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.
Each September the Census Bureau releases new statistics on poverty in the U.S. Since the recession began Florida has had the largest increase in the poverty rate in the nation. The poverty rate rose to 14.9% in 2009, while the child poverty rate rose to 21%. 2.7 million Floridians, roughly 1 in 7 people, were living [...]
This series of charts from the State of Working Florida 2010 report highlight the findings in a slide show format.
The last several years have been extremely hard ones for Florida’s workers. The recession that started in 2007 has been one of the deepest in history, and Florida was both a leader of the recession and one of the hardest hit states due to the vulnerability of our economy to the housing market crash. In [...]
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 [...]
Early childcare and education is an essential part of the economy of Miami-Dade County. It is more than a vital social service; the childcare industry generates revenue, and provides jobs and small business opportunities that sustain the local economy. Using a straightforward input-output economic analysis this report then provides a portrait of the value of [...]
Early childcare and education is an essential part of the economy of Miami-Dade County. It is more than a vital social service; the childcare industry generates revenue, and provides jobs and small business opportunities that sustain the local economy. Using a straightforward input-output economic analysis this report then provides a portrait of the value of [...]
Early care and education centers are important providers of jobs and small business opportunities, especially for women, and they allow parents to work. Families with young children rely on affordable child care to work and maintain financial self-sufficiency. This report combines analysis of critical economic indicators with on the ground input from parents, and child [...]
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 [...]