Increasing Wages for Working Families: The president has called on Congress to increase the federal minimum wage. While Congress has failed to act on this issue in the past eight years, the president has worked within his power to increase wages for working families—based on an executive order, workers on new federal contracts will earn a minimum of $10.10 an hour starting this year, indexed to inflation beginning in 2016. But the president cannot raise wages alone, which is why he continues to call for Congress to pass the Raise the Wage Act to increase the federal minimum wage to $12 by 2020. According to researchers at the Economic Policy Institute, this Act would lead to a raise for 45% of all single, working African American mothers. Overall, passing the Raise the Wage Act would directly or indirectly increase wages for an estimated 35 million workers, helping to ensure fair pay and boost the economy. However, since the president called for an increase in the minimum wage in his 2013 State of the Union address, 17 states and the District of Columbia have answered his call. That means that today, a total 29 states and the District of Columbia have a higher minimum wage than the federal minimum wage.
Narrowing the Digital Divide: In July 2015, President Obama announced ConnectHome , which is a new initiative with 27 communities, one tribal nation, the private-sector, and federal government to expand high-speed broadband to more families across the country. ConnectHome will initially reach up to 200,000 children in low-income households living in public housing with the support they need to access the Internet at home. Through public and private partnership, ConnectHome communities will offer technical training, digital literacy programs, and devices to help narrow the digital divide.
Creating Affordable Retirement Savings: The Administration stresses that Social Security must remain a rock-solid, guaranteed progressive benefit that every American can rely on; although too many Americans reach their golden years without any personal savings or pension whatsoever. According to the Urban Institute, the risk of an insecure retirement is especially high for minorities: white households have six times the wealth, including retirement savings, of African Americans or Hispanics. To make it easier for families to save for retirement, the Treasury recently announced the national launch of myRA, a new starter retirement account designed for individuals who don’t have access to an employer-sponsored retirement program. According to a Federal Reserve report, 42% of workers don’t have access to a retirement plan through their jobs. myRA is designed to help bridge this gap, and help workers get on the path to long-term savings.
Restoring Economic Security to African American Families: Businesses have added over 14 million jobs over 70 straight months of job growth, the longest streak on record. While we still have more to do, this job growth has helped cut the African American unemployment rate in half – from 16.8% in March 2010 to 8.3% in December 2015, its lowest level since September 2007. The African-American unemployment rate has fallen by more than the overall unemployment rate in the past few years, and is further below its pre-recession level than any other racial or ethnic group.
Making College More Accessible and Affordable: The President signed legislation increasing the maximum Pell Grant by more than $1,000 and total Pell Grant funding by 70%, helping millions of low- and moderate-income students afford college every year. He’s also taken steps to reduce student loan burdens, including ending student loan subsidies for private banks and shifting the savings back to students, reducing student loan interest rates to historic lows, and capping student loan payments at 10% of income for all students. The President also established and made permanent the American Opportunity Tax Credit, which provides a tax cut of up to $10,000 over four years for nearly 10 million working and middle-class families a year paying for college.
Getting more Americans into Better, Higher Paying Jobs: Last July, the Administration released a plan for job-training and employment programs to be more responsive to the needs of employers in order to effectively place ready-to-work Americans in jobs that are available now or train them in the skills needed for better jobs. Since then the government has awarded over 15 competitive job-training grants that total over $1.2 billion. Some of the biggest competitive grant program are targeted towards expanding proven, job-driven strategies, including $175 million into expanding apprenticeship programs. To go along with the apprenticeship program, the Department of Labor has also proposed a rule to increase equal employment opportunity in apprenticeship programs for traditionally under-represented groups.
Helping the Long-Term Unemployed Get Back to Work: The Administration has taken steps to help more of the long-term unemployed get back to work, around one-quarter of whom are African-American. The Department of Labor awarded nearly $170 million in “Ready to Work Partnership” grants to support the best models for partnerships between employers, non-profits, and the job training system to help train and connect the long-term unemployed to work.
