For Arizona residents, the job market has tilted in favor of job seekers in a way rarely seen - but there are reasons for workers to be concerned that wages are not keeping up with costs. Read more»

After bottoming out at 4% in 2017, labor union membership in Arizona has been slowly rising, but it is still well behind levels of previous years and only about half of the national average. Read more»

Despite rising inflation and high gas prices, White House officials insisted this week that Arizona is sharing in the nation’s “robust” economic recovery, with low unemployment, and expanding wages in the state. Read more»

A sharp decline in the number of Americans going to college - down nearly a million since the start of the pandemic and by nearly 3 million over the last decade - could alter American society for the worse, even as economic rivals such as China vastly increase university enrollment. Read more»

Pima County employees will have up to 12 weeks of fully paid parental leave after the Board of Supervisors voted 4-1 on Tuesday to expand the benefit. The change will cost the county about $1.2 million annually. Read more»

Consumer prices rose by an average of 7% in U.S. cities last year, the steepest rise in decades, and they grew even faster in the Phoenix metro area, according to new data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Read more»

The so-called Great Resignation was one of the top stories of 2021 as “record” numbers of workers reportedly quit their jobs - but it isn’t quite as great as it seems, since large numbers of U.S. workers have been quitting for years. Read more»

Many people living with disabilities struggle to find professional opportunities, but the increase in remote work, prompted by office closures during the pandemic, has the potential to improve the employment rates for millions of people living with a disability. Read more»

Arizona’s unemployment rate continued its steady decline in October, falling to 5.2%, down a full percentage point from just two months earlier and almost one-third of the state’s pandemic high, according to the latest Bureau of Labor Statistics data. Read more»

Despite a stubbornly high unemployment rate of 6.1% in April — representing 9.8 million people who say they are actively looking for work — many employers are reporting that they can’t find people to hire, and economists disagree whether a too-generous unemployment supplement is the cause. Read more»

An employment program for veterans that began in the days after 9/11 paid off last year when the COVID-19 pandemic rattled employment for vets in the state and across the country, but witnesses said there is still room for improvement in government programs that are supposed to help soldiers transition from military to civilian life. Read more»

Tiny plastic pellets, have escaped into waterways by the countless billions as a result of failures by the plastics industry, not consumers. Read more»

Arizona posted one of the sharpest unemployment drops in the country in May, falling from a historic high of 13.4% in April to 8.9% last month, according to the latest numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Read more»

Some 87,000 new unemployment claims were filed in the week ending May 23, bringing the total number of jobless claims since the COVID-19 pandemic started to more than 740,000. Read more»

The number of unfilled job openings is now greater than the number of unemployed people for the first time on record, but records only go back 18 years. Despite what some GOP spinmeisters would have you believe, “history” didn’t start in December of 2000. Read more»