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    What Will Happen to Black Workers’ Gains if There’s a Recession?

    Black unemployment fell quickly after the initial pandemic downturn. But as the Federal Reserve fights inflation, those gains could be eroded.Black Americans have been hired much more rapidly in the wake of the pandemic shutdowns than after previous recessions. But as the Federal Reserve tries to soften the labor market in a bid to tame inflation, economists worry that Black workers will bear the brunt of a slowdown — and that without federal aid to cushion the blow, the impact could be severe.Some 3.5 million Black workers lost or left their jobs in March and April 2020. In weeks, the unemployment rate for Black workers soared to 16.8 percent, the same as the peak after the 2008 financial crisis, while the rate for white workers topped out at 14.1 percent.Since then, the U.S. economy has experienced one of its fastest rebounds ever, one that has extended to workers of all races. The Black unemployment rate was 6 percent last month, just above the record low of late 2019. And in government data collected since the 1990s, wages for Black workers are rising at their fastest pace ever.Now policymakers at the Fed and in the White House face the challenge of fighting inflation without inducing a recession that would erode or reverse those workplace gains.Decades of research has found that workers from racial and ethnic minorities — along with those with other barriers to employment, such as disabilities, criminal records or low levels of education — are among the first laid off during a downturn and the last hired during a recovery.William Darity Jr., a Duke University professor who has studied racial gaps in employment, says the problem is that the only reliable tool the Fed uses to fight inflation — increasing interest rates — works in part by causing unemployment. Higher borrowing costs make consumers less likely to spend and employers less likely to invest, reducing pressure on prices. But that also reduces demand for workers, pushing joblessness up and wages down.“I don’t know that there’s any existing policy option that’s plausible that would not result in hurting some significant portion of the population,” Mr. Darity said. “Whether it’s inflation or it’s rising unemployment, there’s a disproportionate impact on Black workers.”In a paper published last month, Lawrence H. Summers, a former Treasury secretary and top economic adviser to Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, asserted with his co-authors that the Fed would need to allow the overall unemployment rate to rise to 5 percent or above — it is now 3.5 percent — to bring inflation under control. Since Black unemployment is typically about double that of white workers, that suggests that the rate for Black workers would approach or reach double digits.In an interview, Mr. Summers said that outcome would be regrettable and, to some extent, unavoidable.“But the alternative,” Mr. Summers argued — “simply pretending” the U.S. labor market can remain this hot — “is setting the stage for the mistakes we made in the 1970s, and ultimately for a far larger recession, to contain inflation.”The State of Jobs in the United StatesEmployment gains in July, which far surpassed expectations, show that the labor market is not slowing despite efforts by the Federal Reserve to cool the economy.July Jobs Report: U.S. employers added 528,000 jobs in the seventh month of the year. The unemployment rate was 3.5 percent, down from 3.6 percent in June.Slow Wage Growth: Pay has been rising rapidly for workers at the top and the bottom. But things haven’t been so positive for all professions — especially for pharmacists.Care Worker Shortages: A lack of child care and elder care options is forcing some women to limit their hours or has sidelined them altogether, hurting their career prospects.Downsides of a Hot Market: Students are forgoing degrees in favor of the attractive positions offered by employers desperate to hire. That could come back to haunt them.“These arguments have nothing to do with how much you care about unemployment, or how much you care about the unemployment of disadvantaged groups,” he continued. “They only have to do with technical judgment.”Many progressive economists have been sharply critical of that view, arguing that Black workers should not be the collateral damage in a war on inflation. William Spriggs, an economist at Howard University, cautioned against overstating the Fed’s ability to bring inflation under control — especially when inflation is being driven in part by global forces — and underestimating the potential damage from driving interest rates much higher.Black workers will suffer first under a Fed-induced recession, Mr. Spriggs said. When that happens, he added, job losses across the board tend to follow. “And so you pay attention, because that’s the canary in the coal mine,” he said.In a June 2020 essay in The Washington Post and an accompanying research paper, Jared Bernstein — now a top economic adviser to President Biden — laid out the increasingly popular argument that in light of this, the Fed “should consider targeting not the overall unemployment rate, but the Black rate.”Fed policy, he added, implicitly treats 4 percent unemployment as a long-term goal, but “because Black unemployment is two times the overall rate, targeting 4 percent for the overall economy means targeting 8 percent for blacks.”The Fed didn’t take Mr. Bernstein’s advice. But in the years leading up to the pandemic, Fed policymakers increasingly talked about the benefits of a strong labor market for racial and ethnic minorities, and cited it as a factor in their policy decisions.After Mr. Biden took office, he and his economic advisers pushed for a large government spending bill — which became the $1.9 trillion American Recovery Plan — in part on the grounds that it would avoid the painful slog that job seekers, particularly nonwhite workers, faced after the 2007-9 recession and would instead deliver a supercharged recovery.Federal pandemic relief provided a cushion for Ms. Jordan, at her home near Atlanta with her husband and children. Rita Harper for The New York Times“It’s been faster, more robust for African Americans than any other post-recessionary periods since at least the 1970s,” Cecilia Rouse, the chair of Mr. Biden’s Council of Economic Advisers, said in an interview. Black workers are receiving faster wage gains than other racial and ethnic groups, and have taken advantage of the strong job market to move into higher-paying industries and occupations, according to an analysis of government data by White House economists shared with The New York Times.Menyuan Jordan is among them. Ms. Jordan, who has a master’s degree in social work and was making a living training child care providers in February 2020, saw her livelihood upended when Covid-19 struck.“The money was based off face-to-face professional development that went to zero almost immediately overnight,” she said. “I couldn’t afford the rent.”But pandemic relief packages from the federal government helped cushion the blow of lost earnings. And by last winter, Ms. Jordan had landed a job as a mental health clinician near her home in Atlanta — one that offered training and paid roughly $13,000 more than her prepandemic role, which she estimates brought in $42,000 annually.Administration officials say they are optimistic that Black workers can continue to see higher wages and improving job opportunities even if the labor market cools. But Goldman Sachs analysts, echoing a common view, recently concluded that average wage gains for workers would need to fall much further to be consistent with the Fed’s inflation goals.Fed policymakers are still somewhat hopeful that they can bring down inflation without causing a recession or undoing the gains of the past two years, in part because of a hope that the labor market can slow down mainly through reductions in job openings rather than layoffs.Jerome H. Powell, the Fed chair, has made the case that only by bringing inflation under control can the central bank create a sustainably strong labor market that will benefit all workers.“We all want to get back to the kind of labor market we had before the pandemic,” Mr. Powell said in a news conference last month. “That’s not going to happen without restoring price stability.”Some voices in finance are calling for smaller and fewer rate increases, worried that the Fed is underestimating the ultimate impact of its actions to date. David Kelly, the chief global strategist for J.P. Morgan Asset Management, believes that inflation is set to fall considerably anyway — and that the central bank should exhibit greater patience, as remnants of pandemic government stimulus begin to vanish and household savings further dwindle.“The economy is basically treading water right now,” Mr. Kelly said, adding that officials “don’t need to put us into a recession just to show how tough they are on inflation.”Michelle Holder, a labor economist at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, similarly warned against the “statistical fatalism” that halting labor gains is the only way forward. Still, she said, she’s fully aware that under current policy, trade-offs between inflation and job creation are likely to endure, disproportionately hurting Black workers. Interest rate increases, she said, are the Fed’s primary tool — its hammer — and “a hammer sees everything as a nail.”Reflecting on a dinner she recently attended in Washington with “really high-level, all-white progressive economists,” Ms. Holder, who is Black, said there was a “resigned attitude” among many of her peers, who want positive near-term outcomes for people of color overall but remain “wedded to the use of mainstream tools” and ask, “What else can we do?”Mr. Darity, the Duke professor, argued that one solution would be policies that helped insulate workers from an economic downturn, like having the federal government guarantee a job to anyone who wants one. Some economists support less ambitious policies, such as expanded benefits to help people who lose jobs in a recession. But there is little prospect that Congress would adopt either approach, or come to the rescue again with large relief checks — especially given criticism from many Republicans, and some high-profile Democrats, that excessive aid in the pandemic contributed to inflation today.“The tragedy will be that our administration won’t be able to help the families or individuals that need it if another recession happens,” Ms. Holder said.Morgani Brown, 24, lives and works in Charlotte, N.C., and has experienced the modest yet meaningful improvements in job quality that many Black workers have since the initial pandemic recession. She left an aircraft cleaning job with Jetstream Ground Services at Charlotte Douglas International Airport last year because the $10-an-hour pay was underwhelming. But six months ago, the work had become more attractive.Morgani Brown returned to an employer she had left in Charlotte, N.C., when the hourly pay rose. Damola Akintunde for The New York Times“I’d seen that they were paying more, at $14,” she said, “so I went and applied for Jetstream again.” She remains frustrated with some work conditions, but said the situation had “ended up being better.”With rents rising, she saves money rooming with her boyfriend and another friend, both of whom work at an Amazon fulfillment center. Ms. Brown, who has a baby on the way, is aware that the e-commerce giant has recently cut back its work force. (An Amazon official noted on a recent earnings call that the company had “quickly transitioned from being understaffed to being overstaffed.”)Ms. Brown said she and her roommates hoped that their jobs could weather any downturn. But she has begun hearing more rumblings about people she knows being fired or laid off.“I’m not sure exactly why,” she said. More

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    Economic Aid, Once Plentiful, Falls Off at a Painful Moment

    Food insecurity is rising again as relief provided by President Biden’s $1.9 trillion stimulus package wanes.PORTLAND, Ore. — For the better part of last year, the pandemic eased its grip on Oregon’s economy. Awash in federal assistance, including direct checks to individuals and parents, many of the state’s most vulnerable found it easier to afford food, housing and other daily staples.Most of that aid, which was designed to be a temporary bridge, has run out at a particularly bad moment. Oregon, like states across the nation, has seen its economy improve, but prices for everything from eggs to gas to rent have spiked. Demand is growing at food banks like William Temple House in Northwest Portland, where the line for necessities like bread, vegetables and toilet paper stretched two dozen people deep on a recent day.“I’m very worried, like I was in the first month of the pandemic, that we will run out of food,” said Susannah Morgan, who runs the Oregon Food Bank, which helps supply William Temple House and 1,400 other meal assistance sites.In March 2021, President Biden signed into law a $1.9 trillion aid package aimed at helping people stay afloat when the economy was still reeling from the coronavirus. In addition to direct checks, the package included rental assistance and other measures meant to prevent evictions. It ensured free school lunches and offered expanded food assistance through several programs.Those programs helped the U.S. economy recover far more quickly than many economists had expected, but they have run their course as prices soar at the fastest pace in 40 years. The Federal Reserve, in an attempt to tame inflation, is rapidly raising borrowing costs, slowing the economy’s growth and stoking fears of a recession. While the labor market remains remarkably strong, the Fed’s interest rate increases risk slamming the brakes on the economy and pushing millions of people out of work, which would hurt lower-wage workers and risk adding to evictions and food insecurity.Several factors have driven prices higher in the last year, including a shift in spending toward goods like couches and cars and away from services. Supply chain snarls, a buying frenzy in the housing market and an oil price spike surrounding the Russian invasion of Ukraine have also contributed. While gas prices have fallen in recent months, rent continues to rise, and food and other staples remain elevated.Another factor fueling inflation, at least in small part, is the stimulus spending that helped speed the economy’s recovery and keep people out of poverty. More money in people’s bank accounts translated into more consumer spending.While the extent to which the rescue package fed inflation remains a matter of disagreement, almost no one, in Washington or on the front lines of helping vulnerable people across the country, expects another round of federal aid even if the economy tips into a recession. Lawmakers have grown increasingly concerned that more stimulus could exacerbate rising prices.In the meantime, the progress that the Biden administration hailed in fighting poverty last year has faded. The national child poverty rate and the food hardship rate for families with children, which dipped in 2021, have both rebounded to their highest levels since December 2020, according to researchers at Columbia University’s Center on Poverty and Social Policy. Two in five Americans surveyed by the Census Bureau at the end of July said they had difficulty paying a usual household expense in the previous week, the highest rate in two years of the survey.What is happening at the William Temple House is emblematic of the economic situation. Demand for food is swelling again, and officials here blame rising prices and lost federal aid. The people seeking help come from a wide variety of backgrounds: parents, retirees struggling to stretch Social Security benefits, immigrants who speak Mandarin, college graduates with jobs.Inflation F.A.Q.Card 1 of 5Inflation F.A.Q.What is inflation? More

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    Prosecutors Struggle to Catch Up to a Tidal Wave of Pandemic Fraud

    Investigators say there was so much fraud in federal covid-relief programs that — even after two years of work and hundreds of prosecutions — they’re still just getting started.In the midst of the pandemic the government gave unemployment benefits to the incarcerated, the imaginary and the dead. It sent money to “farms” that turned out to be front yards. It paid people who were on the government’s “Do Not Pay List.” It gave loans to 342 people who said their name was “N/A.”As the virus shuttered businesses and forced people out of work, the federal government sent a flood of relief money into programs aimed at helping the newly unemployed and boosting the economy. That included $3.1 trillion that former President Donald J. Trump approved in 2020, followed by a $1.9 trillion package signed into law in 2021 by President Biden.But those dollars came with few strings and minimal oversight. The result: one of the largest frauds in American history, with billions of dollars stolen by thousands of people, including at least one amateur who boasted of his criminal activity on YouTube.Now, prosecutors are trying to catch up.There are currently 500 people working on pandemic-fraud cases across the offices of 21 inspectors general, plus investigators from the F.B.I., the Secret Service, the Postal Inspection Service and the Internal Revenue Service.The federal government has already charged 1,500 people with defrauding pandemic-aid programs, and more than 450 people have been convicted so far. But those figures are dwarfed by the mountain of tips and leads that investigators still have to chase.Agents in the Labor Department’s inspector general’s office have 39,000 investigations going. About 50 agents in a Small Business Administration office are sorting through two million potentially fraudulent loan applications.Officials already concede that the sheer number of cases means that some small-dollar thefts may never be prosecuted. Earlier this month, President Biden signed bills extending the statute of limitations for some pandemic-related fraud to 10 years from five, a move aimed at giving the government more time to pursue cases. “My message to those cheats out there is this: You can’t hide. We’re going to find you,” Mr. Biden said during the signing at the White House.Investigators say they hope the extra time will allow them to ensure that those who defrauded the government are ultimately punished, restoring a deterrent that had vanished in a flood of lies and money.President Biden signed bills extending the statute of limitations for some pandemic-related fraud to 10 years.Pete Marovich for The New York Times“There are years and years and years of work ahead of us,” said Kevin Chambers, the Department of Justice’s chief pandemic prosecutor. “I’m confident that we’ll be using every last day of those 10 years.”The federal government provided about $5 trillion in relief money in three separate legislative packages — an enormous sum that is credited with reducing poverty and saving the country from a prolonged, painful recession.But investigators say that Congress, in its haste to get money out the door quickly, designed all three packages with the same flaw: relying on the honor system.For example, an expanded unemployment benefit gave workers an extra $600 per week in federal jobless funds on top of what they received from their state. The program was funded by the federal government but administered by states, which often had loose rules around qualifying. Applicants did not need to provide proof they had lost income because of Covid-19; they simply had to swear it was true.A similar we’ll-take-your-word-for-it approach was used in two loan programs run by the Small Business Administration.Millions of Americans sought unemployment benefits during the height of the pandemic.Hiroko Masuike/The New York TimesThey were the Paycheck Protection Plan, in which the government guaranteed loans made by private lenders, and the Economic Injury Disaster Loan program, in which the government itself gave out loans and smaller advance grants that didn’t have to be repaid. In both, the government trusted businesses to self-certify that they met key requirements.Both the Labor Department and the Small Business Administration said they tried to screen those claims — and that they did reject billions of dollars’ worth of applications that didn’t make sense. But that wasn’t enough.In some cases, the programs missed schemes that were comically easy to spot: In one instance, 29 states paid unemployment benefits to the same person. In another, a Postal Service employee got $82,900 loan for a business called “U.S. Postal Services.” Another individual got 10 loans for 10 nonexistent bathroom-renovation businesses, using the email address of a burrito shop.In the Paycheck Protection Plan, private banks were supposed to help with the screening, since in theory they were dealing with customers they already knew. But that left out many small businesses, and the government allowed online lenders to enter the program. This year, University of Texas researchers found that some of those “fintech” lenders appeared less diligent about catching fraud.As the virus shuttered businesses and forced people out of work, Congress and federal agencies sent relief money into programs aimed at supporting the jobless and helping the economy stay afloat.Brittainy Newman/The New York TimesIn another case, a mother and daughter in Westchester County, N.Y., stand accused of turning fraud into a franchise — helping other people cook up fake businesses in order to get loans from the Economic Injury Disaster program.Andrea Ayers advised one client to tell the government she ran a baking business from home, although she was not a baker, prosecutors said.“You bake,” Ms. Ayers texted to the client, adding four laugh-crying emojis, according to charging documents.“Lol,” the client wrote back.The scheme was designed, prosecutors said, to take advantage of the Small Business Administration’s advance grant program, which provided applicants up to $10,000 up front while the agency decided whether to award an a larger loan. Even if the loan was rejected, in many cases the applicant could still keep the grant.Prosecutors said that Ms. Ayers’s daughter, Alicia Ayers, texted another client that the small size of the grants meant they were unlikely to be punished: “10k is not enough for jail time lol.”The government charged both Ayerses with wire fraud. They have pleaded not guilty. Their lawyers did not respond to requests for comment.In some corners of the internet, schemes to defraud were discussed in chat rooms and YouTube videos, where scammers offered to help for a cut of the proceeds. Some used the money on necessities, like mortgage bills or car payments. But many seemed to act out of opportunism and greed, splurging on a yacht, a mansion, a $38,000 Rolex or a $57,000 Pokemon trading card.Vinath Oudomsine bought a $57,000 Pokemon card after receiving a pandemic loan from the Small Business Administration for a nonexistent business.U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of GeorgiaVinath Oudomsine bought the Pokemon card in January 2021, after receiving a loan from the Small Business Administration for a nonexistent business. He pleaded guilty to defrauding the loan program in October 2021, leaving the U.S. government responsible for selling the card.Pandemic fraud became such an open secret that it ceased to be much of a secret at all. In September 2020, a California rapper named Fontrell Antonio Baines, who performs as Nuke Bizzle, posted a music video on YouTube, bragging in detail about how he’d gotten rich by submitting false unemployment claims. His song was called “EDD,” after California’s Employment Development Department, which paid the benefits.“I just seen 30 cards land in one day. Got straight on the phone and activate,” Mr. Baines rapped in the song, flashing cash and envelopes with preloaded debit cards from the state.“Unemployment so sweet,” Mr. Baines said.All three of those programs are now over. There is no official estimate for the amount of money that was stolen from them — or from pandemic-relief programs in general. The Justice Department has charged people with about $1 billion in fraud so far, and is investigating other cases involving $6 billion more, investigators said.But other reports have suggested the real number could be much higher. One official said the total of “improper” unemployment payments could be more than $163 billion, as first reported by The Washington Post. In the Economic Injury Disaster Loan program, a watchdog found that $58 billion had been paid to companies that shared the same addresses, phone numbers, bank accounts or other data as other applicants — a sign of potential fraud.“It’s clear there’s tens of billions in fraud,” said Michael Horowitz, the chairman of the Pandemic Response Accountability Committee, which includes 21 agency inspectors general working on fraud cases. “Would it surprise me if it exceeded $100 billion? No.”The effort to catch fraudsters began as soon as the money started flowing, and the first person was charged with benefit fraud in May 2020. But investigators were quickly deluged with tips at a scale they’d never dealt with before. The Small Business Administration’s fraud hotline — which had previously received 800 calls a year — got 148,000 in the first year of the pandemic. The Small Business Administration sent its inspector general two million loan applications to check for potential identity theft. At the Department of Labor, the inspector general’s office has 39,000 cases of suspected unemployment fraud, a 1,000 percent increase from prepandemic levels.But prosecutors face a key disadvantage: While fraud takes minutes, investigations take months and prosecutions take even longer.Mr. Baines, who detailed his jobless benefit scheme on YouTube, was arrested in September 2020, when Las Vegas police found other people’s unemployment-benefit cards in his car. Mr. Baines pleaded guilty to mail fraud last month. His attorneys declined to comment.Fontrell Antonio Baines, a rapper who performs as Nuke Bizzle, posted a video in which he bragged about getting rich by submitting false unemployment claims.Nuke Bizzle, via YouTubeHannibal Ware, the Small Business Administration inspector general, said his office has tried to focus on cases involving large thefts, career criminals or ringleaders who organized a fraud operation.“Only about 50 working field agents, right? So how do I take one of my agents off of a $20 million case to work a $10,000 case?” said Mr. Ware, who is known as Mike. “Because they will tell me, ‘Mike, the work is the same.’”That has allowed many individuals who took advantage of government programs to go unpunished. Despite ample evidence of people fraudulently obtaining $10,000 advance grants, Mr. Ware’s office has not sought charges for cases involving only a single grant, falsely obtained. It would cost more than $10,000 just to investigate each one.In all, that program awarded 3.9 million loans totaling about $389 billion, on top of $27 billion in grants that did not have to be repaid, according to the Small Business Administration. Many of the allegations of fraud in the grants program date to the first weeks of the pandemic, when the government gave out 5.8 million advance grants worth $19.7 billion in just over 100 days. In that program, fraud was easy to pull off, according to a government watchdog, which cited numerous loans given to businesses that were ineligible for funding.Mr. Ware said that he recently limited his agents to working 10 cases at a time, telling them, “You’re killing yourself. I have to protect you from you.”In some cases, lawyers for those charged with committing pandemic fraud have sought to argue that their clients should be judged less harshly for stealing because the government made it so easy.The government “was handing out money with no checks and a lot of people took advantage of that,” Ashwin J. Ram, an attorney for convicted fraudster Richard Ayvazyan, told The New York Times in November.“It’s a honey trap,” he added. “Richard Ayvazyan fell into that trap.” Mr. Ayvazyan was sentenced to 17 years in prison for participating in a ring that sought $20 million in fraudulent loans.Richard Ayvazyan was convicted in a scheme to steal $20 million in Covid-19 relief funds.Gary Coronado/Los Angeles Times, via Getty ImagesIn the case of Mr. Oudomsine, the Pokemon card purchaser, his lawyers argued in March that a judge should be lenient in deciding his sentence because the fraud had taken hardly any time at all.“It is an event without significant planning, of limited duration,” said lawyer Brian Jarrard, who was Mr. Oudomsine’s attorney at the time.That didn’t work.U.S. District Judge Dudley H. Bowen Jr. sentenced Mr. Oudomsine to three years in prison, more than prosecutors had asked for, to “demonstrate to the world that this is the consequence” of fraud, according to a transcript of the sentencing.Now, Mr. Oudomsine is appealing, with a new lawyer and a new argument. Deterrence, the new lawyer argues, is moot here because the pandemic-relief programs are over.“There’s no way to deter someone from doing it, when there’s no way they can do it any longer,” said David Rafus, Mr. Oudomsine’s new lawyer.Biden administration officials say they’re trying to prepare for the next disaster, seeking to build a system that would quickly check applications for signs of identity theft.“Criminal syndicates are going to look for weak links at moments of crisis to attack us,” said Gene Sperling, the White House coordinator for pandemic aid. He said the White House now aims to build an ongoing system that would detect identity theft quickly in applications for aid: “The right time to start building a stronger system to prevent identity theft is now, not in the middle of the next serious crisis.”In the meantime, the arrests go on.Last week, prosecutors charged a correctional officer at a federal prison in Atlanta with defrauding the Paycheck Protection Program, saying she had received two loans totaling $38,200 in 2020 and 2021. The officer, Harrescia Hopkins, has pleaded not guilty. Her attorney did not respond to a request for comment.“You can’t have a system where crime pays,” said Mr. Horowitz, of the federal Pandemic Response Accountability Committee. “It undercuts the entire system of justice. It undercuts people’s faith in these programs, in their government. You can’t have that.”Seamus Hughes contributed reporting. More

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    As Biden Pleads for More Covid Aid, States Are Awash in Federal Dollars

    States pushed back on a plan to take back some of their stimulus money to fund President Biden’s emergency spending request. Now Congress is trying to find other ways to offset the cost.FRANKFORT, Ky. — Gov. Andy Beshear has been toting oversize checks around his state in recent weeks, handing them out to city and county officials for desperately needed water improvements.The tiny city of Mortons Gap got $109,000 to bring running water to six families who do not have it. The people of Martin County, whose water has been too contaminated to drink since a coal slurry spill two decades ago, got $411,000. The checks bear Mr. Beshear’s signature, but the money comes from the federal government, part of a huge infusion of coronavirus relief aid that is helping to fuel record budget surpluses in Kentucky and many other states.Therein lies a Washington controversy. The funds, which Congress approved at a moment when the pandemic was still raging, are allowed to be used for far broader purposes than combating the virus, including water projects like those in Kentucky. Most states will get another round of “fiscal recovery funds” — part of President Biden’s $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan — next month.But in Washington, Mr. Biden is out of money to pay for the most basic means of protecting people during the pandemic — medications, vaccines, testing and reimbursement for care. Republicans have refused to sign off on new spending, citing the state recovery funds as an example of money that could be repurposed for urgent national priorities.“These states are awash in money — everybody from Kentucky to California,” said Scott Jennings, a former aide to Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader. “People are like: ‘We’ve printed all this money; we’ve sent it out. These states have these massive surpluses, and now you need more?’”Republicans were never fans of Mr. Biden’s rescue plan, which Democrats muscled through Congress without their support. Despite the many ways it is benefiting his state, Mr. McConnell once called it a “multitrillion-dollar, nontargeted Band-Aid” that would dump “another huge mountain of debt on our grandkids.”On Capitol Hill on Thursday, a day after Mr. Biden made a public appeal to Congress for more money, Senate Republicans and Democrats were nearing a deal on a $10 billion emergency aid package — less than half of Mr. Biden’s initial request. But they had not resolved crucial differences over the size and how to pay for it. Republicans want to use unspent money already approved by Congress, but the parties have been unable to agree on which programs should be tapped.Since the outset of the pandemic, the Trump and Biden administrations have injected $5 trillion into the American economy, including the rescue plan. With midterm elections approaching, the gush of federal stimulus spending will draw even greater scrutiny as Republicans accuse Democrats of wasting funds and fueling inflation, and demand a precise accounting of how the money has been spent.David Adkins, the executive director and chief executive of the Council of State Governments, said such questions were inevitable now that policymakers could catch their collective breath.“We have to lean into the notion that states are laboratories of democracy,” Mr. Adkins said. “Some of these things will fail; some of this money will not be spent well. But that is the nature of trying to navigate disruptive times.”The rescue plan set aside $195 billion to help states recover from the economic and health effects of the pandemic. When Mr. Biden made his initial aid request, senior lawmakers in both parties negotiated a plan to pay for it partly by taking back $7 billion from states, as part of a $1.5 trillion spending bill.Governors and rank-and-file Democrats balked, saying that to do so would disproportionately hurt the 31 states that have not yet gotten all their rescue funds, and the deal fell apart. Now it appears the state funds will be spared, though the fracas has cast a sharp spotlight on how the fiscal recovery funds are being spent.“I was never for giving this money to the states, but I was always of the belief that once you gave it to them, politics would not allow you to get it back,” Senator Roy Blunt of Missouri, the top Republican on the subcommittee that controls health spending, said in a recent interview.All told, the White House says 93 percent of the American Rescue Plan dollars that are currently available have been “legally obligated,” meaning they have either already been spent or are committed to being spent.Most states have either started spending their fiscal recovery funds, or have plans to do so. A recent analysis by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities found that while most states are still developing budgets for the upcoming fiscal year, states have already budgeted 78 percent of their fiscal recovery fund allocation.Kentucky, where Mr. Beshear, a Democrat, is promoting record job growth and economic boom times, ended 2021 with a record $1.1 billion surplus, and another surplus is expected this year. The state has already received $1.1 billion in federal funds and expects another $1 billion in May. It is spending the money on broadband, bolstering tourism and shoring up the unemployment insurance fund as well as coronavirus testing, in addition to water improvements.Martin County recently received $411,000 in federal stimulus funds to help pay for desperately needed water improvements.Maddie McGarvey for The New York Times“These dollars are too important and too transformational to get caught up in a partisan fight,” Mr. Beshear said in an interview, adding: “These are dollars that are helping us as we emerge from Covid. We’ve got a choice to limp out of the pandemic or sprint out of the pandemic, and cutting off this aid only hurts the people that need it.”Congress specified four broad purposes for the money: to respond to the pandemic’s health and economic impacts; to provide bonus pay to essential workers; to prevent cuts in public services; and to invest in sewer, water or broadband infrastructure. But states can also use the funds to replace lost revenues, which gives them great flexibility in spending the money.Arkansas, for instance, has awarded $374,000 to a rape crisis center; $6.3 million to the Arkansas Coalition Against Sexual Assault; and another $6.3 million to the Arkansas Alliance of Boys & Girls Clubs. But the bulk of the money has gone toward improving broadband access and addressing the needs of the health care system.“The Omicron variant came in, cases skyrocketed, hospitals filled up and so we had to utilize a significant amount of our ARPA money for expanding hospital space, home testing and other public health response,” said Gov. Asa Hutchinson, a Republican, using the acronym for the rescue plan. “So that’s obviously the first responsibility, and then we looked at these other needs.”Other states are using the money in ways that are only tangentially related to Covid-19, but that are permissible under guidelines issued by the Treasury Department.Alabama devoted $400 million of its allocation, or roughly one-fifth, to building two new prisons, despite a public outcry from advocates for racial justice and civil liberties. Florida devoted $2 billion, nearly one-quarter of its $8.8 billion allotment, to highway construction — a decision that has drawn criticism from the nonpartisan Florida Policy Institute.“The intended purpose of the American Rescue Plan Act dollars was to ensure that individuals and communities could recover from the pandemic, and I think in many ways there were better uses for this money,” said Esteban Leonardo Santis, the group’s tax and revenue analyst.Twenty states, including Kentucky, spent a total of $15 billion to build up their depleted unemployment insurance trust funds. Independent analysts say that is effectively a tax break for businesses, which otherwise may have had to make up for the lost revenues. But Mr. Beshear defended it, saying that Kentucky businesses stepped up during the pandemic. A local Toyota plant made face shields, and bourbon distillers manufactured hand sanitizer, he said.The governor’s Twitter feed is rife with photos of big checks and smiling city and county officials; he is running for re-election in 2023.“If there’s one thing a governor knows how to do, it’s drive around their state and hand out huge checks and cut big ribbons with oversized scissors,” Mr. Jennings said. “They’re like game show hosts out there.”Chris McDaniel, a Kentucky state senator, spent much of this week immersed in budget talks, including planning how to use Kentucky’s next tranche of fiscal recovery funds.Luke Sharrett for The New York TimesExperts say, and the White House acknowledges, that the fiscal recovery funds have helped create state budget surpluses. Gene B. Sperling, a senior adviser to the president who is overseeing the American Rescue Plan, said the surpluses were proof that Mr. Biden’s stimulus package was working — and this was no time to pare back.“Ensuring that states and localities have a cushion for some pretty serious bumps in the road is smart policy,” Mr. Sperling said, “and a lesson learned from what happened after the Great Recession.”But those surpluses are likely to be temporary, and how states are using them has played into the controversy over Covid relief funds. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities says 14 states are using temporary budget surpluses “to call for costly and permanent tax cuts targeted more to wealthy people” — a move the center described as a “bad choice.”Here in Frankfort, the state capital, Kentucky lawmakers in a hurry to wrap up their 2022 legislative session were working on pushing through a hefty income tax cut this week. But a proposal to use the state’s budget surplus to give Kentuckians a tax rebate of up to $500 seemed unlikely to pass, said its author, State Senator Chris McDaniel, the appropriations committee chairman.Mr. McDaniel, a Republican, spent much of this week immersed in budget talks, including planning how to use Kentucky’s next tranche of fiscal recovery funds. Another $1 billion is coming, and despite some philosophical misgivings, he said he saw no reason not to spend it.“I believe firmly that it was too much money that came down,” Mr. McDaniel said. “But I also believe that Kentuckians will bear the tax burden eventually, just like everyone else down the line, and I am not going to disadvantage future Kentuckians out of a point of philosophical pride.”Emily Cochrane More

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    Cash Aid to Poor Mothers Increases Brain Activity in Babies, Study Finds

    The research could have policy implications as President Biden pushes to revive his proposal to expand the child tax credit.WASHINGTON — A study that provided poor mothers with cash stipends for the first year of their children’s lives appears to have changed the babies’ brain activity in ways associated with stronger cognitive development, a finding with potential implications for safety net policy.The differences were modest — researchers likened them in statistical magnitude to moving to the 75th position in a line of 100 from the 81st — and it remains to be seen if changes in brain patterns will translate to higher skills, as other research offers reason to expect.Still, evidence that a single year of subsidies could alter something as profound as brain functioning highlights the role that money may play in child development and comes as President Biden is pushing for a much larger program of subsidies for families with children.“This is a big scientific finding,” said Martha J. Farah, a neuroscientist at the University of Pennsylvania, who conducted a review of the study for the Proceedings of the National Academies of Sciences, where it was published on Monday. “It’s proof that just giving the families more money, even a modest amount of more money, leads to better brain development.”The payments will continue until the children are at least 4 years old, and the researchers plan further tests.via Lauren Meyer/Baby’s First YearsAnother researcher, Charles A. Nelson III of Harvard, reacted more cautiously, noting the full effect of the payments — $333 a month — would not be clear until the children took cognitive tests. While the brain patterns documented in the study are often associated with higher cognitive skills, he said, that is not always the case.“It’s potentially a groundbreaking study,” said Dr. Nelson, who served as a consultant to the study. “If I was a policymaker, I’d pay attention to this, but it would be premature of me to pass a bill that gives every family $300 a month.”A temporary federal program of near-universal children’s subsidies — up to $300 a month per child through an expanded child tax credit — expired this month after Mr. Biden failed to unite Democrats behind a large social policy bill that would have extended it. Most Republicans oppose the monthly grants, citing the cost and warning that unconditional aid, which they describe as welfare, discourages parents from working.Sharing some of those concerns, Senator Joe Manchin III, Democrat of West Virginia, effectively blocked the Biden plan, though he has suggested that he might support payments limited to families of modest means and those with jobs. The payments in the research project, called Baby’s First Years, were provided regardless of whether the parents worked.Evidence abounds that poor children on average start school with weaker cognitive skills, and neuroscientists have shown that the differences extend to brain structure and function. But it has not been clear if those differences come directly from the shortage of money or from related factors like parental education or neighborhood influences.The study released on Monday offers evidence that poverty itself holds children back from their earliest moments.“This is the first study to show that money, in and of itself, has a causal impact on brain development,” said Dr. Kimberly G. Noble, a physician and neuroscientist at Teachers College, Columbia University, who helped lead the study.Dr. Noble and colleagues from six universities recruited a thousand mother-infant pairs within days of the babies’ birth and randomly divided the families into two groups. One group received a nominal $20 a month and another received $333.Using electroencephalograms, or EEG tests, to evaluate the children at age 1, the researchers found that those in the high-cash group had more of the fast brain activity other research has linked to cognitive development than those in the low-cash group. The differences were statistically significant by most, but not all, measures and were greatest in parts of the brain most associated with cognitive advancement.The payments will continue until the children are at least 4 years old, and the researchers plan further tests.Researchers are still trying to determine why the money altered brain development. It could have purchased better food or health care; reduced damaging levels of parental stress; or allowed mothers to work less and spend more time with their infants.The question of whether cash aid helps or hurts children is central to social policy. Progressives argue that poor children need an income floor, citing research that shows even brief periods of childhood poverty can lead to lower adult earnings and worse health. Conservatives say unconditional payments erode work and marriage, increasing poverty in the long run.President Bill Clinton changed the Democratic Party’s stance a quarter-century ago by abolishing welfare guarantees and shifting aid toward parents who work. Though child poverty subsequently fell to record lows, the reasons are in dispute, and rising inequality and volatility have revived Democratic support for subsidies.There are a variety of public and private programs underway in the United States to measure the effects of a guaranteed income on poor families, and many other rich countries offer broad children’s allowances without condition.The temporary expansion of the child tax credit, passed last year, offered subsidies to all but the richest parents at a one-year cost of more than $100 billion. Representative Suzan DelBene, Democrat of Washington, said the study strengthened the case for the aid by showing that “investing in our children has incredible long-term benefits.”Greg J. Duncan, an economist at the University of California, Irvine, who was one of nine co-authors of the study, said he hoped the research would refocus the debate, which he said was “almost always about the risks that parents might work less or use the money frivolously” toward the question of “whether the payments are good for kids.”But a conservative welfare critic, Robert Rector of the Heritage Foundation, argued that the study vindicated stringent welfare laws, which he credited with reducing child poverty by incentivizing parents to find and keep jobs.“If you actually believe that child poverty has these negative effects, then you should not be trying to restore unconditional cash aid,” he said. “You certainly don’t want to go in the business of reversing welfare reform.”Economists and psychologists once dominated studies of poor children, but neuroscientists have increasingly weighed in. Over the past 15 years, they have shown that poor children on average differ from others in brain structure and function, with the disparities greatest for the poorest children.EEG tests have found differences in electrical activity. Magnetic resonance imaging, or M.R.I.s, have shown differences in the size of the cerebral cortex, especially in areas linked to language development and executive functioning. One study found differences in cerebral cortex size may account for up to 44 percent of the achievement gap between high- and low-income adolescents.As with any group differences, averages do not predict individual outcomes. Many other factors beyond brain features influence cognitive development, and many low-income children thrive.To test the effects of cash aid, Baby’s First Years raised more than $20 million from public and private sources, including the National Institutes of Health. Researchers recruited participants from maternity wards in New York City, Minneapolis-St. Paul and the metro areas of New Orleans and Omaha, randomly assigning them to the high- and low-payment groups.The families had average incomes of about $20,000, below the official poverty line for an average-sized family, meaning those who received $333 a month experienced an income gain of approximately 20 percent. The mothers were told they could use the money as they wished.The researchers predicted that children in the high-cash group would show more high-frequency brain activity than those in the low-cash group and less low-frequency activity. Previous research has found such patterns are associated with higher cognitive skills and fewer attention problems.The results largely conformed to predictions, with the children who received the higher grants showing more of the fast brain activity (though no differences in slow brain activity).The scientists wrote that the money “appeared” to cause the changed brain patterns, though they were less equivocal in interviews. Dr. Noble said the evidence, though strong, was not “airtight,” in part because the coronavirus pandemic allowed them to test only 435 infants.Researchers are still trying to determine why the money altered brain development. It could have purchased better food or health care.Cody O’Loughlin for The New York TimesJohn Gabrieli, a neuroscientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said the evidence that cash aid altered brain activity was persuasive and “very important scientifically,” though he added, “We want to see if these differences result in improvements to cognition.”While the size of the recorded differences are modest (about a fifth of a standard deviation), the researchers said they were comparable to those produced by the average school experiment, like giving children tutors. While those services are often hard to administer, they added, cash can be distributed on a mass scale.Katherine Magnuson, a co-author of the study who directs the Institute for Research on Poverty at the University of Wisconsin, said she was surprised that only a year’s worth of aid made a difference. “It shows how sensitive the brain is to environments,” she said.Critics of unrestricted cash aid often warn that families will waste or abuse it. But Lisa A. Gennetian, an economist at Duke University and a co-author of the study, said the results indicated that parents could be trusted to make good decisions. “For one family, that might be food; for another, it might be housing,” she said. Additional research will examine how parents spent the money.Unlike last year’s expansion of the child tax credit, the experimental payments were narrowly targeted to poor newborns, which would make it less costly to replicate and possibly ease conservatives’ concerns about deterring work.One critic of the broader payments, Angela Rachidi of the American Enterprise Institute, said the study suggested the importance of infant bonding. Should the initial results hold up, she said, they could lend support for policies that help mothers spend more time with their newborns, including paid leave.But any cash aid, she said, should be “targeted to those with low incomes, time limited, and not erode work incentives in the long term.” More

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    As Workers Gain Pay Leverage, Nonprofits Can’t Keep Up

    Schools and social assistance agencies face staffing shortages as they compete with businesses able to raise wages — and services are suffering.In a Northern California school district, the superintendent is taking shifts as a lunchroom monitor. In Louisville, Ky., nonprofit groups are losing social workers to better-paying jobs at Walmart and McDonald’s. And in Rhode Island, child welfare organizations are turning away families from early-intervention programs because they are short of personnel.The nationwide labor shortage in recent months has led to delayed shipments, long waits at restaurants and other frustrations for customers and employers alike. But many for-profit businesses have been able to overcome their staffing difficulties, at least in part, by offering higher wages to attract workers.For many nonprofit and public-sector employers, however, raising pay isn’t an option, at least without persuading state legislators to approve budget increases or voters to approve higher taxes. That is leading to a wave of departures and rising vacancy rates as their salaries fall further behind their for-profit counterparts. And it is in some cases making it difficult for them to deliver the services they exist to provide.“We’ve lost our ability to be competitive,” said Carrie Miranda, executive director of Looking Upwards, a nonprofit in Middletown, R.I., that works with adults and children with intellectual and developmental disabilities and other health care needs. “When a new person comes to the door, I can’t say yes to them, and they desperately need the services.”Looking Upwards, like many similar organizations across the country, receives most of its funding through state contracts that pay a fixed reimbursement rate for the services they provide. In many states, including Rhode Island, funding levels had been failing to keep up with rising costs even before the pandemic.But the recent acceleration in wage growth, particularly in low-paying industries, has left them hopelessly behind the curve. At Looking Upwards, pay starts at $15.75 an hour for jobs that can be physically taxing and emotionally draining; the Wendy’s down the street is offering $17 an hour for some positions.“We used to compete with hospitals and other health care entities, and now we’re competing with the convenience stores, the fast food places, the coffee shops,” Ms. Miranda said. “I’ve heard more and more people say, ‘I’d love to stay in this job, I’m passionate about the work, but I need to feed my family, I have to pay my rent.’”.css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-1kpebx{margin:0 auto;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1kpebx{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-1gtxqqv{margin-bottom:0;}.css-1g3vlj0{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1g3vlj0{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-1g3vlj0 strong{font-weight:600;}.css-1g3vlj0 em{font-style:italic;}.css-1g3vlj0{margin-bottom:0;margin-top:0.25rem;}.css-19zsuqr{display:block;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}.css-12vbvwq{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-qjk116{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-qjk116 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-qjk116 em{font-style:italic;}.css-qjk116 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:visited{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}When Steffy Molina graduated from college in 2017, she wanted a job where she could make a difference in the lives of people like her, an immigrant who spoke no English when she came to the United States at age 17. She moved to Providence, where she found a job with Family Service of Rhode Island, helping to arrange health care, nutrition support and other services for families with young children.Ms. Molina, now 27, found the work rewarding. But at $16 an hour, it was hard to make ends meet. Even after earning a master’s degree, she saw little path toward a livable wage.So Ms. Molina left Family Service shortly before the pandemic to take a better-paying job at a nonprofit that relied less on government contracts. And this year, she left nonprofit work to join a for-profit health care technology company, where she earns about $75,000 a year.Ms. Molina says she likes her new job, and still feels she is making a difference. But she misses being able to help families directly.“I loved the work, just the satisfaction of being able to work with a child or a family,” she said. “Even if they could have paid $18, I would have stayed.”Wage pressures aren’t hitting all nonprofits equally. Some organizations, mostly outside of social services, have endowments or other funding sources that make it easier for them to raise pay. And some states regularly adjust reimbursement rates to reflect prevailing wage levels or have used federal aid money to make ad hoc adjustments.Nonprofit employment has lagged in the recoveryChange since Feb. 2020 in employment among private-sector wage and salary workers

    Source: Current Population Survey via IPUMSBy The New York TimesBut government data suggests that the nonprofit sector as a whole is struggling to compete. Nonprofit organizations didn’t cut as many jobs as for-profit businesses early in the pandemic, but they have struggled to rehire: Total nonprofit employment in November was 4.8 percent below its prepandemic level, compared with a 1.5 percent employment gap in the for-profit sector, according to a New York Times analysis of Current Population Survey data. That is despite a sharp increase in demand for many nonprofit services during the pandemic.“We can’t just increase the cost of care,” said Micah Jorrisch, vice president at Maryhurst, a Kentucky nonprofit. “We aren’t Starbucks. We can’t add 50 cents to the cost of a cup of coffee.”At Maryhurst, which provides help to children suffering neglect and abuse, the staffing shortage was so severe that the board recently agreed to raise wages for frontline workers, in some cases by as much as 28 percent. But the organization didn’t receive any permanent increase in state funding to pay for those raises, meaning it will have to cut costs elsewhere or raise extra money from private donors.Neither approach is sustainable, Mr. Jorrisch said. And the organization still has a vacancy rate of about 30 percent — just this month, Maryhurst lost one of its longest-tenured supervisors to a job at Kroger, the supermarket chain.Many public-sector employers are facing similar problems. Billions of dollars of federal aid to state and local governments during the pandemic helped prevent the budget crises that some experts initially feared. But many local officials are wary of offering permanent wage increases based on short-term federal assistance.“It is very dangerous for us to set precedent using one-time funding to create larger salaries unless there is clarity that that funding will continue,” said John Malloy, superintendent of the San Ramon Valley Unified School District, east of Oakland, Calif.Mr. Malloy says his district has an unusually large number of vacant teaching positions. But as in many school districts, the larger challenge is outside the classroom, where they are competing more directly with rapidly rising private-sector wages. School bus drivers can earn far more making deliveries for Amazon. Cafeteria workers and custodians can make better money doing similar work at for-profit companies. This fall, Mr. Malloy resorted to asking central-office staff, including himself, to take shifts supervising students at lunchtime.Wages aren’t the only challenge. School superintendents say they are also battling burnout after close to two years of remote and hybrid learning, battles over mask and vaccine mandates, and other issues. And schools can’t offer remote work or flexible schedules to help compensate for lower pay.Similar issues face nonprofits, especially those involved in child welfare, mental health and other direct services. Demand for many services has soared during the pandemic, straining already thin staffs. Education and human services also disproportionately employ women, who have borne the brunt of the child care crisis that has emerged during the pandemic.Most economists expect the rapid wage growth among lower-paid workers to slow as the pandemic eases and more people return to the labor force. But even if the immediate staffing trouble abates, it could have long-term consequences. People who leave the field in search of better pay could be unlikely to return. And students won’t choose the field if they don’t believe they can earn a livable wage.“It’s a field that’s becoming unattractive,” said Beth Bixby, chief executive officer of Tides Family Services, a Rhode Island nonprofit.Ms. Bixby said one veteran employee, who works in a program for at-risk children, had recently told her that she was earning the same amount — $17 an hour — as her 17-year-old daughter, who works part time at a cosmetics retailer.“It’s demoralizing,” Ms. Bixby said. More

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    Initial unemployment claims last week fell to a half-century low.

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    Initial U.S. jobless claims
    Weekly initial unemployment insurance claims, seasonally adjusted. Latest data: week ending Nov. 20.Source: U.S. Employment and Training AdministrationBy The New York TimesInitial unemployment claims tumbled last week to their lowest point since 1969, the Labor Department reported Wednesday.New filings for state benefits totaled 199,000 on a seasonally adjusted basis, a decline of 71,000 from the previous week.The drop marks a milestone in the economy’s recovery from the pandemic. Weekly claims peaked at more than six million in April 2020 as the coronavirus forced businesses and consumers alike to shut down. As recently as early January, amid a winter resurgence of the coronavirus, new state claims exceeded 900,000 in one week.Filing for unemployment benefits has come down sharply since then, but remained well above prepandemic levels until very recently.Unemployment insurance was a key source of relief after the pandemic threw more than 20 million people out of work. To buttress state payments, emergency benefits were funded through federal pandemic relief bills, although those payments ceased in September, cutting off aid to 7.5 million people.Despite a summer lull, the economy has been showing signs of life lately. Employers added 531,000 jobs in October, and most economists expect growth to pick up in the final quarter of the year, boosted by healthy consumer spending.“Today’s data reinforce the historic economic progress we are making and the importance of building on that progress in the weeks ahead,” President Biden said in a statement about the unemployment claims report.As one measure of progress, Mr. Biden pointed to the most recent tally of unemployment benefits of all sorts, from early November, which showed the number of people with continuing claims — those filing for benefits who have already filed an initial claim — at 2.4 million. The figure right before Thanksgiving last year was more than 20 million.The biggest economic worry lately hasn’t been joblessness but inflation, which has been surging amid labor shortages, supply chain disruptions and higher energy prices.In a separate report Wednesday, the Commerce Department said that household spending rose 1.3 percent in October, while personal income jumped 0.5 percent, before adjusting for inflation. It also showed that prices climbed by 5 percent in the 12 months through October.The data for unemployment claims, although certainly welcome news, may not be quite as good as it seems. On an unadjusted basis, state claims rose last week. And employment remains 4.2 million below its level in February 2020, before the pandemic.“While the labor market is recovering, we think the latest drop in claims may be overstated,” said Gregory Daco, chief U.S. economist at Oxford Economics. “We suspect the decline last week may have been exaggerated by quirky seasonal adjustment factors and think we might see a bounce-back in the weeks ahead.” More

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    800,000 New Yorkers Just Lost Federal Unemployment Benefits

    Many pandemic-era federal programs expired on Sunday, leaving jobless New Yorkers with more modest state unemployment benefits, or no aid at all.From the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, New York City has been pummeled economically unlike any other large American city, as a sustained recovery has failed to take root and hundreds of thousands of workers have yet to find full-time jobs.On Sunday, the city, like other communities nationwide, was hit with another blow: The package of pandemic-related federal unemployment benefits, which has kept families afloat for 17 months, expired.In short order, roughly $463 million in weekly unemployment assistance for New York City residents is ending, threatening to upend the city’s fledgling economic rebound and slashing the only source of income for some to pay rent and buy groceries in a city rife with inequality. About 10 percent of the city’s population, or about 800,000 people, will have federal aid eliminated, though many will continue receiving state benefits.The benefits were the sole income for the many self-employed workers and contract employees whose jobs are central to the city’s economy and vibrancy — taxi drivers, artists and hairdressers, among many others — and who do not qualify for regular unemployment benefits. “To just cut people off, it’s ridiculous and it’s unethical and it’s evil,” said Travis Curry, 34, a freelance photographer who will lose all his assistance, about $482 a week. “If we can’t buy food or go to local businesses because we don’t have money to live in New York, how will New York come back?”Federal officials say that more Americans are ready to return to work, and Republican lawmakers and small business owners have blamed the benefits for discouraging people from working at a time when there are a record number of job openings.In recent weeks, President Biden has said that states like New York with high unemployment rates could turn to leftover federal pandemic aid to extend benefits after his administration decided not to ask Congress to authorize an extension. In New York, Gov. Kathy Hochul, a Democrat who last week signed a new moratorium on evictions after the Supreme Court ended federal protections, said the state could not afford to extend the benefits on its own and would need the federal government to provide additional money. A spokesman for Mayor Bill de Blasio did not respond to requests for comment.Gov. Kathy Hochul said the state could not afford to keep financing unemployment assistance without additional federal aid.Stephanie Keith for The New York TimesThe expiring of unemployment benefits ends a period of extraordinary federal intervention to prop up the economy over the past year and a half as the virus has ravaged the country, claiming the lives of 649,000 people and leaving millions of laid-off workers struggling to secure new jobs. .css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-1kpebx{margin:0 auto;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1kpebx{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-1gtxqqv{margin-bottom:0;}.css-19zsuqr{display:block;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}.css-12vbvwq{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-qjk116{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-qjk116 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-qjk116 em{font-style:italic;}.css-qjk116 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:visited{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}The federal programs supplemented standard and far more modest state unemployment benefits. New York City was the first major city in the United States to be hit hard by the pandemic, decimating industries almost overnight that underpinned the city’s economy, from tourism to hospitality to office buildings. Economists have projected that New York City may not fully regain all its pandemic job losses until 2024.The federal assistance provided new streams of financial aid beyond regular unemployment payments, which are distributed by states. Jobless Americans received a $600 per week supplement, which was later reduced under Mr. Biden to $300 per week. Unemployment benefits were also offered to contract workers and the self-employed, who under normal circumstances do not qualify for assistance. Payments were extended beyond the 26 weeks offered by most states.The end of the $300 federal supplement means those who still qualify for regular benefits through New York State will lose about half of their weekly assistance.Since the jobless programs rolled out in April 2020, New York City residents have collected about $53.5 billion in unemployment aid, primarily among lower-paid workers in the service, hospitality and arts industries, according to a recent report by the economist James Parrott of the New School’s Center for New York City Affairs. The recipients also tended to be people of color, who have borne the brunt of the pandemic’s economic and health toll. That includes Ericka Tircio, who lost her job cleaning a 40-story office building in Manhattan’s Financial District in March 2020 and contracted the disease around the same time. She has collected assistance since then, but it will be reduced by about $300 per week. Ms. Tircio, an immigrant from Ecuador who has a 6-year-old son, said her company told her recently that she might be asked to return to work in the coming months.“I’m praying to God that they call me back,” Ms. Tircio, who speaks Spanish, said through a translator. “There are moments when I’ve waited so long that I feel myself falling into a depression.”Ms. Tircio is a member of 32BJ SEIU, a local chapter of the Service Employees International Union, whose president, Kyle Bragg, said thousands of its members had been laid off during the pandemic.“Workers should not be left behind to fend for themselves during the worst crisis in a century,” Mr. Bragg said.In recent months, about half the states elected to end their pandemic-related benefits long before the expiration this weekend, a deadline set by the federal government when a vigorous recovery appeared to be on the horizon. In states led by Republican governors, elected officials said that the assistance stymied economic growth and resulted in labor shortages; however, the job growth in those states has not been substantially different than in states that kept the programs.In New York, business leaders have advocated for the state to end the pandemic unemployment benefits, arguing that they hurt small businesses struggling to hire workers. Thomas Grech, president of the Queens Chamber of Commerce, said several job fairs he hosted over the summer were poorly attended.“People were disincentivized to go to work,” Mr. Grech said. “They’re making more money sitting at home. It’s a classic case of good intentions gone bad.”Mr. Grech said that raising wages as a way to lure workers, as some labor economists and advocates have recommended, was unrealistic for some restaurants “unless you want to spend $30 or $40 for a burger.”Elected officials in New York have argued that unemployment benefits helped pump money directly into the economy.“People who receive emergency unemployment assistance are going to turn around and spend that money, and that money is helpful to other people who are also struggling to get things back to normal,” said State Senator Brian Kavanagh, a Democrat who represents Lower Manhattan.The expiration of the benefits was supposed to coincide with a grand reopening of sorts for New York, as many companies announced during an early summer dip in virus cases that workers would be called back to the office in September. But the Delta variant has fueled a resurgence of the virus, postponing any hope that Manhattan’s office buildings would soon refill. Months of moderate job gains stalled over the summer and the city’s unemployment rate, 10.2 percent, increased slightly in July and is nearly double the national average.Bill Wilkins, who oversees economic development for the Local Development Corporation of East New York in Brooklyn, said unemployment and other benefits helped sustain his neighborhood, which has long suffered from high joblessness. But as the pandemic recedes from its peak, he said it was also “incumbent for individuals to be more self-reliant.”The pandemic exposed the significant skills gap in New York City, he said, resulting in large numbers of unemployed workers who do not qualify for job openings that require a college degree, such as high-paying jobs in the tech sector.“If you want a job right now, you have a job,” Mr. Wilkins said, referring to lower-paying openings at many mom-and-pop shops. “The problem is, is that job a sustainable wage? You want the higher-paying jobs, but you have to have the requisite skills that demand that type of salary.”Alex Weisman, an actor, registered for unemployment benefits for the first time after the pandemic shut down Broadway, where he had been in the ensemble for “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child.” The checks, which ranged from about $800 to $1,100 a week, allowed him to keep paying rent for his apartment in the Hamilton Heights neighborhood of Manhattan.When the pandemic shut down Broadway, including “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child,” it left Alex Weisman, an actor in the show’s ensemble, jobless and reliant on supplemental federal unemployment assistance.Erin Schaff/The New York TimesMr. Weisman, 34, submits audition videos every week, hoping for steady work. Earlier this year, he booked a television job for five weeks, which allowed him to briefly go off unemployment benefits.As his benefits run out, he is considering connecting with a temp agency to find work. The last time he had a job outside acting was as a barista in 2013.“I’m going to have to get an entry-level position somewhere,” Mr. Weisman said. “Because I succeeded in the thing that I trained in and wanted to do, I have absolutely nothing to offer any other industry. It’s scary.”Mohammad Kashem, who worked for nearly two decades as a taxi driver, had similar difficulties switching industries. Before the pandemic, a bank had seized his taxi medallion after he struggled to repay his loans amid a sharp drop in yellow cab ridership. Mr. Kashem, an immigrant from Bangladesh who lives in Brooklyn, worked as a postal carrier during the pandemic but quit after one month, saying he was unaccustomed to delivering mail through rain and snow. His family has been relying on $700 a week in unemployment benefits. He and his wife could not maintain jobs during the pandemic because of health issues, he said, noting that they both contracted the coronavirus and have high blood pressure and diabetes.When the unemployment benefits expire, his wife may try finding a job as a babysitter. Mr. Kashem, 50, has been wracked with anxiety about how he will pay for rent and school supplies for his three children.“I was driving taxi many, many years,” Mr. Kashem said. “I’m not used to another job.” More