issue: Economy

Tech Hubs Have Better Inequality Performance since 2007 Than Other Large Cities

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

The title of the NYT article seems to say it all: “Study Finds Greater Income Inequality in Nation’s Thriving Cities.” The implication is that the tech/info boom is increasing inequality.

But a closer look at the Brookings data underlying the article shows exactly the opposite.  In fact, based on the Brookings data, tech hubs have on average seen a smaller increase in inequality than other large cities since 2007.

Let’s walk through the evidence. The Brookings study used Census data to measure the change in the 95/20 ratio for large cities from 2007 to 2012. Their list of 50 large cities included 9 tech hubs–San Francisco, Boston, NYC, Denver, Austin, Seattle, San Jose, Raleigh, Colorado Springs.

1. Out of those 9 tech hubs, only 2 (22%) had a statistically significant increase in inequality from 2007 to 2012, according to the Brookings report. Out of the remaining 41 cities, 17 (41%) had a statistically significant increase in inequality form 2007 to 2012.

2. The median increase in inequality for the tech hubs was 0.4 percentage points, compared to 0.7 percentage points for the remaining cities.

3. The average increase in inequality for the tech hubs was 0.8 percentage points, compared to 0.9 percentage points for the remaining cities.

4. Two tech hubs (Denver and Seattle) had declining inequality over this period, compared to only one non-techhub (El Paso).

Preliminary conclusion: Tech hubs have seen better inequality performance since 2007, compared to other large cities.

Caveats: This is a real-time preliminary analysis of the Brookings data. I reserve the right to modify it (or correct mistakes!!) in response to comments. Go for it!

 

Private Sector Investment and Innovation Must Be Encouraged

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

PPI has consistently argued that in most cases, pro-investment and pro-innovation policies will give the best long-term results for raising the living standard of ordinary Americans, boosting domestic production, creating jobs and raising real wages. Today, private investment and nonresidential investment in equipment and structures as a share of GDP is still significantly below pre-recession levels. As a result, we believe that government policymakers should pay close attention to promoting investment, innovation, and productivity.

These principles should influence the government approach to mergers such as proposed combination of Comcast and Time Warner Cable. Antitrust authorities should assess the merger on the basis of how it might affect investment, innovation, and productivity as well as competition grounds. In addition, PPI research, based on official government statistics, shows that investment in the tech/info sector is creating job opportunities for blacks and Hispanics.  These benefits should be part of the merger assessment process as well. (See https://www.www.progressivepolicy.org/2014/01/can-tech-help-inner-city-poverty/).

Protecting the Environment for Innovation: A Regulatory Improvement Commission

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

A Regulatory Improvement Commission would solve the issue of regulatory accumulation, the layering on year after year, of new rules atop old ones. The fundamental problem is not that government keeps creating new rules, but that it never rescinds old ones. As a result, U.S. businesses and entrepreneurs are enmeshed in an ever-growing web of complex rules that are sometimes duplicative, sometimes in conflict with each other, and sometimes obsolete. Like barnacles on a ship’s hull, the sheer number and weight of regulations imposes a drag on economic growth. Regulatory accumulation also raises the costs of entry to entrepreneurs, and creates big opportunity costs as the time and attention of business managers is consumed by compliance with rules rather than creating new products or better business processes.

This problem demands an institutional response. It is unrealistic to expect the same agencies that promulgated rules to eliminate or modify them. Some new entity must be created and charged exclusively with pruning old rules that inhibit innovation and entrepreneurship. PPI has proposed creation of a Regulatory Improvement Commission (RIC) to fill this vacuum. It is modeled on the Defense Base Realignment and Closure Commission (BRAC), which Congress created in 1990 to create a politically feasible way to reduce excess military infrastructure.

The RIC would consult experts, business and the public to draw up a list of regulations that should be eliminated or improved, and present it to Congress for an up or down vote. As a small body that convenes occasionally, and relies largely on staff loaned to it by Congressional and Executive Branch offices, its costs would be negligible. The savings — both in terms of retiring costly rules and reducing the drag of regulatory accumulation of economic growth and entrepreneurship — could be enormous.

Like BRAC, the RIC would provide political cover to Members of Congress, who otherwise would have to vote individually on rules often defended by entrenched and politically powerful interests. The process of “getting it done” has already begun: Sens. Angus King and Roy Blount last year introduced bipartisan legislation in the Senate to establish the RIC.

The above remarks were prepared for delivery at the Kauffman Foundation’s 2014 State of Entrepreneurship event on February 12.

For recent PPI work on regulatory reform, see our latest policy memo and op-ed.

Has the FCC Chairman Solved the Net Neutrality Quagmire?

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Up until the D.C. Circuit’s recent decision in Verizon v. FCC, extreme voices of the political spectrum dominated the “net neutrality” debate. The far left pressed for extensive government interference in the dealings between broadband providers and websites. And the far right questioned the FCC’s authority and need to regulate Internet services. The D.C. Circuit truncated both sides of the distribution of voices; by rejecting the left’s draconian methods, and by affirming the FCC’s authority and basis to regulate Internet services, the Court paved the way for a reasonable compromise. To satisfy the Court, however, the new regulatory regime must leave “substantial room for individualized bargaining and discrimination in terms” of special-delivery arrangements; else it would amount to an outdated mode of regulation called “common carriage.”

The solution, which Bob Hahn, Bob Litan and I have been peddling for a few years, involves the FCC making case-by-case decisions or “adjudication” in administrative law. In a nutshell, the FCC would permit special-delivery arrangements between broadband providers and websites, but the agency would police abuses of that newfound discretion through a complaint process. Adjudication would ensure consumer protections on the Internet, and it will bolster the incentives of both websites and broadband providers to invest at the edges and the core of the network, respectively, generating even more benefits to consumers.

Fortunately, the two Bobs and I are no longer the sole defenders of adjudication. In the two weeks since the decision, adjudication has been endorsed by Professor Kevin Werbach in the Atlantic, Professor John Blevins in the Washington Post, and Professor Stuart Benjamin in his blog post. Most importantly, the concept was floated by FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler in a recent speech in Silicon Valley, and made even more explicit in his speech at the State of the Net conference this week. From an economic perspective, adjudications are the most efficient and most equitable solution available to the Commission. Continue reading “Has the FCC Chairman Solved the Net Neutrality Quagmire?” →

Congress Should Heed the President’s Call and Pass Patent Troll Reform

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

In his State of the Union address, President Obama promised to go it alone on many issues, but there is one issue where he will find Congress to be a willing partner: ending patent trolling.

Over the past year, Democrats and Republicans have quickly coming together to try to solve this growing area of litigation abuse that has been vexing America’s high-tech economy. In these lawsuits, shell businesses called Patent Assertion Entities (PAEs) – or derogatorily “patent trolls” – game the patent litigation system. They purchase dormant patents, wait for others to independently develop comparable technology, and then file patent infringement suits which is a strict liability tort. As the President explained last year, PAEs “don’t actually produce anything themselves.” They ‘see if they can extort some money’ by claiming they own technology others developed.

The President has made good on his promise to step up his efforts to stop patent litigation abuse. In his State of the Union address, he made a short, but important call for reform, saying “let’s pass a patent reform bill that allows our businesses to stay focused on innovation, not costly and needless litigation.”

At the end of last year, the House passed Judiciary Chairman Goodlatte’s bill to reform the patent and litigation systems by a 325 to 91 vote – a rare, large bipartisan margin. Around the same time, Senate Judiciary Chairman Leahy introduced his own bill with some, but not all of these measures. It is time for everyone to come together and get something done.

The American people want their government to work again, and patent troll reform has a strong chance to succeed even in today’s bitter political climate. Democrats and Republicans both understand that patent trolling is pure litigation prospecting. It does not serve justice or inventors. Leaders of both parties should heed the President’s renewed call to pass patent troll reforms that support innovation, both as an American ideal and as a way to create jobs for the American people.

Financial Times: Barack Obama battles a sense of drift on State of the Union goals

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Barney Jopson writing for Financial Times quoted Michael Mandel, PPI’s Chief Economic Strategist, this morning.  Jopson’s article reflected on the President Obama’s accomplishments of 2013 in an effort to project the substance of tonight’s State of the Union address. The article discusses the President’s successes and failures at passing legislation since his last address, Mandel comments that:

Michael Mandel, chief economic strategist at the centrist Progressive Policy Institute, says the president should get credit for the result regardless of how it was achieved.

Read the entire Financial Times article here.

How Young People are Being Left Out of the Economic Recovery

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute
The latest unemployment figures seem promising for the young, but peeling back the numbers reveals that those without college degrees are being left out of the job market.
From the looks of it, young Americans are finally on their way to economic recovery. The latest jobs figures show unemployment for young Americans—those age 16-34—fell to 10.5 percent in December, down from a high of 15.1 percent in November 2009 and by a full 2 percent since last summer.A closer look, however, reveals not all young Americans are sharing equally in the labor market recovery. In fact, some young Americans are hardly experiencing a recovery at all. And many that are seeing a rebound in their economic fortunes still have a long way to go.Happily it doesn’t have to be all doom and gloom. There are ways policymakers can help struggling young Americans reclaim their future, starting with making their plight a bigger priority in 2014.As it has been for years, young Americans with a college degree are much better off than those without one. The stark contrast is evident when looking at labor force participation rates, which is the share of the population that is counted as employed or unemployed. For young Americans with a post-secondary degree, labor force participation rates have been stable since 2010, but for those with some college or only a high school diploma, rates continue to fall. For young Americans without a college degree, it appears unemployment is falling at the expense of labor force participation.Still, as young college graduates are all too aware, a four-year college degree is no longer a guaranteed ticket to financial success.  It turns out that those with a college degree are finding jobs, but increasingly ones that are lower-skill. The result is a rise in underemployment and historically low real earnings. In 2012, young Americans age 18-34 working full-time with a bachelor’s degree earned about $54,300, in real terms. This is only slightly higher than the 16-year record low set in 2011, and in annual terms remains $3,300 below where it was pre-crisis in 2007.

Adding insult to injury is the rising student debt burden, about 90 percent of which comes from a decades old federal aid system that needs reform. Under the current system, college students are essentially stuck in the middle of a game of chicken between generous federal aid and rising college tuition. For example, the “historically low” increase in college tuition last year was still three times the average increase in real earnings for young college graduates in 2012. With average debt levels now at a staggering $29,400 per borrower, many young Americans and their parents are understandably rethinking the value of a college education.

As tough as young college graduates have it, this is still far better than the reality of young Americans without a degree. New PPI research finds that the unemployment rate for young Americans age 16-34 with only a high school diploma, though falling, remains over 14 percent, compared to 5 percent for young college graduates. Worse, real average annual earnings for young Americans with only a college degree were just $32,900 in 2012, still about 4 percent lower than real earnings in 2007.

Fortunately, opportunities exist for policymakers to help. With a concerted effort, we can design policies that directly target young Americans in and out of school and encourage better alignment of the skills of young Americans have with the needs of employers. This may include comprehensive education reform, redefining post-secondary education and training, addressing the rising cost of college and student debt, and promoting investment and asset building activities.

For example, over the next year, the Higher Education Act (HEA) is coming up for reauthorization. HEA could provide policymakers with an opportunity to reaffirm the value of college, by using the administration of federal student aid to encourage alternative forms of higher education.  Going to a four-year college is so ingrained in society it seems to be the only acceptable option after high school; there is now almost one four-year college for every U.S. county. As a result, poor performing colleges get a free pass that doesn’t do anyone any favors—especially their graduates.

The first step to helping young Americans in 2014 is to convince policymakers to take their economic struggles seriously. If policymakers use the start of a new year as a new start for young Americans, 2014 could be a better year for all 80 million young Americans. Moreover, it could lay the groundwork for economic growth and prosperity in America for years to come.

 This piece was originally published by The Daily Beast, you can read it on their website here.

Can Tech Help Inner City Poverty?

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Tech/information companies these days flock to high-density urban areas such as New York and San Francisco. Fewer and fewer entrepreneurs want to put their startup out somewhere in a suburban office park.  Instead, they place their new firm in places which are attractive to young tech workers.

As a result, the tech/information boom is generating jobs in downtown areas that are more accessible to inner city workers, who are typically less likely to have cars. What’s more, there’s a social element: If tech/information companies are located in dense downtown areas, they are more likely to want to help local schools.

The question is: Who is going to get those jobs? As has been repeatedly reported,  tech has a major diversity problem, especially in the startup community (see, for example, this recent article).  Organizations such as All Star Code, Black Girls Code,  and CoderDojo NYC are helping connect inner city youth with tech opportunities, but it’s a slow process.

However, despite the diversity problems, there are reasons for optimism in the broader tech/information industry, going beyond startups. In fact, we’ve just gotten a round of new data from 2013 which shows how tech growth is helping black and Hispanics. This new data enables us to update previous results that we reported.  Take a look at the chart below.

 

From 2009 to 2013, employment of blacks and African-Americans in computer and mathematical occupations grew by 41%,  compared to 7.5% growth for black workers in all occupations. Over the same period, the employment of Hispanics in computer and mathematical occupations rose by 33%, compared to 15% for Hispanic workers in all occupations.

What kind of tech jobs are we talking about? The data doesn’t give a clear picture, although it looks like blacks and Hispanics are getting a wide range of tech jobs, from software developers to customer support. But here’s a couple of charts that give more insight.

This chart shows that  black workers are getting a rising share of  computer and mathematical jobs, while their share of  in managerial and professional occupations, a much broader classification.  That suggest that educated black workers are shifting over to tech.

The situation is somewhat different for Hispanic workers, who have gained ground both in tech jobs and in the broader managerial/professional occupations at roughly the same rate.  In this case the rise in the Hispanic share of tech jobs is part of a broader set of gains in high-skill jobs.

Encouraging Investment in America

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

In an ideal world, Congress would take up tax reform comprehensively, as part of a high-growth strategy. In fact, PPI is currently working on a tax framework for progressives, for how to modernize the entire tax system for individuals and corporations.

Unfortunately, the reality is that wholesale reform is not currently a politically viable option. Therefore, we must consider discrete pieces of tax legislation, with the idea that as long as we are promoting innovation and growth, small measures are better than nothing. One such tax measure currently up for Congressional debate is an extension of the so-called “bonus depreciation” deduction, first enacted in 2008. The intention of the deduction is to encourage U.S. companies to invest domestically, by allowing them to deduct 50 percent of their capital expenditure costs upfront instead of over time. In other words, it makes it more financially attractive for U.S. companies to invest in America – be it to increase factory production, purchase new transportation equipment, or deploy broadband networks.

PPI has done extensive research on the importance of encouraging domestic investment as part of a high-growth strategy. Our annual “U.S. Investment Heroes: Companies Betting on America’s Future” report highlights the top 25 U.S. companies investing in America’s productive capacity, through their domestic investment in plants, properties, and equipment. In our 2013 report, we found that “several companies on our list highlighted this measure [bonus depreciation deduction] in their discussion of 2012 capital investments” as a key reason for their strong U.S. investment.

Investment is the building block for job creation and gains in wages and standard of living. That means we must do everything we can to promote economic growth through investment, including the extension of the bonus depreciation deduction.

The Fiscal Times: College Grads Are Elbowing Aside Less Educated for Jobs

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Eric Painin, writing for The Fiscal Times, featured recent work by Diana Carew, an economist for PPI, on recent graduates and their struggle to find employment. Painin used Carew’s recent report Jobs and Wages for Young Americans: Is Recovery Coming? to draw attention to the “Great Squeeze” in employment for Young Americans, writing:

“Since 2009, many of the occupations with the fastest employment gains for young people have been lower-skill jobs that typically pay less, according to a new report by economist Diana G. Carew of the Progressive Policy Institute.

Production, health care support and food preparation and serving occupations were the three main occupational groups to see gains for young Americans across all levels of educational attainment. The downside is that all three groups have mean hourly earnings significantly lower than the national average for all occupations.

Notably, young college graduates saw a 15 percent increase in office and administrative employment while more generally employment in this group declined, the report stated. “This is consistent with the argument that young college graduates are struggling with high underemployment,” Carew wrote – and in the process are squeezing their less educated rivals aside.”

Find the full article on The Fiscal Times‘ website here.

Young Americans: Is Recovery Coming?

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Young Americans – the 80 million Americans age 16-34 – have had a rough recession and an almost non-existent recovery. This is reinforced by the latest jobs report, which shows unemployment falling at the expense of labor force participation, now a historically low 70.9 percent. For young Americans age 16-24, labor force participation is just 54.8 percent. Looking ahead, is recovery ever coming?

Four telling facts about jobs and wages for young Americans suggest a labor market recovery is coming, although it will be gradual and uneven by educational attainment. Specifically, young Americans with a postsecondary degree are more likely to be employed, but the nature of their employment suggests they are taking lower-skill jobs at the expense of their less educated peers. These facts also suggest there is more that policymakers could be doing to boost young Americans’ long-term economic and financial well-being.

Read the full brief, including three charts and a table on young Americans in the recovery, here.

Providence Journal: How the U.S. government helped give us the Internet

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

The Internet has become so integral to our everyday lives that it is easy to forget how young it is. Mosaic, the first graphical web browser, came out in 1993. Since then, the Internet’s phenomenal growth has transformed the way billions of people around the world communicate, learn, work, trade, campaign, mate, protest, plot and form communities.

All this seems inevitable in retrospect, but it wasn’t. In the 1990s, U.S. policymakers faced critical choices about who should build the Internet, how it should be governed, and to what extent it should be regulated and taxed. For the most part, they chose wisely to open a regulated telecommunications market to competition, stimulate private investment in broadband and digital technologies, and democratize access to the Internet.

The story of how scientists, engineers, entrepreneurs and venture capitalists created the technical basis for the digital revolution is familiar. Much less is said about the visionary policymakers who created the legal and regulatory framework that enabled the Internet’s exponential growth.

Controversial at the time, their decisions drew fire from both sides of the aisle. Conservatives complained that Washington’s efforts to expand access to the Internet constituted — you guessed it — a “war on the Web.” Liberals demanded a more aggressive regulatory stance to prevent predatory companies from dominating the digital economy. Also stoking fears of monopolies and demanding regulation were incumbent businesses threatened by new technologies and start-ups.

In steering a pragmatic course between ideological poles, the “digital policy pioneers” showed not only foresight, but a quality even rarer in Washington: humility. Instead of trying to direct the Internet’s evolution, they relied on competition to set prices and they let consumers decide which devices, technologies and services would thrive in the digital marketplace.

Key digital policy milestones include the Clinton administration’s 1993 blueprint for building an “information superhighway,” the landmark 1996 Telecommunications Act, and the 1998 framework for global e-commerce developed by White House adviser Ira Magaziner.

The most important pioneers, however, were President Clinton and Vice President Al Gore. They recognized before most that the new digital technologies were creating something fundamentally different, not just a high-tech version of the old telephone system.

As “Clinton’s idea mill,” PPI played a strong supporting role. During the 1990s, we launched a New Economy Task Force. The Task Force brought together high tech entrepreneurs from Silicon Valley and elsewhere with leading members of Congress to hammer out new “Rules of the Road” for nurturing the nascent digital economy.

The policies that took root in the ’90s were refined and strengthened during the Bush and Obama administrations. Digital policy, in fact, remains a rare, bipartisan exception to the zero-sum logic of polarization that has paralyzed our national government.

Our current leaders must work hard to maintain that consensus. After all, the vibrant innovation ecosystem that has grown up around the Internet is a prime catalyst for jobs and economic growth. According to research by Michael Mandel, PPI’s chief economic strategist, demand for apps has led to 750,000 new jobs since the iPhone was introduced in 2007.

The broadband Internet also is a powerful magnet for private investment. In 2013, telecom and tech companies topped PPI’s ranking of the top 25 companies that invested the most in the U.S. economy. And America is moving at warp speed toward the “Internet of Everything,” which promises to spread the productivity-raising potential of digital technology across the entire economy.

Nor are the Internet’s benefits exclusively economic. Ev Erhlich, in a report for PPI outlining a “Progressive Broadband Agenda,” stresses ways the Internet can help to reinvent “social” sectors like education, health care, as well as the delivery of government services.

In short, U.S. policymakers need to continue to get digital policy right, because our country’s prosperity and social progress depend upon it. That’s especially true now, as the open and decentralized Internet faces a new array of challenges. These include the backlash to the National Security Agency revelations; Europe’s determination to impose strict “data protection” rules that could deter transatlantic data trade; nationalist demands for “data localization,” which would impede cross-border data flows; the Internet’s use by criminals and terrorists for sinister purposes; and, a growing push by authoritarian countries, especially Russia and China, to subject the Internet to international regulation.

As we look back over the last two decades, it’s clear that the free and open Internet isn’t just a technological marvel. It’s also a major political achievement — and one that looks all the more impressive when juxtaposed to the partisan paralysis that afflicts Washington now. And it’s an achievement that needs defending today.

 

This piece was originally published by the Providence Journal, you can read it on their website here.

Innovation from 9 to 5: China’s Economic Test

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

China is investing more in R&D than the European Union, according to soon-to-be-released data from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).  This milestone reflects a multi-pronged effort by Chinese policy makers to spur economic innovation. Other measures include incentives to lure foreign educated Chinese back home,  patent targets and subsidies, and a strong emphasis on market driven change and innovation across sectors in the recent national memo from President Xi.

The Chinese strategy of focusing resources on modernization has paid big dividends for the national economy and Chinese workers since Deng Xiaoping opened China to Nixon and the world in the 1970s. First heavy than light industry flourished under focused, deliberate state nourishment, leading China to its present status as the world’s second-largest economy. But this model of state-directed development faces new challenges as the standard of living rises and factories face competition from other countries with even cheaper labor, such as Vietnam and Bangladesh. Now that Chinese workers face threats to their job security, the government is asking: How can we innovate our way up the economic value chain?

The Chinese Communist Party has long justified its political monopoly by acting as the benign steward of transformative economic growth. But as growth rates flag, the difficulty of moving toward higher-valued added activities has presented the Chinese version of “it’s the economy stupid.” Unfortunately for President Xi Jinping, the party’s authoritarian ways are antithetical to the type of culture that has traditionally led to the entrepreneurial innovation the party seeks to develop.

Innovation is inherently disruptive. But the business environment, the legal environment, and societal pressures in China combine to foster businesses and businessmen who curry favor with officialdom and make few waves. Chinese schools feature rote memorization of the “correct” answers to any and all questions, stifling any instinct a student may have to think outside the box. Recently, the government officially endorsed a rehashing of ancient Confucian thought emphasizing obedience and deference to authority. Professors who ask China to follow its own constitution and develop rule of law get sacked.  Beijing would like to believe that it can suppress freedom of speech and thought, forego a genuine rule of law, and maintain strict political control, all while building a dynamic, modern economy. It has done an impressive job of organizing the economy around the imperative of “copy to catch up.” But it’s a lot harder to force people to be creative by decree.

After decades of following Western models of economic development, Chinese politicians now denounce the predetermined path in favor of forging a new “Chinese way” of combining free markets with controlled government. Ideally, China would develop an economy driven by a flexible, creative, innovative work force without transitioning to the classically liberal social and governmental structure traditionally necessary to cultivate that kind of human capital. The writing on the wall reads: “Be creative and daring! Only at work, never in any other capacity.”  China’s attempt to quarantine innovation underpins the success or failure of their targeted economic transformation and with it the fortunes of the CCP. It is dangerous to join the chorus of voices heralding China’s downfall since 1949, but this contradiction looks like a giant roadblock on the path forward.

NY Times: New York, the Silicon City

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

For all the talk of New York’s “tale of two cities” economic divide, last week Mayor Bill de Blasio took charge of a local economy that has far outperformed the rest of the country since the financial collapse — and not just in a small corner of Manhattan, but across the city. Driven by the expansion of the technology and information sector, New York City today has more private-sector jobs than during the 2007-8 peak of the finance-driven boom years.

New York has, over the last decade, become a tech city to rival San Francisco, Boston and Seattle. And it has done so by moving away from its old reliance on the finance and legal sectors, and the industries like hospitality that rely on them. The challenge for Mr. de Blasio is continuing that trend, and making sure all New Yorkers benefit from it.

Mr. de Blasio’s predecessor, Michael R. Bloomberg, can justifiably boast about New York’s rise to prominence as a “digital city.” On his watch, the technology and information sector has become the city’s second-most-powerful economic engine, after financial services. New York now has 10 percent of the country’s jobs in the “Internet publishing and web search portal” industry, up from just over 6 percent in 2007.

Surprisingly, over the past couple of years, the city’s minority populations have been among the main beneficiaries of this boom. Since 2010, the number of blacks working in computer and mathematical occupations — the Census Bureau’s term for tech-related jobs — in the city has risen by 19.7 percent, based on a preliminary analysis of new census data.

Continue reading at the New York Times.

 

Why Tech Growth Enables Progressive Goals

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

In my New York Times op-ed, “New York, the Silicon City,” published today, I show how the growth of the tech/information sector has been a force for creating opportunity in New York City, not inequality. Moreover, the laudable progressive goals of New York’s new mayor, Bill de Blasio, are best achieved by embracing tech, rather than running away from it. In New York City, the tech/information boom has diversified the local economy and enabled the city to outperform the rest of the country despite the financial bust being centered in Wall Street. Moreover, the tech boom has benefited minorities, and been far better for the outer boroughs than the finance/real estate boom which preceded it.

There’s a more general principle at work here: Tech growth should be seen as enabling progressive goals, rather than fighting them. Innovation shakes up the existing order, creating opportunities for those who would otherwise be closed out.  Nationally we’ve seen a tremendous increase in recent years in the number of minorities getting degrees in computer and information sciences. For example, The number of bachelor’s degrees in computer and information sciences granted to Hispanic and Latino students rose by 44% over the past three years. (see this post).  The growth of the tech sector is a path to a new middle class.

Final note: If anything, we have too little innovation, not too much.

Will GOP Stiff Jobless?

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

STATEMENT BY WILL MARSHALL:

Today, Will Marshall, President of the Progressive Policy Institute, issued the following statement on legislation proposed in the Senate to extend unemployment insurance benefits:

“The Senate is set to vote this evening on extending unemployment insurance for 1.3 million Americans whose benefits expired at the end of 2013. With the jobless rate still at seven percent following the weakest “recovery” in post-war history, this should be a no-brainer. In days past, legislation to help jobless families keep food on the table and roofs over their heads during economic emergencies has garnered broad, bipartisan support.

“Not only is it morally right to lend a helping hand to people out of work through no fault of their own, it’s good economics, since the unemployed are likely to put every dollar of their benefits right back into the economy. Nonetheless, Senate Republicans are balking on the grounds that Democrats aren’t proposing offsetting budget cuts to pay for the $6.5 billion extension.

“Their commitment to fiscal discipline is selective and phony, since it seems to apply mainly to spending on the poor, vulnerable and jobless, not to taxes on the affluent. But maybe that’s slightly less offensive than Sen. Rand Paul’s insulting warnings against encouraging dependency on government. Either way, the vote is shaping up as a test of the Republican Party’s basic decency, and the early returns don’t look good.”