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Fired by DOGE, More Federal Workers Are Flooding the Job Market

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The drastic, sudden pullback in federal dollars is collapsing opportunities for many who’ve spent years in public service.After Matt Minich was fired from his job with the Food and Drug Administration in February, he did what many scientists have done for years after leaving public service. He looked for a position with a university.Mr. Minich, 38, was one of thousands swept up in the mass layoffs of probationary workers at the beginning of President Trump’s second administration. The shock of those early moves heralded more upheaval to come as the Department of Government Efficiency, led by the tech billionaire Elon Musk, raced through agency after agency, slashing staff, freezing spending and ripping up government contracts.In March, about 45 minutes after Mr. Minich accepted a job as a scientist in the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, the program lost its federal grant funding. Mr. Minich, who had worked on reducing the negative health impacts of tobacco use, observed that he had the special honor of “being DOGE-ed twice.”“I’m doubly not needed by the federal government,” he said in an interview.He is still hunting for work. And like hundreds of thousands of other former civil servants forced into an increasingly crowded job market, he is finding that drastic cuts to grants and contracts in academia, consulting and direct services mean even fewer opportunities are available.Some states that were hiring, another avenue for former federal government employees, have pulled back. So, too, have the private contractors typically seen as a landing place. The situation is expected to worsen as more layoffs are announced, voluntary departures mount and workers who were placed on administrative leave see the clock run out.More than 700 people attended a recent resource fair in Arlington, Va., to receive free consultation, professional headshots and workshops.Maansi Srivastava for The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Republican Agenda Hits Familiar Obstacle: State and Local Taxes

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    A small group of Republicans is threatening to torpedo President Trump’s agenda over the state and local tax deduction, long a headache for both parties.It was perhaps inevitable that the Republican effort to pass a vast fiscal package this year would, at some point, get caught up in the thicket of the state and local tax deduction.After all, the deduction, often called SALT, has long had the potential to cause a political standoff. Many G.O.P. lawmakers abhor it and, in 2017, imposed a $10,000 limit on the amount of state and local taxes Americans can write off on their federal returns. But to pass a tax bill this year, the party will need the support of a motivated clutch of Republicans who have made lifting that cap the animating promise of their political careers.Those lawmakers, who represent high-tax states like New York and New Jersey where the deduction is cherished, say they are willing to tank the package over the issue. Representative Nick LaLota, Republican of New York, can already visualize voting against the bill.“There’s a green ‘yes’ button and there’s a red ‘no’ button to press. Come time, if there’s not enough SALT in this bill, I’m pressing the red ‘no’ button,” he said. “It is a hill I am willing to stake my entire congressional career on.”Attempts by House Republican leaders to reach a deal with members like Mr. LaLota yielded little progress this week, leaving the issue unresolved as G.O.P. lawmakers prepare to release the first draft of their tax bill next week. Along with Medicaid, the health care program for the poor that Republicans have targeted for cuts, the state and local tax deduction could determine the fate of the entire G.O.P. legislative agenda.That’s because any change to the current $10,000 limit would be incredibly expensive, threatening to swamp the overall Republican budget for tax cuts. Even a relatively modest change, like doubling the cap for married couples, would cost $230 billion over a decade, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. More generous alterations along the lines of what New York Republicans have demanded could surpass $1 trillion.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Alabama Prison Labor Program Faces Legal Challenges

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    In the back of a nondescript industrial park on the outskirts of Montgomery, Ala., past the corner of Eastern Boulevard and Plantation Way, there is a manufacturing plant run by Ju-Young, a car-part supplier for Hyundai. On a Tuesday in May, about half of the workers there — roughly 20 — were prisoners.Listen to this article with reporter commentaryThey were contracted to the company by the Alabama Department of Corrections as part of a “work-release” day labor program for inmates who, according to the state, have shown enough trustworthiness to work outside prison walls, alongside free citizens.The inmates bused there by the state make up just one crop of the thousands of imprisoned people sent to work for private businesses — who risk disciplinary action if they refuse.Sitting against a chain-link fence under the shade of a tree in the company parking lot, commiserating over small talk and cigarettes with fellow assembly workers, one of the imprisoned men, Carlos Anderson, argued that his predicament was simple. He could work a 40-hour week, at $12 an hour — and keep a small fraction of that after the state charges transportation and laundry fees, and takes a 40 percent cut of pretax wages — or he could face working for nothing at the prison.Under Alabama prison rules, there are thin lines between work incentives, forced labor and “involuntary servitude” — which reforms to the Alabama Constitution in 2022 banned. From the viewpoint of Mr. Anderson and more than a dozen other Alabama inmates interviewed by The New York Times, the ultimate message, in practice, is straightforward: Do this, or else.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    For L.G.B.T.Q. People, Moving to Friendlier States Comes With a Cost

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    Laws targeting gender-affirming care have uprooted thousands. But places that are more supportive can also be more expensive.When Stefanie Newell decided to move to Denver last year, the choice was about acceptance. Feeling comfortable as a transgender woman didn’t seem possible in San Antonio, her hometown, in the midst of a flood of Texas legislation targeting the L.G.B.T.Q. community.But the decision also had financial implications. In San Antonio, she lived with her mother, and the cost of living was generally low. Just driving her stuff two states north wiped out her savings.“I thought I was well prepared, and when I arrived I was flat broke,” said Ms. Newell, 25. And Denver isn’t cheap: Her one-bedroom apartment downtown costs about $1,800 a month, which she pays with a mix of part-time paralegal work, freelance writing and editing, and ad revenue from her content on Instagram. “It’s taken off to the point where I’m not in the negative,” she said. “It definitely gets close.”It’s a choice that gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people in the United States have made for decades: Move from a less welcoming part of the country to one, usually a coastal city, with more protections and a bigger community. The price of tolerance was higher rent.The need for relocation seemed to be declining in the 21st century, as gay marriage became the law of the land and pride went mainstream. But over the last two years, a flurry of laws banning transition care for transgender youths — variations of which are now on the books in 25 states — have sent more people in search of sanctuary.Even though most of the laws are based on gender identity rather than sexual orientation, the impact goes beyond transgender people. Abbie Goldberg, director of women’s and gender studies at Clark University in Worcester, Mass., regularly surveys L.G.B.T.Q. individuals and families. In one recent study, she found that Florida’s law restricting discussion of sexual identity in public schools made parents who are L.G.B.T.Q. more likely to want to leave the state.It’s More Expensive to Live in L.G.B.T.Q.-Friendly StatesPlaces that protect LG.B.T.Q. rights, as measured by the Movement Advancement Project’s accounting of supportive and restrictive laws, also tend to have a higher cost of living, expressed as a percentage of the national average.

    Source: Movement Advancement Project, Commerce DepartmentBy The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Here’s Where Climate Change Is Driving Up Home Insurance Rates

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    Source: Keys and Mulder, National Bureau of Economic Research (2024) Note: State average is shown in counties with few or no observations. Enid, Okla., surrounded by farms about 90 minutes north of Oklahoma City, has an unwelcome distinction: Home insurance is more expensive, relative to home values, than almost anywhere else in the country. Enid […] More

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    New York Plans to Invest $1 Billion to Expand Chip Research

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    The move is aimed at drawing $9 billion in corporate investment, as New York jockeys to host a new national semiconductor technology center.Gov. Kathy Hochul of New York announced on Monday a plan to invest $1 billion to expand chip research activities in Albany, N.Y., as the state aims to continue as a global semiconductor center.The plan is expected to create 700 new permanent jobs and retain thousands more, and includes the purchase of a new version of one of the world’s most expensive and sophisticated manufacturing machines, along with the construction of a new building to house it.At an event in Albany, Gov. Hochul positioned the investment as a national priority. “The Chinese are attempting to dominate this industry,” she said. “We have no intention of letting that happen. “The initiative should draw $9 billion in additional investments from chip-related companies, according to state officials. They expect it to boost New York’s chances to be selected to host a new National Semiconductor Technology Center, a planned centerpiece of the research portion of federal money that Congress allocated in 2022 as part of the CHIPS Act.“We’re hoping that this level of investment will attract more investment from the U.S. CHIPS Act to make it even bigger,” said Mukesh Khare, an IBM vice president who is general manager of its semiconductor operations.Besides IBM, which has long conducted chip research in Albany, companies participating in the project include Micron Technology, Applied Materials and Tokyo Electron.The focus of the effort is the Albany Nanotech Complex, a cluster of research buildings owned and operated by a state-affiliated nonprofit called NY CREATES. The state plans to spend about $500 million to build a new 50,000-square-foot clean room building.A different building is needed to accommodate the next major advance in a technology called lithography, which projects patterns of circuitry on silicon wafers to make chips. Advances in such equipment are needed to create smaller transistors and other circuitry to boost the power of computers and other devices.The most sophisticated chips are currently made using technology called extreme ultraviolet, or EUV, lithography. The Dutch company ASML is the dominant supplier of the machines, which officials in the United States and the Netherlands have prevented from being sold to China as part of an effort to limit that country’s progress in chip manufacturing.Albany Nanotech has owned prototype EUV tools and currently operates a commercial version. Under the new plan, New York will invest $500 million to purchase a next-generation EUV system — known by the phrase “High NA,” for numerical aperture — that will allow the center to develop much more advanced chips.Besides permanent research jobs, state officials estimated that the Albany project would generate 500 to 600 temporary construction jobs over roughly two years.Albany NanoTech won’t be the first to use the High NA tool. Intel has ordered the first system from ASML, which is expected to begin installing it in early 2024. The comparable machine is expected to arrive in Albany in late 2025, Mr. Khare said.The effort is unusual in several ways, including that the new machine will be owned by the state and operated as a public resource to help the broader U.S. semiconductor industry, he added.States in the Northeast United States seem destined to play a big role in the chip industry’s evolution. U.S. Commerce Department officials also said Monday that BAE Systems in New Hampshire will receive the first grant under the manufacturing portion of the CHIPS Act.Micron, a Boise, Idaho, company that is the only American maker of chips used to store data, has also said it will spend up to $100 billion over a decade or more to develop a new manufacturing site near Syracuse, N.Y. More

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    Strike Is a High-Stakes Gamble for Autoworkers and the Labor Movement

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    Experts on unions and the industry said the U.A.W. strike could accelerate a wave of worker actions, or stifle labor’s recent momentum.Since the start of the pandemic, labor unions have enjoyed something of a renaissance. They have made inroads into previously nonunion companies like Starbucks and Amazon, and won unusually strong contracts for hundreds of thousands of workers. Last year, public approval for unions reached its highest level since the Lyndon Johnson presidency.What unions haven’t had during that stretch is a true gut-check moment on a national scale. Strikes by railroad workers and UPS employees, which had the potential to rattle the U.S. economy, were averted at the last minute. The fallout from the continuing writers’ and actors’ strikes has been heavily concentrated in Southern California.The strike by the United Automobile Workers, whose members walked off the job at three plants on Friday, is shaping up to be such a test. A contract with substantial wage increases and other concessions from the three automakers could announce organized labor as an economic force to be reckoned with and accelerate a recent wave of organizing.But there are also real pitfalls. A prolonged strike could undermine the three established U.S. automakers — General Motors, Ford and Stellantis, which owns Chrysler, Jeep and Ram — and send the politically crucial Midwest into recession. If the union is seen as overreaching, or if it settles for a weak deal after a costly stoppage, public support could sour.“Right now, unions are cool,” said Michael Lotito, a lawyer at Littler Mendelson, a firm representing management.“But unions have a risk of not being very cool if you have five-month strike in L.A and an X-month strike in how many other states,” he added.If the stakes seem high for the U.A.W., that’s partly because the union’s new president, Shawn Fain, has gone out of his way to elevate them. During frequent video meetings with members before the strike, Mr. Fain has portrayed the negotiations as a broader struggle pitting ordinary workers against corporate titans.“I know that we’re on the right side in this battle,” he said in a recent video appearance. “It’s a battle of the working class against the rich, the haves versus the have-nots, the billionaire class against everybody else.”Mr. Fain’s framing of the contract campaign in class terms appears to be resonating with his members, thousands of whom have watched the online sessions.Shunte Sanders-Beasley, a U.A.W. member said, “If we can win back some of the concessions we took, I’m hoping that it’ll be a trickle-down effect.”Cydni Elledge for The New York TimesShunte Sanders-Beasley, a U.A.W. member in Michigan who started working at a Chrysler plant in Indiana in 1999, said she saw the fight similarly.“If you follow history, autoworkers tend to set the tone,” said Ms. Sanders-Beasley, who has served as vice president of her local and backed Mr. Fain’s campaign for the union’s presidency last year. “If we can win back some of the concessions we took, I’m hoping that it’ll be a trickle-down effect.”A successful autoworker strike in 1937, which led G.M. to recognize the U.A.W. for the first time, helped set in motion a wave of union organizing across a variety of industries like steel, oil, textiles and newspapers over the next few years.Labor activists agreed that the current strike could also reverberate across other industries, where workers appear to be paying close attention to the labor actions of the past year. “In organizing meetings, they say, ‘If they can do it, we can do it,’” said Jaz Brisack, an organizer with Workers United who had played a key role in the Starbucks campaign.But the flip side is that the strike could inflict collateral damage that creates frustration and hardship among tens of thousands of nonunion workers and their communities.“The small and medium-sized manufacturers across the country that make up the automotive sector’s integrated supply chain will feel the brunt of this work stoppage, whether they are a union shop or not,” Jay Timmons, the chief executive of the National Association of Manufacturers, said in a statement Friday.Higher wages and gains for rank-and-file workers can be good for the economy. But some argue that Mr. Fain’s and other labor leaders’ aggressive demands could discourage businesses from investing in the United States or render them uncompetitive with foreign rivals.“Mr. Fain has to think about this, too — the long-term financial viability of these three companies,” said John Drake, vice president of transportation, infrastructure and supply chain policy at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.Even those who welcome the union’s aggressive stance say it is fraught with risk. Gene Bruskin, a longtime union official who helped workers at a Smithfield meat-processing plant in North Carolina achieve, in 2008, one of the biggest organizing victories in decades, said a long strike could disillusion workers if the union came up short on key demands.“If the U.A.W. fails to make any significant gains, particularly on the two-tier stuff, their future could be seriously harmed,” said Mr. Bruskin, referring to a system in which newer workers are paid far less than veteran workers who perform similar jobs.Mr. Bruskin also worried that the union could effectively win the battle and lose the war if the auto companies respond by shifting more production to Mexico, where they already have a significant presence. Shawn Fain, president of the U.A.W., said, “It’s a battle of the working class against the rich, the haves versus the have-nots, the billionaire class against everybody else.”Cydni Elledge for The New York TimesThe tens of billions of dollars in federal subsidies for domestic production of electric vehicles that President Biden has helped secure should limit that shift and help keep manufacturing jobs at home. Many automakers are already locating new plants in the United States to take advantage of the funds.Still, Willy Shih, an expert on manufacturing at Harvard Business School, said the automakers could adjust their operations in ways that undercut the U.A.W. while continuing to produce cars domestically. Automation is one option, he said, as is locating new plants in lightly unionized Southern states.The Detroit automakers have created joint ventures with foreign battery makers outside the reach of the U.A.W.’s national contracts and have sought to locate some of those plants in states like Tennessee and Kentucky. The union is seeking to bring workers at those plants up to the same pay and labor standards that direct employees of the Big Three enjoy, but it has not succeeded so far.Given those threats, the union may feel justified in taking a more ambitious posture toward the automakers. The primary check on shifting work to other states will be the U.A.W.’s ability to organize new plants, especially in the South, where it has struggled to gain traction for years. Experts argued that the union would likely increase its chances of attracting members there if it could point to large concrete gains.“The answer is winning a strong contact here and using it to organize huge groups of autoworkers who are currently nonunion,” said Barry Eidlin, a sociologist at McGill University in Montreal who studies labor.And there are other ways in which being too cautious may be a bigger risk to the union than being too aggressive. Organizers point out that workers are often demoralized when union leaders talk tough and then quickly settle for a subpar deal.Critics of the previous U.A.W. administration accused it of doing just that before Mr. Fain took over this year. “We’d be trying to make sense of how certain things passed in the first place,” Shana Shaw, another longtime U.A.W. member who backed Mr. Fain, said of the concessionary contracts autoworkers were asked to accept over the years.Even Mr. Fain’s habit of framing the fight in broad class terms may prove to be a strategic advantage. A recent Gallup poll found that 75 percent of the public backed the autoworkers in the showdown, compared with 19 percent who were more sympathetic to the companies.The widespread public support suggests that the autoworkers may be operating in a different context from workers in another strike that famously contributed to a loss of power for labor: air traffic controllers’ unsuccessful fight against the Reagan administration in the early 1980s, after which private-sector employers appeared to become more comfortable firing and replacing striking employees.Dr. Eidlin said that while the air traffic controllers failed to court allies in the labor movement, “the fact that Fain and the U.A.W. are messaging more broadly, really trying to build that broad coalition, speaks to the possibility of a different outcome.” More

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    In a Hot Job Market, the Minimum Wage Becomes an Afterthought

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    The federal wage floor of $7.25 is increasingly irrelevant when even most teenagers are earning twice that. But what happens when the economy cools?Under New Hampshire law, Janette Desmond can pay the employees who scoop ice cream and cut fudge at her Portsmouth sweet shop as little as $7.25 an hour.But with the state unemployment rate under 2 percent, the dynamics of supply and demand trump the minimum wage: At Ms. Desmond’s store, teenagers working their first summer jobs earn at least $14 an hour.“I could take a billboard out on I-95 saying we’re hiring, $7.25 an hour,” Ms. Desmond said. “You know who would apply? Nobody. You couldn’t hire anybody at $7.25 an hour.”The red-hot labor market of the past two years has led to rapid pay increases, particularly in retail, hospitality and other low-wage industries. It has also rendered the minimum wage increasingly meaningless.Nationally, only about 68,000 people on average earned the federal minimum wage in the first seven months of 2023, according to a New York Times analysis of government data. That is less than one of every 1,000 hourly workers. Walmart, once noted for its rock-bottom wages, pays workers at least $14 an hour, even where it can legally pay roughly half that.Hardly anyone makes $7.25 anymoreAverage number of workers earning federal minimum wage

    Note: 2023 data is through July.Source: Current Population Survey, via IPUMSBy The New York TimesThere are still places where the minimum wage has teeth. Thirty states, along with dozens of cities and other local jurisdictions, have set minimums above the federal mark, in some cases linking them to inflation to help ensure that pay keeps up with the cost of living.But even there, most workers earn more than the legal minimum.“The minimum wage is almost irrelevant,” said Robert Branca, who owns nearly three dozen Dunkin’ Donuts stores in Massachusetts, where the minimum is $15. “I have to pay what I have to pay.”As a result, the minimum wage has faded from the economic policy debate. President Biden, who tried and failed to pass a $15 minimum wage during his first year in office, now rarely mentions it, although he has made the economy the centerpiece of his re-election effort. The Service Employees International Union, which helped found the Fight for $15 movement more than a decade ago, has shifted its focus to other policy levers, though it continues to support higher minimum wages.Opponents, too, seem to have moved on: When Pennsylvania’s House of Representatives voted this year to raise the state’s $7.25 minimum wage to $15 by 2026, businesses, at least aside from seasonal industries in rural areas, shrugged. (The measure has stalled in the state’s Republican-controlled Senate.)“Our members are not concerned,” said Ben Fileccia, a senior vice president at the Pennsylvania Restaurant and Lodging Association. “I have not heard about anybody being paid minimum wage in a very long time.”The question is what will happen when the labor market cools. In inflation-adjusted terms, the federal minimum is worth less than at any time since 1949. That means that workers in states like Pennsylvania and New Hampshire could struggle to hold on to their recent gains if employers regain leverage.Congress hasn’t voted to raise the minimum wage since George W. Bush was president — in 2007, he signed a law to bring the floor to $7.25 by 2009. It remains there 14 years later, the longest period without an increase since the nationwide minimum was established in 1938.As the federal minimum flatlined, however, the Fight for $15 campaign was succeeding at the state and local levels. Cities like Seattle and San Francisco adopted a $15 minimum wage, followed by states like New York and Massachusetts. And while Republican legislatures opposed raising minimums, voters often overruled them: Missouri, Florida, Arkansas and other Republican-dominated states have passed increases through ballot measures in the past decade.Nationwide, the number of people earning the minimum wage fell steadily, from nearly two million when the $7.25 floor took effect to about 400,000 in 2019. (Those figures omit people earning less than the minimum wage, which can in some cases include teenagers, people with certain disabilities or tipped workers.)Then Covid-19 upended the low-wage labor market. Millions of cooks, waiters, hotel housekeepers and retail workers lost their jobs; those who stayed on as “essential workers” often received hazard pay or bonuses. As businesses began to reopen in 2020 and 2021, demand for goods and services rebounded much faster than the supply of workers to deliver them. That left companies scrambling for employees — and gave workers rare leverage.The result was a labor market increasingly untethered to the official minimum wage. In New Hampshire, the 10th percentile wage — the level at which 90 percent of workers earn more — was just above $10 in May 2019. By May 2022, that figure had jumped to $13.64, and local business owners say it has continued to rise.Making more than the minimumLow-wage workers are making more than their state’s minimum wage nearly everywhere, but especially in states that haven’t raised their wage floors above the federal level of $7.25 an hour. (The 10th percentile wage is the pay rate at which 90 percent of workers in a state earn more.)

    Notes: Minimum wages are as of January 2022. Pay data is as of May 2022. Minimum wages in some cities and localities may be higher than the state minimum.Source: Labor DepartmentBy The New York Times“Today you’re looking at $15 an hour and saying I wish that’s all we had to pay,” said David Bellman, who owns a jewelry store in Manchester, N.H.The unemployment rate in New Hampshire was low before the pandemic; at 1.7 percent in July, it is now among the lowest rates ever recorded anywhere in the country. Competition for workers is fierce: The Wendy’s on Mr. Bellman’s drive home from work advertises wages of $18 an hour. At his own store, he is paying $17 to $20 an hour and recently hired someone away from the local bagel shop — his son had noticed that she seemed like a hard worker.“Basically the only way to hire anybody is to take them away from somebody else,” Mr. Bellman said.New Hampshire is surrounded by states where the minimum wage is above $13, so if Granite State employers tried to offer substantially less, many workers could cross the border for a bigger paycheck. But even in states like Alabama and Mississippi, where the cost of living is lower and where few neighboring states have minimum wages above the federal standard, most employers are finding they have to pay well above $7.25.Paige Roberts, president and chief executive of the Jackson County Chamber of Commerce in Mississippi, said she was “nearly laughed out of a job” when she started asking members about paying the minimum wage. Entry-level jobs there pay about $12 an hour, according to the local unemployment office.In states with higher minimums, the picture is more nuanced. Faster hikes in the wage floor in the late 2010s forced up long-stagnant wages in fields like restaurants and retail. And some businesses, such as summer camps, say they are still paying the minimum wage for entry-level workers or those in training. But for the most part, the minimums no longer exert the strong upward pressure on pay that they did when they were adopted.When New Jersey passed a minimum-wage law in 2019, many businesses complained that the increases were too aggressive: The floor would rise by at least a dollar an hour every year until it hit $15 in 2024. But recently, the hot job market has levitated the wage scale even more.Jeanne Cretella starts workers in her New Jersey restaurants and event venues at $15 an hour, though the state’s minimum won’t reach that figure until next year.Hiroko Masuike/The New York Times“Covid kind of shifted things around a bit, as did inflation,” said Jeanne Cretella, whose business, Landmark Hospitality, operates 14 venues in New Jersey and Pennsylvania.Before the pandemic, dishwashers and other entry-level employees at Landmark typically made the minimum wage. These days, Ms. Cretella starts workers in New Jersey at $15 an hour, though the state’s minimum won’t hit that mark until next year.When the Fight for $15 movement began, many economists warned that raising the minimum wage too high or too quickly could lead to job losses. Some studies did find modest negative effects on employment, particularly for teenagers and others on the margins of the labor market. But for the most part, researchers found that pay went up without widespread layoffs or business failures.Some economists still wondered what would happen as $15 minimum wages spread beyond high-cost coastal cities. But that was before the pandemic reshaped the low-wage labor market.“We’re kind of in different territory now,” said Jacob Vigdor, an economist at the University of Washington who has studied the issue.Washington has the highest statewide minimum wage, at $15.74. Yet when Mr. Vigdor recently visited Aberdeen, a small town near the Pacific coast, all business owners wanted to talk about was how to retain workers.“I did not really hear a lot of concern about those minimum wages,” he said. “There the concern is that they’re losing people.”Still, economists say the minimum wage could become relevant again when the labor market eventually cools and workers lose bargaining power.David Neumark, a professor at the University of California, Irvine, said states with high minimum wages could be at a disadvantage in a recession, because employers would have to keep pay high as demand softened, potentially leading to layoffs.Other economists have the opposite concern: that workers in states where the minimum wage remains $7.25 could see their recent gains evaporate when they no longer have the leverage to demand more.“It’s as tenuous as it gets,” said Kathryn Anne Edwards, a labor economist and policy consultant. “The labor market has gained ground, but policy has not cemented that territory.”Despite the strong labor market, many workers say they barely get by.KaSondra Wood has spent much of her adult life working for the minimum wage, from the army depot where she held her first job, earning $5.15 an hour, to the Little Caesars where she made $7.25 as recently as last year.But not anymore: This summer, she started a job cleaning rooms at a local hotel, earning $12 an hour. Even in Oneonta, Ala., a rural area with few job opportunities, employers know better than to try hiring at the minimum wage.“They wouldn’t advertise for it, knowing they wouldn’t get anyone in there,” she said.But Ms. Wood, 38, hardly feels that she is getting ahead. The hotel is a 45-minute drive from her home, so gas eats up much of her paycheck, even though she car-pools with her mother. Groceries keep getting more expensive.“A couple years ago, $12 an hour would’ve been killer money,” she said. But now, it isn’t enough to pay her bills.“I don’t ever get caught up,” she said. “I’m broke by the time I get paid.” More

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    Could U.S. Toughness on Chinese Business Have Unintended Consequences?

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    Businesses fear that efforts to look tough on Beijing, which have the potential to be more expansive than moves by the federal government, could have unintended consequences.At a moment when Washington is trying to reset its tense relationship with China, states across the country are leaning into anti-Chinese sentiment and crafting or enacting sweeping rules aimed at severing economic ties with Beijing.The measures, in places like Florida, Utah and South Carolina, are part of a growing political push to make the United States less economically dependent on China and to limit Chinese investment over concerns that it poses a national security risk. Those concerns are shared by the Biden administration, which has been trying to reduce America’s reliance on China by increasing domestic manufacturing and strengthening trade ties with allies.But the state efforts have the potential to be far more expansive than what the administration is orchestrating. They have drawn backlash from business groups over concerns that state governments are veering toward protectionism and retreating from a longstanding tradition of welcoming foreign investment into the United States.Nearly two dozen mostly right-leaning states — including Florida, Texas, Utah and South Dakota — have proposed or enacted legislation that would restrict Chinese purchases of land, buildings and houses. Some of the laws could potentially be more onerous than what occurs at the federal level, where a committee led by the Treasury secretary is authorized to review and block transactions if foreigners could gain control of American businesses or real estate near military installations.The laws being proposed or enacted by states would go far beyond that, preventing China — and in some cases other “countries of concern” — from buying farmland or property near what is broadly defined as “critical infrastructure.”The restrictions coincide with a resurgence of anti-China sentiment, inflamed in part by a Chinese spy balloon that traveled across the United States this year and by heated political rhetoric ahead of the 2024 election. They are likely to pose another challenge for the administration, which has dispatched several top officials to China in recent weeks to try to stabilize economic ties. But while Washington may see a relationship with China as a necessary evil, officials at the state and local levels appear determined to try to sever their economic relationship with America’s third-largest trading partner.“The federal government in the United States, across branches with strong bipartisan support, has been quite forceful in sharpening its China strategy, and regulating investments is only one piece,” said Mario Mancuso, a lawyer at Kirkland & Ellis focusing on international trade and national security issues. “The shift that we have seen to the states is relatively recent, but it’s gaining strength.”One of the biggest targets has been Chinese landownership, despite the fact that China owns less than 400,000 acres in the United States, according to the Agriculture Department. That is less than 1 percent of all foreign-owned land.Such restrictions have been gathering momentum since 2021 after Fufeng USA, the American subsidiary of a Chinese company that makes components for animal feed, faced backlash over plans to build a corn mill in Grand Forks, N.D. The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, a powerful interagency group known as CFIUS that can halt international business transactions, reviewed the proposal but ultimately decided that it did not have the jurisdiction to block the plan. However, the Air Force, citing the mill’s proximity to a U.S. military base, said this year that China’s involvement was a national security risk, and local officials scuttled the project.Since then, states have been developing or trying to bolster their restrictions on foreign investment, in some cases blocking land acquisitions from a broad set of countries, including Iran and North Korea. In other instances, they have targeted China specifically.The state moves, some of which also include investments coming from Russia, Iran and North Korea, have raised the ire of business groups that fear the rules will be too onerous or opponents who view them as discriminatory. Some of the proposals wound up being watered down amid the backlash.This year, Texas lawmakers proposed expanding a ban that was enacted in 2021 on the development of infrastructure projects funded by investors with direct ties to China and blocking Chinese citizens and companies from buying land, homes or any other real estate. Despite the support of Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas, a Republican, the proposal was scaled back to prohibit purchases of just agricultural land, quarries and mines by individuals or companies with ties to China, Iran, North Korea and Russia. The bill ultimately expired in the Texas Legislature in May.In South Dakota, Gov. Kristi Noem, a Republican, has been pushing for legislation that would create a state version of CFIUS to review and investigate agricultural land purchases, leases and land transfers by foreign investors. Ms. Noem has argued that the federal government does not have sufficient reach to keep South Dakota safe from bad actors at the state level.The legislation failed amid pushback from farming groups that were concerned about restrictions on who could buy or rent their land, along with lawmakers who said it would hand too much power to the governor.One of the most provocative restrictions has been championed by Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, a Republican who is running for president. In May, Mr. DeSantis signed a law prohibiting Chinese companies or citizens from purchasing or investing in properties that are within 10 miles of military bases and critical infrastructure such as refineries, liquid natural gas terminals and electrical power plants.“Florida is taking action to stand against the United States’ greatest geopolitical threat — the Chinese Communist Party,” Mr. DeSantis said when he signed the law, adding, “We are following through on our commitment to crack down on Communist China.”Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, a Republican presidential candidate, signed into law one of the most provocative restrictions against Chinese investments.David Degner for The New York TimesBut the legislation is written so broadly that an investment fund or a company that has even a small ownership stake from a Chinese company or a Chinese investor and buys a property would be violating the law. Business groups and the Biden administration have criticized the law as overreach, while Republican attorneys general around the country have sided with Mr. DeSantis.The Florida legislation, which targets “countries of concern” and imposes special restrictions on China, is being challenged in federal court. A group of Chinese citizens and a real estate brokerage firm in Florida that are represented by the American Civil Liberties Union sued the state in May, arguing that the law codifies and expands housing discrimination. The Justice Department filed a “statement of interest” arguing that Florida’s landownership policy is unlawful.A U.S. district judge, who heard arguments about the case in July, said last week that the law could continue to be enforced while it was being challenged in court.The restrictions are creating uncertainty for investors and fund managers that want to invest in Florida and now must decide whether to back away from those plans or cut out their Chinese investors.“It creates a lot of thorny issues not just for the foreign investors but for the funds as well, because some of these laws try to make them choose between keeping investors and being able to invest in those states,” said J. Philip Ludvigson, a partner at King & Spalding. “It’s really a gamble for the states that are passing some of these very broad laws.”Mr. Ludvigson, a former Treasury official who helped lead the office that chairs CFIUS, added: “You might want to get tough on China, but if you don’t really think through what the second- and third-order effects might be, you could just end up hurting your state revenues and your property market while also failing to solve an actual national security problem.”The state investment restrictions also coincide with efforts in Congress to block businesses based in China from purchasing farmland in the United States and place new mandates on Americans investing in the country’s national security industries. The Senate voted overwhelmingly in favor of the measures in July, which still need to clear the House to become law.The combination of measures is likely to complicate diplomacy with China and could draw retaliation.“Officials in Beijing are quite concerned about the hostility to Chinese investments at both the national and state levels in the U.S., viewing these as another sign of rising antipathy toward China,” said Eswar Prasad, a former head of the International Monetary Fund’s China division. “The Chinese government is especially concerned about a proliferation of state-level restrictions on top of federal limitations on investments from China.”He added, “Their fear is that such actions would not just deprive Chinese investors of good investment opportunities in the U.S., including in real estate, but could eventually limit Chinese companies’ direct access to American markets and inhibit technology transfers.” More