This report examines the impact of job creation and retention in Florida due to the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. The report focuses on the impact on Black and Latino communities in Florida, in particular through transportation contracting and the weatherization program. Based on the findings, recommendations are made for ensuring that stimulus spending promotes a full [...]
The steep recession which was triggered by the bursting of Florida’s housing “bubble” also had deeper roots. For decades wage growth has not kept up with increasing productivity. Expanding consumer debt and widening income inequality occurred even during the good times. Florida needs a sustainable economy over the long term, and that will require more [...]
RISEP publishes research and data on issues of concern to low and middle income workers and their families in Florida. Our work focuses on working conditions, low wage workers, working poverty, living wage law and minimum wage laws, and high road development.
RISEP also publishes data on Florida’s work force, labor market statistics, wage levels, poverty, employment, shifts in jobs, quality of employment, immigration, race and gender statistics.
RISEP is part of the Center for Labor Research and Studies of the School of International and Public Affairs at Florida International University.
This report is the third in a series that looks at the opportunity landscape in Florida before the recession, and how economic stimulus investments should be targeted towards making quality of life opportunities accessible to all communities, particularly communities of color. This installment focuses on the impact of the Neighborhood Stabilization Program (NSP) and its efforts to rehabilitate foreclosed and abandoned housing for [...]
Between February 2009 and February 2010, the South Florida chapter of Jobs with Justice (SFJwJ) and the Research Institute on Social and Economic Policy (RISEP) collaborated on a participatory action research project to document the problems as well as the community vitality that exists in mobile home parks in Miami-Dade County. The focus of this [...]
MIAMI (CBS4) – When mobile home park owners sell or close a park, more than half of its residents have nowhere else to go and could potentially end up homeless, according to a study released by Florida International University Thursday… (read more)
In the fourth quarter of 2009, unemployment in Florida reached 10.9% for all workers, higher than the national average of 10.0%. Black workers had the highest unemployment in the state at 17.6%, up 1.8 percentage points from the previous quarter, the largest increase of any group. Hispanics saw a decrease in unemployment to 12.2%, down [...]
This report examines the impact of job creation and retention in Florida due to the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. The report focuses on the impact on Black and Latino communities in Florida, in particular through transportation contracting and the weatherization program. Based on the findings, recommendations are made for ensuring that stimulus spending promotes a full [...]
Wage theft is a growing problem across America and in Florida, as employers seek to cut costs. Workers are paid less than minimum wage, not paid for overtime worked, forced to work off the clock, or simply not paid at all. The problem is especially acute in South Florida because of the numerous low-wage and [...]
SEIU Healthcare Florida is the major union in the healthcare sector in Florida. This union is growing in a state with extremely low union membership, and in an industry that has been virtually unionfree in Florida in the past. In the private sector, Florida’s unionization rate in 2008 was the second lowest of all 50 [...]
With healthcare at the forefront of the largest U.S. policy debate in two decades, researchers from the Research Institute on Social and Economic Policy at Florida International University were given unprecedented access to more than four hundred frontline healthcare workers to determine what impact the union is having on the healthcare industry, the workers’ jobs [...]
Unemployment in Florida for the 3rd quarter of 2009 was 10.9% overall, higher than the national average of 8.1%. But unemployment for minority workers in Florida was significantly higher, reaching 15.6% for Black workers and 13.1% for Hispanic workers, according to estimates from the Economic Policy Institute. This represents an increase of 9.3 percentage points [...]
This report looks closely at hard hit populations and communities in four major metropolitan areas of Florida, identifying the barriers to opportunity facing these communities prior to the economic crisis in order to better understand the direct impact from the economic crisis and the substantial federal and state responses to foster recovery. The report looks [...]