Research Roundup

A new Transportation Equity Network report, The Road to Jobs: Patterns of Employment in the Construction Industry in 18 Metropolitan Areas, highlights the critical role of construction jobs in offering decent-paying employment to non-college educated workers, yet African-Americans are underrepresented in this workforce. With a looming shortage of skilled construction labor, the report emphasizes there is a window of opportunity to fund skills training that will open up the industry to excluded minorities and women.

In Foreclosure Exposure, ACORN highlights the racial and economic disparities of the subprime lending debacle, as African-Americans were 2.7 times more likely and Latinos 2.3 times more likely than white borrowers to be issued high-cost loans. These racial disparities persisted even when comparing borrowers of similar income levels. More generally, the report highlights those metropolitan areas most at risk from concentrated foreclosures.

American Rights At Work released its Labor Day List: Partnerships that Work, highlighting successful businesses that have built collaborative partnerships with unions in their workplaces.

In a new Economic Snapshot, the Economic Policy Institute finds that the median family income for 2006 has fallen $1000 below its peak in 1999. More dramatically, annual full-time earnings have dropped $1,335 for women and $2,353 for men below peak levels.

Kids Count has updated eleven poverty indicators and three employment and income indicators at its state-level data online system, a resource for creating customized profiles, maps and graphs of child wellbeing at the national, state and county level.