Kuochih Huang joined the Labor Center’s Low-Wage Work program team in July 2020. Originally from Taiwan, Kuochih earned his Ph.D. in economics from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He has conducted research for several labor organizations in Taiwan. Prior to graduate school, Kuochih worked as an assistant research fellow at the Taiwan Institute of Economic Research (TIER) and as a journalist covering public policy issues.
The Living Wage Act is a proposed ballot measure to increase the California minimum wage to $18 an hour by 2025. This report examines which workers stand to benefit from the proposed increase.
This data tool tracks the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on workers in California, and how the state is recovering from these effects. The pandemic left millions of Californians out of work, and while the economy has begun to recover in recent months, some workers continue to struggle. This resource will be updated periodically, as new data becomes available, to allow users to monitor the progress of labor markets in the state. Last updated May 18, 2022.
In this blog we will use the Low-Wage Data Explorer to dispel some myths about the one-in-three workers in California who are paid low wages.
In this research brief we provide estimates of safety net use among families of construction workers in Arizona. We find that 45% of families of construction workers in Arizona are enrolled in one or more safety net programs at a cost to the state and the federal government of over $700 million per year. By comparison, among all Arizona workers, 32% have a family member enrolled in one or more safety net programs. Over one-third (36%) of construction workers lack health insurance, almost three times the rate for all workers in Arizona (13%).
In this research brief we provide estimates of safety net use among families of construction workers in Georgia. We find that 44% of families of construction workers in Georgia are enrolled in one or more safety net programs at a cost to the state and the federal government of approximately $400 million per year. By comparison, among all Georgia workers, 33% have a family member enrolled in one or more safety net programs. Nearly half (49%) of construction workers lack health insurance, more than three times the rate for all workers in Georgia (15%).
Many workers in the industry are in the residential construction sector, where they are often misclassified as independent contractors and are not being paid as highly as those who are putting up commercial buildings and roads, said Kuochih Huang, one of the authors of the study.
“Women lost their jobs by far more than men because either their position was affected by the pandemic, or because they needed to quit their job or reduce their work hours because they needed to take care of their children,” Huang said.
One year into the COVID-19 pandemic, we’re seeing improved employment figures for women. But these numbers don’t tell the whole story. The dual shocks of employment and child care loss continue to threaten decades of progress in women’s labor market participation and earnings.
Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, two-thirds of the California labor force would be considered as being employed in occupations of close proximity, according to a Nov. 30 study from the UC Berkeley Center for Labor Research and Education.
About two-thirds of California workers will be within arm’s length of their colleagues and customers when the economy reopens fully after the pandemic, University of California at Berkeley researchers discovered.
