KRC received a fair amount of attention for our work in 2024. Here are some of the highlights!
Click on any of the links to read the full articles (some may have a paywall)
Philadelphia Inquirer: What is the ‘Trump sales tax’? A look at tariffs and how they might affect Pennsylvania – Layla Jones cites KRC on the effects of tariffs, economically and politically.
Philadelphia Inquirer: Kamala Harris unveils economic plans in Pittsburgh. Here’s why it matters in the race to win Pa. – KRC data is used to show how from 2016-2020, Pennsylvania lost more than 23,000 manufacturing jobs. Many of those have since been regained in the 2020-2024 period.
Philadelphia Inquirer: Will Pennsylvania’s economic rebound help deliver the crucial swing state to Kamala Harris? – KRC’s State of Working Pennsylvania 2024 is cited to demonstrate Pennsylvania’s economic recovery in the years leading up to the 2024 Presidential Election
Lehigh Valley Business Journal: Keystone Research Center gives Pa. economy high grade – LVBJ comments on KRC’s report on PA’s economic recovery since the pandemic, citing across-the-board rising wages and improved inflation marks.
Lehigh Valley Business Journal: Election Day – PA Voters weigh issues – Unemployment has fallen in parts of Pennsylvania by as many as 4 percentage points. As the Keystone Research Center notes, as low unemployment provides workers with leverage, the current job market is the best for Pennsylvania workers since the early 1970s.
KRC’s research points our that workers in PA have more leverage than they’ve had since the 1970’s, also noting the state’s record-low unemployment.
Lehigh Valley Business Journal: Election Highlights PA role as Battleground State – “The Trump campaign, with the help of the right-wing messaging machine led by Fox and friends, won the narrative wars about the economy,” said Herzenberg. “The Biden then Harris campaigns failed to challenge the false claim that Bidenomics was a disaster.
“Even more important, the Harris campaign allowed populist rhetoric on trade and immigration – both issues in which Trump’s gut is partly on target with respect to the economic impacts on U.S. workers – to completely obscure the contrast between Trump’s policies that will hammer working families, further juicing inequality, and Harris policies that would have strengthened the middle class.”
Pennsylvania Business Journal: Keystone Research Center sees more good news on PA Jobs front – “The Pennsylvania job market in August maintained its forward momentum and our unemployment rate stayed at 3.4% for the 11th month in a row.
“The number of non-farm jobs rose to a record 6.2 million, a jump of 8,000 jobs over July and the 13th consecutive monthly increase. Pennsylvania has gained more than 100,000 jobs (102,600) in the past 12 months. Our unemployment rate is now eight-tenths of a percentage point below the national 4.2% rate.
“The August numbers sustain the economic realities documented in KRC’s ‘State of Working Pennsylvania 2024 report. Pennsylvania’s economy is the most favorable it’s been for workers in half a century.”
PennLive: Fair Labor standards for clean energy projects are good for workers, good for climate, and good for Appalachia – In this opinion piece, ED Stephen Herzenberg explains why the clean energy economy is booming. Here’s why that’s good for everyone involved. 67 renewable energy or energy-efficient projects have either been recently completed or are in the works in PA.
TIME Magazine: How the Economy is doing in Swing States – “’It really is the strongest economy in 50 years from a workers’ perspective in terms of their bargaining power with employers,’ says Stephen Herzenberg, the executive director of the Keystone Research Center. Herzenberg has calculated that every county in Pennsylvania has a lower unemployment rate than it did before the pandemic. Many of the strongest job gains have come from rural and western parts of the state, which typically lag behind. Black and Latino workers have also made strides in the job market.”
CBS News – In some battleground states, low-wage workers keep losing ground –
CBS cites our research on how minimum wage workers in Pennsylvania are doing worse than minimum wage workers in other states because PA’s minimum wage is stuck at $7.25/hour.
“In our region, the minimum wage has gone up in surrounding states but not in Pennsylvania,” noted Keystone Research Center, a think tank for Pennsylvania-related issues, in a blog post. “Minimum-wage workers in Pennsylvania have also lost ground relative to workers in the middle of the wage distribution, that is, relative to the median wage.”
GoErie: PA budgets $600m in tax credits for private school aid. State law curbs oversight – The Keystone Research Center’s analysis concluded that the commonwealth’s most elite private institutions, some with yearly tuition exceeding $40,000, draw students from the EITC and OSTC programs.
90.5 WESA/NPR: Pennsylvania’s minimum wage likely to remain frozen for yet another year – Washington and California have increased the minimum wage and included tipped workers at up to $15 per hour to much success, said Stephen Herzenberg, an economist and executive director of the union-backed Keystone Research Center.
Public News Service: 67 PA counties boom for low unemployment, job growth, wage increases – According to the Keystone Research Center, 44 of Pennsylvania’s counties have seen average weekly wage growth since before the pandemic, including most counties in the lower geographic three-quarters of the state.