructure, and face resource constraints that will make it tough for them to take on more of the burden.
Chart of the Week
The black-white wealth gap is staggering, and has dire implications for families across the country. The median net worth of a white household is $171,000 while the median net worth of a black household is $17,600. Wealth helps families weather economic downturns and periods of unemployment, prepare for retirement, launch new businesses, and set up future generations for success. There are likely many factors influencing this disparity, including the racial wage gap, discriminatory housing and housing-finance practices that lead to lower rates of homeownership, and less access to financial institutions and tools. This Black History Month, the Trump administration should be coming up with a plan to tackle this problem rather than taking credit for years-long trends in the racial unemployment gap.
ICYMI
- The Economic Policy Institute evaluates Trump’s first year of deregulation, and finds that workers’ health, safety, and pay were hit hard.
- Federal contractors awarded more than $20 billion in contracts since Trump’s election have also outsourced more than 10,000 jobs overseas.
Coming This Week
- Monday 9:00am: New Federal Reserve Board Chair Jerome Powell was sworn in
- Tuesday 10:00am: Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS, for Dec 2017) – https://www.bls.gov/news.release/jolts.nr0.htm
- Wednesday 3:00pm: Consumer Credit (for Dec 2017) – https://www.federalreserve.gov/Releases/G19/Current/default.htm
