Many Kentucky Workers Have Gained Insurance through the Medicaid Expansion, Are at Risk If Program Is Scaled Back
To view this brief in PDF form, click here. Many thousands of Kentuckians who work low wage jobs at restaurants,...
Jobs & The Economy
Close Look at Employment Numbers Shows Need for More Jobs
There's a big inconsistency between Kentucky's declining unemployment rate -- now at five percent, the lowest level since 2001 -- and the fact we still have many fewer people employed...
Child Care Workers’ Pay Is Not Enough
Child care plays a critical role for ensuring families can work and helping children get a healthy start to their developmental process. In Kentucky, it’s also responsible for $810 million...
Presentation: The State of Working Kentucky 2015
Despite five consecutive years of job growth, Kentucky’s economy is yet to fully recover from the Great Recession and faces longer-term troubling trends when it comes to job quality. The...
More Than a Celebration, Labor Day a Reminder of Work Left To Do
It’s a time-honored tradition to do as little work as possible on Labor Day. So many of us will spend the time off work at the lake, with family cooking...
Don’t Trust the Unemployment Rate: Coal Counties Edition
Kentucky is celebrating its drop in unemployment rate, which at 5.2 percent as of July is hovering at a level not seen since 2004. But since the unemployment rate doesn't...
Job Growth since Recession Continues, but Quality is Mixed
After major job loss in the Great Recession, Kentucky’s economy has gradually improved and the state has added 141,000 jobs since June 2009. The pace of job growth has picked...
Busting a Right-to-Work Myth: Why Unions Need to Cover ‘Free Riders’ in RTW States
Despite misleading explanations from “right-to-work” (RTW) advocates, the point of such laws is straightforward: weaken workers’ ability to band together through unions for better job conditions and pay. The law...
Kentucky’s Lopsided Recovery
Job growth in Kentucky has picked up over the last year, and every county saw a decline in its unemployment rate from March 2014 to March 2015. However, a closer...
What the Research Says about “Right-to-Work” Laws, Employment and Wages
As several Kentucky counties have passed or are considering local “right to work” (RTW) laws, serious research calls the benefits of such laws into question. The best evidence suggests that RTW...