This week brings us yet another indicator that coal may be on the decline worldwide.
JPMorgan Chase announced on March 4 that it will curtail the amount of coal projects it finances worldwide. The bank joins several competitors, including Citigroup, Morgan Stanley, Wells Fargo and Goldman Sachs, which have all distanced themselves in some way from coal financing.
Environmental activists had a positive, if muted, response to the news.
JPMorgan's new "environmental and social policy framework" outright bans the bank from financing new coal-fired power plants in high-income countries, as defined by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, a Paris-based think tank. Only 32 countries, including the U.S., Japan, Australia and most of Europe, qualify as high-income according to the OECD.
JPMorgan will continue to finance coal-fired power plants in developing countries like China, India and Indonesia, but only if the plants use the most efficient technology available to burn its coal.
In addition, the new framework also prohibits the bank from financing completely new mines in rich or poor countries around the world.
JPMorgan will also reduce the amount of credit it extends to coal mining companies, although the policy doesn't have many details. The company declined to comment.
The Rainforest Action Network, which calls on banks to completely end the financing of coal-based projects, called JPMorgan's move "a step in the right direction of moving away from some of the dirtiest carbon-based fuels." However, the group noted that the bank hasn't completely stopped financing coal projects.
"It’s important that the institution continue to address this issue by ending its support for coal [completely]," Ben Collins, a senior campaigner at the Network, told The Huffington Post.
In the last decade, JPMorgan has been one of the largest lenders to coal companies globally, providing $18.8 billion in funding for mining and coal-fueled power plants around the world, according to to a 2015 study on coal financing.
But the market for coal has fallen off a cliff in the United States over the last decade, thanks to the rise of cheap natural gas, with many of the country's biggest coal companies filing for bankruptcy protection over the last two years.
Even in China, which is the world's largest coal consumer, demand has fallen off. That's partly because its economic growth has cooled, but partly because the country knows it has a smog problem and has vowed to get its emissions in line by having at least 20 percent of its energy from non-fossil fuel sources by 2030.
The monthly jobs report came out on Friday, and things are pretty good overall.
The big headline numbers were great: The economy added 242,000 jobs in February, much higher than the 195,000 that economists estimated, and the unemployment rate remained at 4.9 percent, which is nice and low.
But if you drill down into the data, the picture is a little murkier.
Here are four things we know about the economy from the details in this report:
1) Wages aren't growing much, and it's hard to say why.
Average hourly earnings were down by 3 cents in February, to $25.35. Year-over-year, wages are up about 2.2 percent. That's not great -- although, thanks to very low oil prices and low inflation, it's not terrible either. But it's worth asking why wage growth since 2010 hasn't been as robust as growth in previous recoveries.
Shane Ferro/Huffington Post
2) Nonetheless, people are coming back into the labor force.
As we said earlier, the economy added 242,000 jobs this month. But perhaps more importantly, details in the household survey show that more than 500,000 entered the labor force by starting to look for work again. In order to be officially unemployed, a person must not have a job and must be looking for work. Discouraged workers, who have given up looking for jobs, aren't counted as part of the labor force. It's a sign of a healthy economy when those people start looking for jobs again, even if they don't find work immediately.
3) But the unemployment rate for blacks is twice the unemployment rate for whites.
The unemployment rate for whites in the United States is 4.3 percent. For blacks, it's 8.8 percent. This is an economic dynamic that has been persistent since the Labor Department started tracking unemployment by race back in the 1970s. The chart below is not really America's best look:
Shane Ferro/Huffington PostThere's a huge racial disparity in the unemployment rate in this country.
4) There is a lot of growth in low-wage industries.
The retail industry added 55,000 jobs last month, and food service added 40,000. These have been some of the strongest growth industries over the last few years, which means the economy is adding a lot of low wage, service sector jobs. That said, the economy also added a lot of health care (38,000) and construction (19,000) jobs in February, which tend to pay quite well.
You might be contributing to the decimation of endangered animal species without even realizing it.
When illegal ivory, tiger pelts or rhino tusks make their way to markets and e-commerce sites, traffickers may try to conceal how the products were obtained. They'll use terms like "bone" or "walrus tusk" to describe ivory, duping retailers and customers alike. What's more, uninformed shoppers or tourists might not know that tortoiseshell and certain types of coral or wood are also part of this illicit trade network, which is estimated to be worth between $50 and $150 billion per year.
Major companies across the e-commerce, retail and travel industries are now banding together to raise awareness and reduce the amount of illegal wildlife products Americans buy.
Google, eBay, Etsy, JetBlue and Tiffany & Co are among the 16 firms committing to eliminating these products from their supply chains, the U.S. Wildlife Trafficking Alliance and the Obama administration announced Thursday.
“A lot of Americans are just not aware that they could be buying illegal products and adding to this global problem,” David J. Hayes, chair of the alliance and former chief operating officer at the Department of Interior, told The Huffington Post.
Each company will take action within its own sphere of commerce. Some will warn customers about the impacts of illegal wildlife products, while others will flag items on sale that potentially violate wildlife policies or provide educational videos on sustainability for travelers.
ChinaFotoPress via Getty ImagesIllegal ivory and ivory products confiscated in China.
Several online retailers have already taken steps to block harmful items from their sites. eBay and the online bidding platform LiveAuctioneers.com have banned illegal ivory sales. Etsy has banned all ivory and prohibited sellers to list goods made from threatened or endangered animal parts.
"It's hard for the consumer to know what's legal and what's illegal, and it can be hard for the retailer to know," said Beth Allgood, U.S. campaigns director for the International Fund for Animal Welfare, a conservation nonprofit that has worked with eBay, Etsy and LiveAuctioneers to remove illegal ivory listings. "We can be partners to retailers who don't know all the regulations."
For JetBlue, the awareness campaign will primarily inform passengers traveling to and from the Caribbean and Latin America, said Sophia Mendelsohn, JetBlue’s head of sustainability. In videos to be shown on JetBlue’s flights, residents and small business owners from the region will speak about how sustainable tourism practices can support wildlife diversity.
“We want to stop this issue at its root cause,” Mendelsohn told HuffPost. “We’re going to cut out unwitting demand so there’s less profit in drawing out these natural resources, whether it’s for tech, necklaces or special meals” at local restaurants.
Lam Yik Fei via Getty ImagesLeopard skins seized by Hong Kong customs officials.
Other corporate partners that have pledged to work with the alliance include Ralph Lauren and Royal Caribbean Cruises. The Association of Zoos and Aquariums will exhibit seized illegal wildlife products in its parks to highlight the threats posed to various species. Discovery Communications will produce virtual reality content focusing on trafficking and conservation.
The household brands committed to this new effort will work to establish best practices for smaller names in the travel, e-commerce and retail industries.
“These companies are accepting industry leadership and making sure smaller ones aren’t involved in wildlife trafficking,” Hayes said. “These are true industry-wide efforts.”
Stockbyte via Getty ImagesAn illegal haul of rhino horn.
Awareness of wildlife conservation has been growing for some time. President Barack Obama issued an executive order to implement a wildlife taskforce in 2013. The corporate alliance announced this week is a result of that effort.
Public interest in the issue spiked last year following the killing of Cecil the Lion. The backlash against the Minnesota dentist who shot down the lion in Zimbabwe heightened scrutiny of trophy killings and spurred action from the travel industry.
American Airlines, United Airlines and Delta Airlines announced last summer that they would ban transport from Africa of the “big five” game animals -- lion, elephant, rhino, leopard and buffalo.
ASSOCIATED PRESSA lion in an enclosure of the Lion Park, in Johannesburg, South Africa.
A prominent labor rights group that monitors working conditions in overseas factories says apparel giant Nike refused to let it inspect a plant in Vietnam roiled by employee strikes.
Workers at the Hansae Vietnam factory who produce university-branded Nike clothes held a pair of walkouts over working conditions late last year. The Worker Rights Consortium, an independent monitor affiliated with nearly 200 U.S. colleges, says it wanted to inspect the factory on behalf of its member schools to find out what the problem was.
What Nike and the WRC can agree on is that Nike didn't help facilitate any access for the group. Nike says that it can't control who inspects a supplier's factory, and that it wouldn't normally assist an outside group like the WRC. "These are not our factories to control," Hannah Jones, Nike's chief sustainability officer, told The Huffington Post.
But the WRC says the rebuff from Nike signals a turnabout after years of reasonable cooperation from the brand. Scott Nova, the group's director, said he was "surprised and concerned" that Nike "effectively refused to let us in the door."
"What it boils down to is Nike prefers not to be accountable to an independent investigative body," Nova said. "They want to police the working conditions themselves. The reason there are mandatory standards is it's not prudent to allow companies to police themselves."
To understand the row, you have to understand Nike's long history with labor watchdogs and activists. The company's public image was battered by a series of sweatshop scandals back in the 1990s. Tales of paltry wages and harsh conditions for foreign workers producing Nike shoes, clothes and athletic equipment led U.S. students to protest the iconic brand. At the time, Nike said it shouldn't be held responsible for the actions of suppliers it doesn't own.
The company eventually took major strides toward transparency. It became the first big U.S. retailer to publish a list of the overseas factories producing its goods, and it took a far more active role in monitoring the working conditions inside factories. The company evolved into something of a poster child for corporate social responsibility, the concept in which brands are accountable to the working conditions at the bottom of their supply chains.
Despite the progress that's been made, independent watchdogs like the WRC have never been comfortable with the system of monitoring adopted by Nike and other brands. Most U.S. retailers devise their own voluntary monitoring plans that critics say leave them without much skin in the game. And though they subject themselves to audits, those audits are often done by monitoring groups that are funded at least in part by the retailers themselves. Such monitoring came under heavy scrutiny after 2012 press coverage of conditions at Foxconn, the Chinese supplier to Apple, and the collapse of Rana Plaza, which killed more than a hundred garment workers in Bangladesh in 2013.
Nike's Jones said the company works closely with the nonprofit Fair Labor Association. The group has corporate board members and receives much of its funding through its corporate affiliates -- including Adidas, Apple, Fruit of the Loom and Under Armour -- though it also counts many universities and nongovernmental organizations among its members. Jones said the FLA runs factory assessments over which Nike has no control. She also said Nike works with the International Labour Organization, an agency of the United Nations, to address complaints at its factories.
In the case of the Hansae factory, Jones said, Nike products account for about 9 percent of what's manufactured in the facility. She said Nike was first notified about the worker strikes by the WRC. The company then did its own investigation, relying on the FLA and the ILO, finding that the strikes resulted from "a very poor relationship between workers and a new manager" at the factory, she said.
"That's how we've always operated with the WRC. We went in, did our own monitoring, and we asked the FLA to come in and do an independent assessment, which they are about to do," Jones said. "We don't have a formal relationship with the WRC, and it's quite important that brands have an arm's length with watchdog institutions."
The WRC says that Nike has helped facilitate its factory audits in the past, and that, in the case of Hansae, it has an obligation to. Scores of universities have contracts with Nike, licensing their school logos to go on Nike apparel. Many of those schools are WRC affiliates who have their own codes of conduct that suppliers are expected to adhere to.
Two weeks ago, hundreds of college faculty members signed onto a letter criticizing Nike for not assisting the WRC in investigating the situation at Hansae. The letter, led by Richard Appelbaum, a sociology professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara, accused the company of "attempting to turn back the clock on transparency and worker rights."
Rutgers, too, has waded into the tiff. In a December letter to Nike obtained by The Huffington Post, Rutgers' president, Robert Barchi, said that if Nike didn't help the WRC access the Hansae factory, the company would be taking "a step backward" on its labor rights record. "Rutgers feels that it is essential that all companies producing Rutgers branded products not only adhere to all applicable labor codes of conduct but also be perceived as maintaining the highest standards of labor rights," Barchi wrote.
"We have reversed nothing," Nike's Jones insisted. "Nike remains firmly committed to transparency."
College students have considerable influence on apparel makers because of how lucrative the college licensing contracts are. The pressure at Rutgers has come from students affiliated with a group called United Students Against Sweatshops, which has been agitating on campuses since the late 1990s.
In 2012, the group succeeded in getting Rutgers to drop its relationship with Adidas after students criticized the company for not paying severance to laid-off workers at a supplier in Indonesia. (Adidas later agreed to pay into a fund for the employees.) Morgan Currier, an organizer with USAS, said students are adamant that Nike assist the WRC in investigating any problems at Hansae.
"Students are very upset with Nike," Currier said. "They're undermining 19 years of work by garment workers and students."
Nike has learned there were two strikes that lasted three days each at Hansae. According to Jones, some of the worker unrest there stemmed from how production bonuses were being awarded. She said that she would not call management there "gold star," but that they were in the process of "full remediations."
Nova, of the WRC, said his group was doing labor rights research in the area when it learned of the strikes last year through local sources.
"We only have limited information because of Nike," Nova said. "But we do have enough information to have serious concerns about it."
Warren Buffett doesn't want you to know how his empire is preparing to deal with the disastrous effects of climate change. In fact, he said in a letter released Saturday, he isn't exactly sure this whole "climate change" thing is real, anyway.
In his annual letter to investors in his conglomerate Berkshire Hathaway, the billionaire investor fought back against a proposed shareholder resolution demanding his insurance subsidiaries measure and disclose the risks that climate change poses to their business and how the company is responding to the threat. Buffett compared fears over climate change to the brouhaha around apocalyptic Y2K predictions.
“It seems highly likely to me that climate change poses a major problem for the planet,” the 85-year-old wrote in the letter, released Saturday morning. “I say ‘highly likely’ rather than ‘certain’ because I have no scientific aptitude and remember well the dire predictions of most ‘experts’ about Y2K.”
Insurance companies take on losses after major weather disasters (think droughts, Hurricane Katrina and other big storms), so it makes sense they'd be concerned about climate change. If that's true, why would Buffett say he's not so sure this is real? Because skepticism is better business.
Buffett isn’t denying climate change, but rather using language climate deniers feel comfortable with and will likely cite in future attempts to derail environmental policy. Climate change affects Buffett's business: He owns a Nevada utility that has fought and won against solar development in that state, and his railroad, Burlington Northern, in large part depends on the demand for coal and oil.
Buffett argues in favor of seeing climate change as a likely risk to the world, but against the need for more oversight, transparency or regulation of his companies. It’s a position he’s taken before -- Buffett argued against designating reinsurers, of which he owns the world’s fifth-largest, as too-big-to-fail institutions. Though he said he never spoke directly to regulators about the issue, he made his views public. Regulators, thus far, have agreed.
Why Buffett's Words Matter
Markets, governments and companies aren’t properly pricing the risk of climate change. For instance, are beachfront homes in low-lying areas as valuable as their owners believe? Experts reckon that only once markets and others attach a price to the threat of climate change will the rest of the world finally move to limit the potential consequences. If insurers -- which must grow their assets in order to make good on their guarantees -- measure the potential losses they could incur as a result of climate change, they can then price that risk. Then everyone else could follow.
Buffett's views against disclosure put him in sharp disagreement with Bank of England Governor Mark Carney, who has said that financial markets can help limit the effects of climate change, but only if companies -- such as insurers -- supply the kind of information that Buffett doesn't want to disclose.
In September remarks to the insurance industry, the chief overseer of the world’s third-largest insurance sector warned about the numerous economic and financial risks posed by climate change. Carney urged companies, particularly insurers, to start taking seriously their responsibility to measure their potential losses. Their own solvency could be at stake, Carney warned.
Insurance companies invest their money in places like the stock market. But “stranded" oil, gas and coal reserves, left in the ground due to the world’s commitment to halt rising temperatures, could render related financial assets worthless. Or the disruption of trade resulting from an extreme weather event could affect related investments.
Cynthia McHale, director of the insurance program for Ceres, a nonprofit group that pushes investors to pay attention to the financial risks of climate change, said in an interview earlier this month that neither insurers nor their government overseers have a good handle on the risks that climate change poses to insurers’ various financial assets.
McHale compared the situation to the one faced by big banks in 2008, when few sufficiently realized the magnitude of potential losses from the U.S. property bust.
Weathering Heights
Buffett's case against the resolution boils down to this: “Thinking only as a shareholder of a major insurer, climate change should not be on your list of worries.”
First, he said, his company can handle any possible losses thanks to rising premiums. Because insurance policies are typically written for one year and repriced annually, Buffett's company can hike premiums to better account for the heightened risk of climate change-driven losses.
Second, Buffett asserts that climate change has produced neither “more frequent nor more costly hurricanes nor other weather-related events covered by insurance.”
But eight of the 10 costliest hurricanes in U.S. history, in terms of insured losses, have occurred since 2000, according to the Insurance Information Institute. Nine of the 10 costliest floods in U.S. history, when measured by payouts from the federal government’s National Flood Insurance Program, also have occurred since 2000, according to the insurance group.
NOAAThe U.S. experienced five different types of extreme weather last year.
Munich Re, the world’s biggest reinsurer, estimated that extreme weather events led to $510 billion in insured losses from 1980 to 2011.
Carney said that according to Lloyd’s of London, the world’s oldest insurance market, the roughly 8-inch rise in sea level at the tip of Manhattan since the 1950s increased the insured losses from Hurricane Sandy by 30 percent in New York alone.
PAUL J. RICHARDS via Getty ImagesA house in Staten Island, New York, hit in Hurricane Sandy. Scientists say we should prepare for more weather events like the massive storm.
Insurance companies should care about climate change from a selfish perspective if they want to stay in business. Carney has warned that insurers that jack up premiums or exit markets after realizing the potential losses associated with climate change could unwittingly cause the value of their own assets to shrink.
He also warned about potential losses from claims on policies written by insurers. For example, insurance companies could be forced to make massive payouts if victims of climate change successfully hold accountable companies that contributed to it. He likened the situation to the one faced by U.S. insurers stung by tens of billions of dollars in losses from asbestos claims.
In fact, Carney said that as a result of recent weather trends, some now estimate that insurers are undervaluing their potential losses by as much as 50 percent.
Insurance companies caught unprepared for the effects of climate change could cause problems for government officials and put taxpayers at risk.
For example, governments may have to cover markets that insurers dump as a direct result of climate change, the Bank of England chief said, putting taxpayers on the hook.
Bloomberg via Getty ImagesMark Carney, the U.K.'s top central banker, says insurers may be undervaluing their potential risks by 50 percent.
What Could Change If Insurers Opened Up About This Risk
Disclosing climate change information would improve policymaking, Carney said. It could make climate policy more like monetary policy, where officials who set interest rates often tinker with their stance based on markets’ reactions.
The Financial Stability Board, a global group of the world’s financial regulators, wants financial companies to disclose their risks, too.
Some state insurance regulators in the U.S. are demanding insurers take the threat posed by climate change into account when investing their customers’ money and underwriting insurance policies. Washington state’s insurance regulator, Mike Kreidler, has criticized some insurers for failing to take climate change risks seriously, arguing their own solvency was at risk.
Buffett sounded more alarmed by the prospect of climate change in 2007, when scientific evidence of the impacts of climate change was less well-understood. In his annual letter that year, Buffett wondered aloud whether the deadly and expensive hurricanes of 2004 and 2005 marked the first warning of a new type of climate.
“It would be a huge mistake to bet that evolving atmospheric changes are benign in their implications for insurers,” Buffett wrote in his letter.
He warned that it was “naïve” to think of Hurricane Katrina -- the costliest hurricane in U.S. history -- “as anything close to a worst-case event.”
“These could rock the insurance industry,” Buffett added.
The White House is worried that robots are coming to take your job.
In a report to Congress this week, White House economists forecast an 83 percent chance that workers earning less than $20 per hour will lose their jobs to robots.
Wage earners who receive up to $40 in hourly pay face a 31 percent chance they'll be replaced by robots, while workers who are paid more than $40 an hour face much lower odds -- about 4 percent -- of losing their jobs to automation.
The estimates underscore the myriad threats facing low-wage workers in America, who in recent years have been buffeted by stagnant wages, decreasing employment prospects and higher education costs if they wish to obtain additional credentials in pursuit of better-paying jobs.
In an economy increasingly defined by the yawning gap between rich and poor, White House economists worry that increased automation could exacerbate inequality as the well-paid enjoy the fruits of robot-fueled gains in productivity while everyone else is left to fight for scraps.
One study cited by the White House found that automation has particularly hurt middle-skilled Americans, such as bookkeepers, clerks and some assembly-line workers. A lack of additional training and education opportunities led these workers to settle for lower-skilled positions, and likely lower wages.
Already, the White House noted in its report, most economists reckon that changes in technology are "partially responsible for rising inequality in recent decades."
Robots and other advances in technology are forecast to displace a significant number of blue- and white-collar workers, according to 48 percent of experts surveyed by the Pew Research Center in 2014. They also said that robots and so-called digital agents will displace more jobs than they create by 2025.
Many experts surveyed by Pew said they are concerned that the rise of robots and other technological advances "will lead to vast increases in income inequality, masses of people who are effectively unemployable, and breakdowns in the social order."
It's not a new worry. The famed economist John Maynard Keynes wrote in 1930 about "technological unemployment," or the theory that workers could be displaced due to society's ability to improve labor efficiency at a faster rate than finding new uses for labor.
But White House economists said they don't have enough information to judge whether increased automation will help or hurt the U.S. economy. For example, new jobs could emerge to develop and maintain robots or other new forms of technology.
"While industrial robots have the potential to drive productivity growth in the United States, it is less clear how this growth will affect workers," the White House said in its report.
There are two important questions, according to White House economists. First, if robots replace existing workers, will workers have enough bargaining power to share in their employers' newfound gains? Second, will the economy create new jobs fast enough to replace the lost ones?
Falling union membership -- some 11 percent of U.S. workers belonged to a union last year, down from about 20 percent in 1983 -- suggests that workers may not have much power to demand higher wages from employers who are automating them out of a job.
The economy could create enough new, good-paying jobs to help those displaced by robots, but the plight of manufacturing workers who have lost their jobs in recent decades as manufacturers moved abroad suggests that this, too, could be a challenge.
Instead, according to the White House, the key is to maintain a "robust training and education agenda to ensure that displaced workers are able to quickly and smoothly move into new jobs." With most Americans now financing higher education through debt -- about 1 in 8 Americans collectively owe $1.3 trillion on their student loans -- amid an era of sluggish wages, it's unclear whether higher debt burdens will lead to a better economic future.
The White House is worried that robots are coming to take your job.
In a report to Congress this week, White House economists forecast an 83 percent chance that workers earning less than $20 per hour will lose their jobs to robots.
Wage earners who receive up to $40 in hourly pay face a 31 percent chance they'll be replaced by robots, while workers who are paid more than $40 an hour face much lower odds -- about 4 percent -- of losing their jobs to automation.
The estimates underscore the myriad threats facing low-wage workers in America, who in recent years have been buffeted by stagnant wages, decreasing employment prospects and higher education costs if they wish to obtain additional credentials in pursuit of better-paying jobs.
In an economy increasingly defined by the yawning gap between rich and poor, White House economists worry that increased automation could exacerbate inequality as the well-paid enjoy the fruits of robot-fueled gains in productivity while everyone else is left to fight for scraps.
One study cited by the White House found that automation has particularly hurt middle-skilled Americans, such as bookkeepers, clerks and some assembly-line workers. A lack of additional training and education opportunities led these workers to settle for lower-skilled positions, and likely lower wages.
Already, the White House noted in its report, most economists reckon that changes in technology are "partially responsible for rising inequality in recent decades."
Robots and other advances in technology are forecast to displace a significant number of blue- and white-collar workers, according to 48 percent of experts surveyed by the Pew Research Center in 2014. They also said that robots and so-called digital agents will displace more jobs than they create by 2025.
Many experts surveyed by Pew said they are concerned that the rise of robots and other technological advances "will lead to vast increases in income inequality, masses of people who are effectively unemployable, and breakdowns in the social order."
It's not a new worry. The famed economist John Maynard Keynes wrote in 1930 about "technological unemployment," or the theory that workers could be displaced due to society's ability to improve labor efficiency at a faster rate than finding new uses for labor.
But White House economists said they don't have enough information to judge whether increased automation will help or hurt the U.S. economy. For example, new jobs could emerge to develop and maintain robots or other new forms of technology.
"While industrial robots have the potential to drive productivity growth in the United States, it is less clear how this growth will affect workers," the White House said in its report.
There are two important questions, according to White House economists. First, if robots replace existing workers, will workers have enough bargaining power to share in their employers' newfound gains? Second, will the economy create new jobs fast enough to replace the lost ones?
Falling union membership -- some 11 percent of U.S. workers belonged to a union last year, down from about 20 percent in 1983 -- suggests that workers may not have much power to demand higher wages from employers who are automating them out of a job.
The economy could create enough new, good-paying jobs to help those displaced by robots, but the plight of manufacturing workers who have lost their jobs in recent decades as manufacturers moved abroad suggests that this, too, could be a challenge.
Instead, according to the White House, the key is to maintain a "robust training and education agenda to ensure that displaced workers are able to quickly and smoothly move into new jobs." With most Americans now financing higher education through debt -- about 1 in 8 Americans collectively owe $1.3 trillion on their student loans -- amid an era of sluggish wages, it's unclear whether higher debt burdens will lead to a better economic future.
