RESOURCES

June 21, 2021

The Impact of Trade on Black Workers

A new Groundwork Collaborative brief highlights new research from Nyanya Browne, Bethel Cole-Smith, and Dr. William Spriggs of Howard University that explores the impact of trade policy on Black workers. The brief outlines how decades of neoliberal trade policies have increased corporate power at the expense of workers’ economic security…

June 15, 2021

Investing in Home and Community Based Services: Good for Workers, Families, and the Economy

Significant investments in home and community-based services would benefit our economy as a whole by reducing staffing shortages, boosting the pay of care workers, and allowing family caregivers to have career opportunities otherwise unavailable to them without access to care. Investing in a robust and inclusive care infrastructure — particularly…

May 26, 2021

Inflation Fears Are Overstated And Misrepresented

Fearmongering over inflation must not derail investments that are deeply needed, popular, and economically sound — especially when inflation fears are overstated and misrepresented. The only way to achieve a full, equitable recovery and a more stable economy for the future is to continue making public investments in the workers,…

May 17, 2021

Unemployment Insurance Is An Essential Lifeline For Workers, Families, And The Economy

UI benefits put more money in peoples’ pockets, which in turn powers consumer spending, generating growth that reverberates throughout the economy. Enhanced UI benefits are an essential part of a healthy recovery that centers workers and local communities and should continue until we are on stronger economic footing.

April 29, 2021

Progressive Policies: Housing for All

Stable housing supports human thriving, which in turn drives a strong economy — we cannot say our economy is working when millions of people are unhoused or one financial emergency away from losing their homes. Only by guaranteeing housing can our government proactively address the centuries of racist housing and…

April 22, 2021

Progressive Policies: Building Worker Power

Strengthening unionization and collective bargaining rights not only improves material conditions and reduce economic precarity for working people, but they also counterbalance outsized private power in the service of a more inclusive and resilient economy.

April 15, 2021

Progressive Policies: Comprehensive Paid Leave

Comprehensive paid leave is a critical piece of a robust care infrastructure and reduces racial inequality, improves women’s economic outcomes, and provides economic security for those who need it most, creating a stronger economy for all of us.

April 8, 2021

Room to Run: America has Ample Fiscal Space — and Should Use it to Tackle Pressing Economic and Climate Challenges.

Even before the COVID-19 pandemic the United States faced multiple protracted crises that jeopardized the nation’s economic viability and future prosperity – structural inequality, too few good jobs, a caregiving shortage and climate change. The American Jobs Plan takes a solid step toward addressing these challenges but there is still…

April 8, 2021

Progressive Policies: Raise Corporate Taxes

Low taxes on the wealthy and corporations contribute directly to our weak and precarious economy by magnifying inequality—concentrating economic resources and power, undermining democracy, and suppressing consumer demand. 50 years of failed trickle-down tax policy has left the United States with insufficient revenues, anemic economic growth, and skyrocketing inequality—and the…

April 5, 2021

Past Due: How American Housing Policy Leaves Millions Behind

Sammi Aibinder and Dr. Lindsay Owens examine the policies that have contributed to America’s extreme level of housing instability, both in the context of COVID-19 and for decades prior. This ongoing housing crisis is the culmination of two long-standing and interrelated problems: housing unaffordability and the lack of a housing…

April 1, 2021

Progressive Policies: Investing in Green Infrastructure

Tackling climate change by investing in green infrastructure is not only imperative to save our dying planet but also provides a crucial avenue and pivotal moment to recreate an economy that is resilient, equitable, and generates broad economic opportunity.

March 25, 2021

Progressive Policies: Cancel Student Debt

Over 44 million people in the U.S. are entangled in the student debt crisis, with student debt now totaling $1.67 trillion, student debt is weighing down millions of people across the country. Canceling student debt could boost GDP by more than $1 trillion over the next ten years, create almost…

March 19, 2021

Progressive Policies: Building a Robust and Inclusive Care Infrastructure

Care work across the lifecycle, including childcare, home health care, and elder care, underpins every facet of our economy. Yet because this work is primarily done by women and disproportionately by women of color, it has been undervalued, undercompensated, and underprovisioned, leaving families, workers, and caregivers struggling. Investing $77.5 billion…

March 18, 2021

Austerity is Bad Economics: Why U.S. Fiscal Conservatism Does Not Hold

Economist Marokey Sawo refutes the typical arguments austerians make about balancing public budgets and reducing existing public debt, and shows why the government must make big, sustained public investments to reduce inequality, attend to people’s material needs, and improve the long-term health of people and the economy.

March 11, 2021

Progressive Policies: Child Tax Credit & Earned Income Tax Credit

Because of the American Rescue Plan, the increased Child Tax Credit will provide families with an additional $116 billion for the year and will make the full allowance available to 27 million more children. Nearly 39 million people will experience real benefits, totaling an additional $13 billion, from the expanded…

March 4, 2021

Progressive Policies: Enhanced Unemployment Insurance

Continuing unemployment claims remain 17 million above pre-pandemic levels. Expanding enhanced UI — including enhanced eligibility, extended benefits, and at least the $400 per week additional payment proposed in the American Rescue Plan — is crucial to keeping families and communities afloat and money circulating in the economy.

March 4, 2021

Rebuilding the Public Sector for Economic Recovery and Resilience

Sara Hinkley, Ph.D explains how decades of public disinvestment at the local, state, and national levels set the country up for a harsh, prolonged, and profoundly unequal recession, which can be remedied with increased government spending that will make the economy more productive and resilient.

February 25, 2021

Polling: CTC and EITC expansions broadly popular, reduce poverty, benefits tens of millions

Increasing the Child Tax Credit and expanding the Earned Income Tax credit would lift millions of Americans out of poverty, drive the child poverty rate down to historic lows, and put money into the pockets of those families who have been hurt most by the COVID-19 crisis. Our recent polling…

February 25, 2021

Progressive Policies: A $15 Minimum Wage

In the American Rescue Plan, Biden called on Congress to act on raising the minimum wage to $15. On Tuesday, January 26th, the Raise the Wage Act was introduced in the House and Senate. The bill would gradually raise the federal minimum wage to $15 per hour, which is good…

December 9, 2020

How Much Emergency Relief Will it Take to Revive the US Economy?

Dr. Adam S. Hersh and Dr. Mark Paul explain why the federal response must include bold emergency measures — including economic relief upward of $4.5 trillion in the short-term and automatic triggers — to contain the Covid-19 public health crisis and prevent long-term economic damage.

November 2, 2020

The State of the Economy Ahead of the Election

This paper finds that the manufacturing workers in Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin have fared the worst under the Trump Administration's trade and industrial policies.

September 28, 2020

Promises Unfulfilled: Manufacturing in the Midwest

This paper finds that the manufacturing workers in Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin have fared the worst under the Trump Administration's trade and industrial policies.

September 16, 2020

How Trade Policy Failed U.S. Workers — And How to Fix it

This report examines the failures of U.S. trade policy over the past several decades and then focuses on how future trade policy should be reoriented to serve the public good, not wealthy special interests.

August 7, 2020

Unemployed Workers and Benefit “Replacement Rate”: An Expanded Analysis

We investigate average unemployment insurance (UI) replacement rates across industries using estimates of wage- and non-wage compensation and find that 60 percent of unemployment insurance claimants work in industries where the average total compensation exceeds the average weekly UI benefit.

July 22, 2020

COVID-19 and The End of Laissez-Faire Globalization

This paper exposes the flaws in U.S. trade policy that have caused shortages of life-saving medical supplies like masks and ventilators needed to fight the COVID-19 pandemic.

July 15, 2020

Trade Deals Aren’t Enough: Fixing the Tax Code to Bring American Jobs Back

This paper lays out how federal tax policy encourages and incentivizes offshoring, failing workers, businesses, and the economy.

November 25, 2019

WE ARE THE ECONOMY

This report summarizes the Groundwork Collaborative's economic roundtable series.

November 7, 2019

The Costs of Being Poor: Inflation Inequality Leads to Three Million More People in Poverty

This brief examines how accounting for differential inflation impacts poverty and income inequality.

October 24, 2019

How Technology Changes the Balance of Power in the Labor Market

This brief reviews some of the ways technology tips the balance of power in the labor market in favor of corporations and away from workers.

July 29, 2019

Mosaic National Multi-Modal Survey Toplines

This survey breaks down the responses used in the Latinx and Black American Reports.

July 29, 2019

Black Americans in the Mosaic

This memo presents findings from this study as pertains to responses gathered from Black adults.

July 29, 2019

Latinx Americans in the Mosaic

This memo presents findings from this study as pertains to responses gathered from Latinx adults.

July 22, 2019

The Trump Administration, Wall Street, and the Next Recession

The Trump administration’s recent actions have fueled the excessive power of Wall Street relative to the rest of the economy.