Fiscal Intelligence

Fiscal analysis that enables educators, small business owners, and community organizers to make informed decisions.

Category: Leadership

Video | July 5, 2013

JOB POLARIZATION AND RISING INEQUALITY

The growth in high- and low-skill jobs, coupled with little growth in the middle-skill groups, has changed the composition of the workforce. The leftmost bars in Chart 3 show the share of U.S. workers in each skill category in 1980 and 2010. While both high-skill and low-skill job shares increased, the lower-middle skill group’s job share shrank. In 1980, nearly half of all workers were employed in lower-middle-skill occupations. Among the occupations in this group, machine operators accounted for 10 percent of the U.S. workforce and administrative support workers accounted for 18 percent.

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Video | July 5, 2013

Cyclical v. Structural Changes (A Jobless Recovery)

<div style=”margin-bottom:5px”> <strong> <a href=”http://www.slideshare.net/LuisTaverasMBAMS/cyclical-v-structural-changes&#8221; title=”Cyclical v. Structural Changes (A Jobless Recovery)” target=”_blank”>Cyclical v. Structural Changes (A Jobless Recovery)</a> </strong> from <strong><a href=”http://www.slideshare.net/LuisTaverasMBAMS&#8221; target=”_blank”>Luis Taveras MBA, MS</a></strong> </div>

 

Cyclical Changes

In a temporary layoff, an employer “suspends” an employee’s job, generally because of slack demand. Both the employer and the employee expect their relationship to resume when economic conditions improve. The employer may even help the employee apply for unemployment insurance benefits so that he or she is more likely to wait out the layoff instead of taking another job. When layoffs are temporary, subsequent recalls can take place quickly, fueling fast payroll growth.

Structural Changes

By contrast, a permanent layoff severs the relationship between the employer and the employee. The employer eliminates the job for any of a variety of reasons, including a permanent fall in demand, technological change, reorganization of production, and local or international outsourcing. Even an employer that ultimately decides to fill the job again will need to search for a new employee.

Together with our findings on temporary layoffs, it suggests that the two most recent recessions were more strongly structural than recessions past.

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Video | June 26, 2013

OPENSUNY

Building on SUNY’s current open and online initiatives, Open SUNY has the potential to be America’s most extensive distance learning environment. It will provide students with affordable, innovative, and flexible education in a full range of instructional formats,both online and on site. Open SUNY will network students with faculty and peers from across the state and throughout the world through social and emerging technologies and link them to the best in open educational resources. Open SUNY will provide an online portal for thousands of people worldwide.

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Video | June 19, 2013

Are Schools Getting a Big Enough Bang for Their Education Technology Buck?

Far too often, school leaders fail to consider how technology might dramatically improve teaching and learning, and schools frequently acquire digital devices without discrete learning goals and ultimately use these devices in ways that fail to adequately serve students, schools, or taxpayers.

Forty-one percent of eighth-grade math students from high-poverty backgrounds, for instance, regularly used computers for drill and practice. In contrast, just 29 percent of middle school students from wealthier backgrounds used the computers for the same purpose. We also found that black students were more than 20 percentage points more likely to use computers for drill and practice than white students.

<div style=”margin-bottom:5px”> <strong> <a href=”http://www.slideshare.net/LuisTaverasMBAMS/are-schools-getting-a-big&#8221; title=”Are Schools Getting a Big Enough Bang for Their Education Technology Buck?” target=”_blank”>Are Schools Getting a Big Enough Bang for Their Education Technology Buck?</a> </strong> from <strong><a href=”http://www.slideshare.net/LuisTaverasMBAMS&#8221; target=”_blank”>Luis Taveras MBA, MS</a></strong> </div>

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Video | June 18, 2013

The Coming Budget Crunch

The NYC mayoral candidates have big spending plans. Do we know how they plan to accomplish them? Are they printing money in order to do so?

Bill Thompson wants to put 2,000 extra cops on the street at a cost of $200 million a year. One of his rivals, Public Advocate Bill de Blasio, pledges to introduce universal pre-K in the city’s schools, a project with a $530 million annual price tag. Thompson, deBlasio, and another candidate, New York City comptroller John Liu, want to build at least 60,000 units of new subsidized housing over the next four years. The bill for that could dwarf the cost of the police and school proposals.

This makes anyone wonders if they are aware of the fiscal challenges that the City of New York is facing.

  • Spending from city revenues rose from $28.9 billion when Bloomberg took office to $47.5 billion in fiscal year 2012 and will be an estimated $50.2 billion in 2013—a staggering 70 percent increase per resident.
  • The tab for workers’ health care more than doubled, from $2 billion a year to $4.8 billion. Retirees add another $1.6 billion.
  • According to the Citizens Budget Commission, total city debt hit $105 billion last year—almost double what it was when Bloomberg entered City Hall
  • The budget allocation for annual interest payments on debt jumped from $3.9 billion in 2002 to $5.8 billion in 2012, according to New York City’s Independent Budget Office.
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Video | June 7, 2013

Hotspots 2025

The costs of living and doing business in New York City are high, but not as high as in some others, including London and Tokyo, Mr. Abruzzese said. New York’s most glaring weakness has been in the management of the environment and preparation to cope with storms and other natural disasters, he said. (The New York Times)

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June 7, 2013

United States of America v. Apple, Inc.

<div style=”margin-bottom:5px”> <strong> <a href=”http://www.slideshare.net/LuisTaverasMBAMS/united-states-of-america-v-apple-inc&#8221; title=”United States of America v. Apple, Inc.” target=”_blank”>United States of America v. Apple, Inc.</a> </strong> from <strong><a href=”http://www.slideshare.net/LuisTaverasMBAMS&#8221; target=”_blank”>Luis Taveras MBA, MS</a></strong> </div>

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Video | May 25, 2013

2013 Edelman Trust Barometer Finds a Crisis in Leadership

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