Budget Matters Blog

Today we released the findings of a major investigation. We collaborated with our friends at Young Invincibles to explore the federal budget through the eyes of this nation's young people. Here's a snippet:During the twentieth century, the United States raised living standards by creating the best-educated workforce in the world. The nation’s success rested on local, state and federal investment in high quality, universal primary and secondary schooling, coupled with affordable higher education. But public investment is now on the decline. Over the last decade, funding for education fell as a share of total public spending ...

In the Federal Priorities Database, NPP hosts state-by-state data on federal spending and social and economic indicators, including the unemployment rate and people served by the Medicaid program. This graph makes use of related data to show how unemployment and Medicaid enrollment rose together following the start of the recession in 2007.

Unemployment rose sharply following the start of the Great Recession in 2007. At the same time, enrollment in Medicaid increased as Americans who were hard-hit in the economic downturn qualified for the health insurance program for low-income Americans. Medicaid enrollment rose from 16.6 percent of the under-65 ...

William from Denver, Colorado, asks: “Is there a way to show whether or not the private sector is actually ‘doing fine?’ In TV commercials I see that Mitt Romney is criticizing President Obama for saying that.”

Great minds can disagree about what constitutes “fine,” so let’s look at a firm measure of private sector health – the most recent jobs report. It didn’t contain a lot of good news, though there was perhaps one bright spot.

In May, the overall U.S. economy added 69,000 jobs. That was much lower than expected, and most analysts considered it an ...

To accompany this week’s look at employment numbers, we’ve updated last year’s unemployment and underemployment story from NPP’s Federal Priorities Database.

The chart below compares unemployment rates to underemployment rates. Underemployment is a number that not only counts the unemployed but also counts people no longer looking for work and part time employees who would rather be working full time. What’s interesting is that until the economic downturn, underemployment was about four percentage points higher than unemployment.

Since 2008, however, the gap between these numbers has increased, remaining at about seven percentage points at the ...

Last week’s jobs report for May by the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that unemployment grew for the first time in three months, albeit very slowly, up one-tenth of a percentage point to 8.2 percent. Good news or bad news? The news coverage has focused on the “bad,” but the truth is, it’s probably a little of both.

There are several ways to look at unemployment data. First is to look at the official monthly unemployment figure, that 8.2 percent. But that’s only part of the picture. It doesn’t include unemployed people who aren ...

This week, in honor of high school and college graduations, we’re talking about job creation and employment. There’s much disagreement over the federal government and job creation—that is, if the federal government can, or should, create jobs.

Here’s a simple way of looking at it: The federal government is certainly capable of creating jobs. It can hire construction workers to repair bridges and highways; it can send cash to the states to hire more teachers and police officers; and it can create jobs through more subtle measures, like providing tax cuts to corporations that may use ...

During Pie Week, we’ve explored three types of federal spending pies: total, mandatory, and discretionary. Judging from your comments on our Facebook page, you have strong opinions about the numbers on these charts.

To wrap up the week, we think it’s important to see the spending charts next to one another and understand the relationships between them. Below is an experimental way to make these charts more interactive. Just hover over the pie slices and click them to see the detailed data.

Educational? Confusing? Leave a comment and let us know what you think.

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For the second day of Pie Week, we present the mandatory spending pie. Mandatory spending is part of total federal spending, which we explored in yesterday's total federal spending pie.

Spending for mandatory programs is not determined by lawmakers during their yearly process for passing the federal budget. Instead, mandatory programs like food stamps and Medicare have certain eligibility criteria; anyone who meets them receives benefits from the program. Want to know more about mandatory spending? Check out Federal Budget 101. And visit the Budget Matters blog again tomorrow, when we'll have another pie for your enjoyment.

This week’s headlines from Washington have focused on an end of year budget deal that would avoid a federal government shutdown and the expiration of a temporary reduction in workers’ Social Security payroll deductions. Two important issues, to be sure, but left somewhere in the dust is another and arguably more important issue – the expiration of unemployment benefits for long-term unemployed workers.Last December, as part of a deal to extend the Bush era tax credits, the Obama Administration and Congress agreed to temporarily reduce employee Social Security contributions from 6.2 percent of their wages to 4.2 ...

Senior research analyst Mattea Kramer explains how the proposed extension of unemployment benefits would help keep the economy afloat.