Month: August 2022

Yesterday, Governor Tony Evers announced that Wisconsin high school juniors and seniors heading back to school this fall will have 14 new occupational pathways that local employers can support, thanks to ongoing modernization efforts by the Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development (DWD).

Working in collaboration with school consortiums, employers, the Wisconsin Technical College System, and other partners, DWD has modernized the framework for a total of 75 Youth Apprenticeship (YA) program pathways to help industries like construction, health sciences, marketing, science and engineering, and transportation find and develop home-grown talent.

DWD’s YA Program Modernization Initiative resulted in 14 new occupational pathways in which local employers can offer apprenticeship opportunities to students. These include:

• Agriculture, Food, and Natural Resources, new pathways: Arborist and Dairy Grazier.
• Architecture and Construction, new pathways: Gas Distribution Technician, Heavy Equipment Operator/Operating Engineer, and Utilities Electrical Technician.
• Arts, Audio Visual Technology and Communications, new pathway: Media Broadcast Technician.
• Health Science, new pathways: Phlebotomist and Resident Aide.
• Information Technology, new pathway: IT Broadband Technician.
• Manufacturing, new pathway: Electro-mechanical/Mechatronics.
• Transportation, Distribution, and Logistics, new pathways: Airport Operations and Management, Aviation Maintenance Fundamentals, Aviation Airframe and Powerplant Technician, Aviation Avionics Technician.

The YA program is coordinated and provided around the state by consortia that often consist of school districts, technical colleges, and chambers of commerce. Of the 421 public school districts, 321 districts, or 76.2 percent, had students enrolled in YA for the 2021-2022 school year.

Employers interested in becoming a youth apprenticeship sponsor can find more information here.

Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell pledged that he and his colleagues will keep raising interest rates until they’re confident that inflation is under control.

In short and direct remarks Friday at an economic conference in Jackson Hole, Wyo., Powell acknowledged that higher borrowing costs will likely cause some short-term pain for families and businesses.

Unemployment may be higher and the economy may grow more slowly. But Powell warned the alternative — allowing high inflation to continue unchecked — would be worse.

“Without price stability, the economy does not work for anyone,” he said.

“We are taking forceful and rapid steps to moderate demand so that it comes into better alignment with supply, and to keep inflation expectations anchored,” Powell said. “We will keep at it until we are confident the job is done.”

President Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act into law on Tuesday, saying “the American people won, and the special interests lost.”

The bill, which was passed by the Senate earlier this month and the House of Representatives last week, costs an estimated $437 billion, with $369 billion going toward investments in “Energy Security and Climate Change,” according to a summary by Senate Democrats.

Democrats project that the legislation will reduce the deficit by bringing in $737 billion. This includes an estimated $124 billion from IRS tax enforcement, the projected result of hiring 87,000 new IRS agents who will ramp up audits.

The bill also imposes a 15% corporate minimum tax that the Joint Committee on Taxation predicts will raise $222 billion, and prescription drug pricing reform that the Senate estimates will bring in $265 billion.

One thing the Inflation Reduction Act is not expected to do, according to multiple analyses, is reduce inflation. The Congressional Budget Office said the bill will have “a negligible effect” on inflation in 2022, and in 2023 its impact would range between reducing inflation by 0.1% and increasing it by 0.1%.

Wisconsin lawmakers were divided over the Inflation Reduction Act that passed the U.S. House on Friday. The legislation now goes to President Joe Biden for his signature.

The bill provides around $375 billion over 10 years to help industry and consumers transition away from fossil fuels to cleaner energy sources. The bill provides around $64 billion to extend the Affordable Care Act to around 13 million people who need help paying health care premiums for insurance bought on the private market. The bill raises around $740 billion in revenue over the next 10 years, and that includes around $222 billion raised from a 15 percent minimum tax on corporations.

“That will make us more energy independent and less dirty,” said Pocan.

Republican U.S. House Rep. Tom Tiffany called the bill a “tax-and-spending bonanza” amid record inflation. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office found the bill’s impact on inflation could be positive or negative, and its effects are largely uncertain.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on Thursday relaxed many of the guidelines for COVID-19 in communities, a major shift that emphasizes living with the virus rather than strict prevention of infection. The new guidance puts the onus on individuals to assess their own personal risk levels, rather than businesses, governments or schools.

The new guidelines no longer recommend case investigation and contact tracing, except in health care settings and certain high-risk congregate settings. The new guidance also treats a COVID-19 exposure in the same way regardless of whether the person exposed is vaccinated. Under the new guidelines, there is no quarantine recommendation.

The agency no longer recommends physical distancing, and instead asks individuals to consider the risk in specific settings.

CDC will also no longer recommend screening testing of asymptomatic people without known exposures, except in certain high-risk settings like nursing homes and prisons.

“Screening testing might not be cost-effective in general community settings, especially if COVID-19 prevalence is low,” CDC wrote.

In schools, CDC removed the recommendation that kids avoid mingling with other classrooms, a practice known as cohorting.

It also removed a recommendation on “test-to-stay,” which was aimed at keeping children who were exposed to COVID-19 in the classroom as long as they had no symptoms and repeatedly tested negative.

They’re not just racking up higher balances on their credit cards as sky-high inflation and rising interest rates hit household wallets, though. A study released Tuesday by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s Center for Microeconomic Data shows a 13% cumulative year-over-year increase in credit card balances. That’s the largest jump in 20 years, since 2002.

Credit card debt stands at $890 billion as of the end of the second quarter, according to the quarterly report on household debt and credit. While credit card balances typically rise during the second quarter, the $46 billion increase makes the second quarter one of the highest jumps on record since 1999. The last time total credit card balances were this high was the first quarter of 2020.

“Americans are borrowing more, but a big part of the increased borrowing is attributable to higher prices,” New York Fed researchers wrote Tuesday. Not only did balances increase, researchers note, but the number of new credit cards was up too.

Mortgages, auto loans, retail cards, and other consumer loans also rose at a fairly rapid clip. In total, non-housing debt grew by $103 billion during the second quarter, the largest increase recorded by the New York Fed since 2016.

Overall, Americans’ total household debt increased by 2% to $16.15 trillion during the second quarter, according to the New York Fed. That puts balances about $2 trillion higher than they were at the end of 2019, prior to the onset of the pandemic.