This brief provides an overview of the state’s obligation to meet the needs of English learners, how limited funding exacerbates the opportunity gap, and highlights practices and policies that can ensure every child receive an education free from barriers to academic achievement.
Our military veterans and their families deserve not only our gratitude, but also our support for the sacrifices they have made for our country. Yet when it comes to health care, we are letting them down by not closing the health coverage gap, and providing access to the high-qualityand affordable health care that they need and deserve.
The list of policy recommendations below is not comprehensive because it focuses solely on “education policy.” However, if we want all North Carolina children to thrive, policymakers must consider a holistic policy agenda that confronts the role of poverty outside of school.
Limited incomes, minimal assets, and high costs of basic necessities limit the ability of low-income households to afford even small monthly coverage costs …
In this year’s report on the state of working North Carolina in 2017, we focus primarily on the generation that entered the job market and came of age roughly starting in the year 2000—the so-called Millennial generation. We look at the long-term and short-term trends in the economy and policy environment that have shaped their experience.
As the shock of the Great Recession recedes, it is becoming increasingly clear that our economy is falling short of our long-standing expectations about economic growth and prosperity. Like the national economy in recent years, North Carolina has experienced significant decline in its labor force, the replacement of good-wage manufacturing jobs with low-wage service jobs, wage stagnation, and increased income inequality.
North Carolina’s workers produce, earn and spend in the state’s economy, and their well-being is requisite for a strong economic recovery. However, as North Carolina policymakers try to set the state on a path of economic growth, they often ignore the primary role workers play in a successful economy.
Across the country and here in North Carolina, concern is rising that our collective negligence in the face of eroding public infrastructure will have ripple effects through our economy — keeping us from reaching our full economic potential and hurting the health and well-being of people and communities. Indeed, across a range of public infrastructure projects that seek to deliver a public good to the broad community, the receding role of government is acute. It is also not an accident.
Raising the minimum wage in North Carolina plays an essential role in addressing the problem of low wages by providing families with bigger paychecks, creating more good jobs, and building thriving communities.
Our 2016 analysis of the State of Working North Carolina demonstrates clear evidence that contradicts the trumpeting of a “Carolina Comeback” —and shows that low taxes, low regulation and lax labor standards largely do not lead to better economic outcomes nor address the challenges facing North Carolina.
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