Sara
Hinkley

California’s 2021-22 budget will have an enormous impact on the nature of California’s recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic. The Governor’s 2021-22 budget proposal would restore some critical funding for public health and education, but it will not be sufficient to get California’s economy and low-income Californians back on track. To avoid a prolonged economic downturn, and further damage to California’s most vulnerable residents, California needs to make a much more significant investment in the drivers of economic growth.

This brief summarizes the Great Recession’s impact on public employment and the public sector job losses driven by the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. Our analysis points to the importance of focusing on the public sector as policymakers respond to the COVID-19 crisis.

In this post we examine the likely impacts of the pandemic on local budgets, the factors still unknown, and the principles that must guide California’s response to this ongoing crisis.

Although the short-term effect of today’s decision is to throw 17 million public sector workers into uncertainty, it is also possible that Janus v. AFSCME will serve as a turning point for both a reinvigorated politics of labor and a revitalized conversation about the importance of the public sector to our social compact. Both our economy and our democracy depend on what happens next.

As economic inequality takes center stage in the public debate, policymakers are increasingly asking whether subcontracting has contributed to the problem of low-wage work.