Jobs

This is the 2009 State of Opportunity report.  Here you may download the final report, the final report with accompanying charts, a synopsis, and each of the indicators individually.

Read more about the report here.

This memo offers guidance for using the 2009 State of Opportunity in America report, which examines various dimensions of opportunity, including health care, wealth and income, education, and incarceration. While expanding opportunity in America remains a goal of policymakers and advocates alike, this report finds that access to full and equal opportunity is still very much a mixed reality. Our recommendations to address this reality offer concrete ideas for moving us forward together.

Alan Jenkins, executive director of The Opportunity Agenda, appears on MSNBC to discuss the economy and our new report, The State of Opportunity in America.

This is the 2007 update to the State of Opportunity report.  There are two files, the full chart of indicators and a summary.

"Getting job creation right," an opinion piece by Bill Lann Lee, Co-Founder of The Opportunity Agenda, and Alan Jenkins, Co-Founder and Executive Director, appeared today in Politico.

Arguing that although the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act created and saved many jobs, unemployment is still at its highest levels in a quarter-century and more work needs to be done. Lee and Jenkins offer three suggestions for lawmakers:

In her blog today, Arianna Huffington asks if CBS’s new reality offering, Undercover Boss, is the most subversive show on television. It’s a provocative question, as most of us would like to think that a reality show existed that could turn the genre on its head.

Across the country, our youth – the future of our country – took to the streets today. Protestors closed college campuses and secondary schools in a national day to defend the current state of public education. With rising tuition costs, budget cuts, increased layoffs and growing class sizes, parents, students and concerned citizens are trying to get their voices heard in the education crisis.

As seen in the chart below, that's been making the rounds, the stimulus is working. The Obama Administration, using numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, is touting that the number of jobs lost is lessening.

Americans perception of today's affairs and recent important events, such as the failed terrorist attack on Christmas Day, the President’s State of the Union Address, and the persistent effects of the recession form their agenda for 2010. Although the public's top priorities for the Administration and Congress laid out by recent surveys show that priorities remain similar to last year (jobs and the economy), there have been some notable shifts. These shifts will have an impact on what will gain enough public pressure to get legislation passed in an election year. Let's take a more careful look at how Americans think about the economy, terrorism, health care, and immigration.

The end of a year – and especially the end of a decade – warrants both retrospective reflection and predictions of what is to come.  Currently there seems to be much consensus, especially around the 2000s as a decade of struggle and decline for the US.  There is a silver lining, however, in the cautious optimism around the issue of race relations.  As the decade comes to a close, it is still clear that the US is entering the 2010s with much work to do, particularly with the economy and unemployment.  Below is recent public opinion on the past decade, the curr

Today, the public will get a look at how funds distributed through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 are being spent when the reports from agencies receiving these stimulus funds are released.

As the country considers how we might reform our health care system, it is important to note that good health requires not just health insurance, but also the flexibility to care for oneself or one's family when sick, and to help prevent the spread of contagious diseases through the workplace.  Today, Senator Ted Kennedy and Representative Rosa DeLauro introduced a bill, dubbed the Healthy Families Act, that would guarantee American workers up to 7 paid sick days each year, and allow workers to take these paid sick days to care for ill family members.

Brentin Mock at The American Prospect reports on the nomination of West Coast green jobs and urban revitalization advocate Van Jones to the White House position of Green Jobs Czar. Van Jones is the founder of the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights and Green For All.  He is author of the New York Times Bestseller The Green Collar Economy.

Vice President-elect, Joe Biden, has picked Jared Bernstein, founding advisory board member of The Opportunity Agenda, as his chief economic adviser.

In his first 100 days, President-elect Obama plans to pass an economic stimulus package that will create or save 2.5 million jobs. Economists estimate that this may require almost $1 trillion in government financing, yet, across the political spectrum, they largely agree that doing so would represent a wise investment in our country’s economic future.