As we approach the one-year anniversary of the Inflation Reduction Act, the law is already lowering costs for families, growing the middle class, jumpstarting clean energy development, and creating a fairer tax system. The Inflation Reduction Act’s impacts will only grow in future years as more investments flow through the economy and additional climate and health care provisions take effect to help American families.

Below are a series of resources that highlight the impacts of the law at the national and state level one year later, and a separate piece describing the recent progress made on inflation.

Ensuring Americans’ access to quality higher education is a critical piece of the U.S. economy’s success. A higher education is one important pathway to the middle class and making it available to more Americans leads to a strong, diverse, and globally competitive workforce. Yet, student loan debt can act as a barrier to entry into the middle class, denying many borrowers the ability to build wealth, save for retirement, and support a family.
Recognizing these challenges, the Biden-Harris administration has overhauled the income-driven repayment (IDR) system to give millions of middle-class borrowers the relief they need to pay back their loans in a sustainable way. The administration’s actions will give full credit for the payments borrowers have already made, while also introducing the Saving on a Valuable Education (SAVE) plan to reduce IDR payments going forward.

Each month, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) releases national and state-level data on U.S. employment, which provide useful information about the state of the labor market and progress toward building a better America. To highlight key trends in the monthly data, the Joint Economic Committee compiles state-by-state fact sheets for all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico. The most recent state-level data, which cover the month of June, were released on July 21, 2023. The latest national data were released on July 7, 2023.