Read below for our top four picks from this week’s Economic Equality News! Want to receive it directly to your inbox? Sign up here!
1. Land of the free and the home of unequally paid?
Forbes– This month the Census revealed the latest income numbers for full-time, year-round workers by gender, age and region. While the national statistics have been stagnant for a decade (on average, a full-time, year round female worker earns 77 cents to every dollar her male peers earn), there is movement on the state level. Here we look, by 2012 median earnings, how the 50 states rank in terms of paycheck equality. How does New York check out? Female full-time annual earnings: $43,000Male full-time annual earnings: $51,274Earnings on the dollar: 84 cents.
2. Child Care and the Overwhelmed Parent
New York Times- What working mothers really need are systematic ways to find and afford safe, local care options for their kids. While many parents scramble to find care in the summer months, especially for older children out of school, it’s a year-round challenge for families with kids younger than preschool age. Twelve million infants (from birth to 4 years old) are in daily care with someone other than a primary parent, according to the Census Bureau.
Resources for choosing a child-care provider are antiquated. Only 27 states even post reports online on both regular monitoring and inspections of child-care centers, and only 24 do for home-based child-care. In California, according to a recent report by The Center for Investigative Reporting, parents had to actually go in person or call during business hours to request reports on one of the 48,000 state-licensed day care, preschool and after-school programs. Even in the heart of Silicon Valley, reports aren’t available online.
3. Women Business Owners face Gender Gap
Mercury News- Women who own small business are still far behind their male counterparts when it comes to getting loans and government contracts, a congressional report said Wednesday.
The report by Democratic staffers of the Senate Small Business & Entrepreneurship Committee found that while businesses owned by women account for 30 percent of small companies, they receive only 4.4 percent of the total dollars in conventional small-business loans. That amounts to $1 for every $23 loaned.
4. Cuomo Convenes Wage Board For Tipped Workers
State of Politics- The state Department of Labor on Thursday was directed by Gov. Andrew Cuomo to convene a wage board in order to recommend potential changes to the state’s minimum wage for tipped workers.The minimum wage at the end of last year increased by 75 cents to $8, the product of a 2013 agreement that will phase in the minimum wage to $9 by the end of 2015.