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The American Society of Civil Engineers has graded our infrastructure a D+, poor and at risk. Congress must act.

Walmart's raises to $9 an hour in 2015 and then to $10 an hour in 2016 is a positive step forward, but it still falls short of giving workers the wages they need.

This Demos Explainer explores the tension between political support for deficit reduction versus job creation and economic security policies. 

This Explainer explores how the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is used in measuring our economic growth and whether alternative measures are also needed to provide a more comprehensive outlook of economic progress.  

The working class today is much more complex and diverse than the white, male, manufacturing archetype often evoked in popular narratives.

Methodology: Demos sponsored an online survey among 1,536 registered voters, conducted June 5 to June 14, 2017. The research included a base sample of registered voters and, for deeper analysis, oversamples of working-class African Americans, working-class Hispanics, working-class white Obama-to-Trump voters, and progressives, defined as people of all races who identify as extremely or somewhat liberal. The data in this survey is weighted by standard weights to make it fully representative. 

While GDP has been steadily increasing, indicating a growing economy, other metrics of progress show a very different picture.

Fast food companies keep employees at poverty-level wages while reaping billions of dollars in profits. It drives inequality, slows growth, and lowers living standards.

How Walmart Can Invest in Its Workforce Without Costing Customers a Dime

This report makes the case that we should create jobs for the unemployed directly and immediately in public employment programs that produce useful goods and services for the public’s benefit.

How Last Minute, Just-In-Time Scheduling Practices Are Bad for Workers, Families and Business

A picture of the current state of the private retirement system, why this picture bodes ill for the future of retirement in the country, and why that system needs reform.

Why over a lifetime, 401k fees can cost a median-income two-earner family nearly $155,000 and consume nearly one-third of their investment returns.

How Raising Wages Would Benefit Workers, the Industry and the Overall Economy

How Our Tax Dollars Are Funding Low-Wage Work and Fueling Inequality

Public-sector jobs in Massachusetts are more likely than private-sector jobs to be good jobs that provide a family-supporting income and wealth-building benefits. They need to be preserved.

From the time a baby is born, American families are trapped between the need to provide care for their children and the necessity of earning income. 

In 2013, Walmart spent billions repurchasing shares of its own stock. It should have spent it raising wages.

This report presents new research on the scope of federally-supported employment in the private economy and shows how, using our over 1.3 trillion dollars in federal purchasing, the President of the United States can place over twenty million Americans on a pathway to the middle class.

How the retail industry fails to meet the needs of the Black and Latino workforce.