The U.S. Census Bureau on October 26, released new estimates on the characteristics of employer businesses. According to the 2022 Annual Business Survey(ABS), which covers reference year 2021, there were approximately 5.9 million employer firms in total, of which, 1.2 million (21%) were…
Author: Anne Whitaker, Editor
Veterans Day 2023
Veterans Day originated as “Armistice Day” on Nov. 11, 1919, the first anniversary of the end of World War I. Congress passed a resolution in 1926 making it an annual observance, and it became a national holiday in 1938. Sixteen…
Teens Spend over 4 Hours on Social Media Per Day
By now, it is generally agreed upon that social media is designed to be addictive, but a new survey from Gallup indicates that the problem may be worse than previously thought. 51% of U.S. teenagers report spending at least four…
Tracking Supply Disruptions, Impact of Inflation on Small Business
The volatile and complex nature of the challenges businesses faced during the Covid-19 pandemic presented multiple dilemmas for business owners, but two challenges emerged as paramount: supply chain disruptions and Inflation, which started to rise in the spring of 2021…
GOP Holds Advantage on Issues, Neither Party Well-Liked
Data newly released by Gallup shows that the two major political parties in the United States are nearly equally unpopular. 56% of Americans view the Republican Party unfavorable and 58% say the same of the Democratic Party. Though, despite the…
Majority of Americans Afraid of the Spread of AI Deepfakes and Propaganda
No doubt at least partially fueled by decades of Hollywood films about its evils, Americans are concerned over the rise of Artificial Intelligence and its various technologies. They are particularly concerned in regards to deepfakes (taking the image and/or voice…
Manufacturing Faces Potential Labor Shortage Due to Skills Gap
About 1.4 million manufacturing jobs were lost during the COVID-19 pandemic but the industry was already facing a potential labor crisis — a projected 2.1 million unfulfilled jobs by 2030 resulting from a lack of skilled labor, according to a study by…
Impact of COVID-19 on Passenger and Freight Transportation
When the World Health Organization (WHO) declared COVID-19 a global pandemic on March 11, 2020, countries struggled to stop its spread: sports teams canceled entire seasons, schools closed, workers began working from home and countries sealed their borders. In contrast to the…
Americans’ Concern Over COVID-19 Rises
COVID-19 infections are on the rise with new variants seemingly being announced every other week, Americans are becoming less confident in the direction over the coronavirus situation is going. They are now slightly less likely to believe the pandemic is…
Supplemental Poverty Measure in 2022 Higher Than Pre-Pandemic Level
The Supplemental Poverty Measure (SPM), which includes government assistance, increased to 12.4% in 2022 from 7.8% in 2021, according to U.S. Census Bureau data released today. The 2022 poverty rate was also 0.6 percentage points higher than the pre-pandemic rate…