Sacramento Head Start Alumni Association

RECESSION HURTING WORKING FAMILIES

Oct 28, 2002

**The Price of Inaction
The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities is calling on Congress to strengthen the Temporary Emergency Unemployment Compensation program, created as part of economic stimulus legislation in March 2002. This report warns that unless Congress extends and strengthens the temporary program, approximately 3 million workers and their families will receive fewer weeks of federal unemployment benefits than they need.
http://www.cbpp.org/10-1-02ui.pdf

**The State of Working America
With unemployment up sharply and job growth stagnating, the tight labor market of the 90s is quickly unwinding and its benefits beginning to fade, cautions this annual report from the Economic Policy Institute. On the positive side, strong productivity growth remains, and wages continue to outpace inflation?—though they are beginning to slow. Hourly wages for production/manufacturing and non-supervisory service workers (about 80 percent of all workers) are growing at the slowest rate since the beginning of 1995. Unless growth accelerates soon, high and rising unemployment will generate wage stagnation, higher poverty rates, and rising inequality.
http://www.epinet.org/newsroom/releases/swa090102.html