The report finds that many of Florida’s workforce fall outside of federal labor laws; thus, other enforcement mechanisms such as Miami Dade’s Wage Theft Ordinance are needed to ensure that employees, communities, and local governments will not miss out on millions of stolen wages that are owed to them, and that [...]
This report focuses on how workers are faring in Florida’s economy, and the overriding theme in 2011 is the stark contrasts in the impact of the recession on different groups of workers. While higher educated workers in higher paying jobs appear to be doing fairly well and even gaining ground in wages, lower educated workers, [...]
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.
The report finds that many of Florida’s workforce fall outside of federal labor laws; thus, other enforcement mechanisms such as Miami Dade’s Wage Theft Ordinance are needed to ensure that employees, communities, and local governments will not miss out on millions of stolen wages that are owed to them, and that [...]
As of October Florida’s unemployment rate was 10.3%, the lowest unemployment level since mid- 2009. This unemployment rate represents 955,000 jobless people out of a labor force of 9,228,000.This December unemployed Floridians face imminent cuts to their benefits both from the state and federal governments. If congress does not renew the Extended Benefits (EB) and [...]
Since the recession began in 2007, Florida has seen the largest increase in poverty in the nation. Three million Floridians, roughly 1 in 6 people, were living below poverty levels in 2010. In 2010, close to 1 in 4 children in the state were living in poverty.
Two years after the official end of the recession, Florida still has a jobs deficit of nearly 981,000 jobs, and some groups of workers are faring far worse than others in the economy, according to the annual State of Working Florida report to be released on Sunday by the Research Institute on Social and Economic [...]
This report focuses on how workers are faring in Florida’s economy, and the overriding theme in 2011 is the stark contrasts in the impact of the recession on different groups of workers. While higher educated workers in higher paying jobs appear to be doing fairly well and even gaining ground in wages, lower educated workers, [...]
The last five months have seen steady declines in Florida’s unemployment rate, from 12% in December to 10.6% in May. The improvement leveled off in June, when the unemployment rate was unchanged. Since January 2010 the state has gained 85,500 jobs, according to seasonally adjusted figures, the longest and largest continuous gain since the recession [...]
Cuts to unemployment benefit weeks would have disparate impact on workers of color, given the large difference in unemployment rates for Black and Hispanic workers. Average annual unemployment for all groups continued to go up from 2009 to 2010, but Black and Hispanic workers had much larger increases than White non-Hispanic workers. Hispanic unemployment increased [...]
RISEP’s new analysis of Florida’s unemployment compensation system, co-released by Florida New Majority and the National Employment Law Project, shows that unemployment benefits are a key stimulus to Florida’s economy, putting over $9 billion into the state’s economy since the start of the recession. But Florida ranks low among states on key measures of how well benefits reach [...]
At the end of 2010 Florida’s economic outlook is still uncertain. The number of jobs increased just slightly in 2010, growing by 0.6% for an addition of 43,500 jobs. However there are still over 1.1 million people unemployed in the state. This means that for every job that was added, there are still 25 people [...]
This report is the first in a series describing and exposing the extent of wage violations in the state of Florida. This project is an initiative of the Florida Wage Theft Task Force (WTTF) whose mission is to find solutions to and increase public awareness about wage violations experienced by Florida’s working men and women. [...]