Tag: Department of Labor

Working Enrolled Actuaries

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://burypensions.wordpress.com/2023/10/23/working-enrolled-actuaries/

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Excerpt:

  • Public and Multiemployer plan actuaries would not be in this listing as there is no actuarial certification for public plans and union plans have their own Schedule MB which I have no incentive to keep track of.
  • ‘One-participant’ plans are not included here since their filings are not publicly available for view so there are far more SBs signed by the small-plan actuarial community. For example, I have 83 SBs signed in 2021 that appear on the DOL website but do another 150 ‘one-participant’ SBs that do not.

Author(s): John Bury

Publication Date: 23 Oct 2023

Publication Site: burypensions

Fatality Inspection Data – Work-related fatalities for cases inspected by Federal or State OSHA

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.osha.gov/fatalities

Archive data: https://www.osha.gov/fatalities/reports/archive

Excerpt:

This page provides data on work-related fatalities that occurred under Federal OSHA and State Plan jurisdiction for cases that have been closed or citations issued on or after January 1, 2017.

Employers must report worker fatalities to OSHA within eight hours. OSHA investigates all work-related fatalities in all covered workplaces. The agency has up to six months to complete an investigation and determine whether citations will be issued.

The table below can be modified or searched by inserting additional information in the boxes above each column.

COVID-19-related fatalities are provided in the “COVID-19” tab below, and are not included in the CY 2017-22 list.

Publication Date: accessed 5 Sep 2023

Publication Site: OSHA, Department of Labor

Social Security denies disability benefits based on list with jobs from 1977

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/12/27/social-security-job-titles-disabled-applicants-obsolete/

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Every year, thousands of claimants like Heard find themselves blocked at this crucial last step in the arduous process of applying for disability benefits, thanks to labor market data that was last updated 45 years ago.

The jobs are spelled out in an exhaustive publication known as the Dictionary of Occupational Titles. The vast majority of the 12,700 entries were last updated in 1977. The Department of Labor, which originally compiled the index, abandoned it 31 years ago in a sign of the economy’s shift from blue-collar manufacturing to information and services.

Social Security, though, still relies on it at the final stage when a claim is reviewed. The government, using strict vocational rules, assesses someone’s capacity to work and if jobs exist “in significant numbers” that they could still do. The dictionary remains the backbone of a $200 billion disability system that provides benefits to 15 million people.

It lists 137 unskilled, sedentary jobs — jobs that most closely match the skills and limitations of those who apply for disability benefits. But in reality, most of these occupations were offshored, outsourced, and shifted to skilled work decades ago. Many have disappeared altogether.

Author(s): Lisa Rein

Publication Date: 27 Dec 2022

Publication Site: Washington Post

Biden’s ESG Tax on Your Retirement Fund

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.wsj.com/articles/bidens-esg-tax-on-your-retirement-fund-pension-planning-regulation-climate-change-investment-returns-portfolios-11658245467?st=4e8f8bvbqr4vurf&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink

Excerpt:

BlackRock CEO Larry Fink wrote in 2020 that “sustainable investing is the strongest foundation for client portfolios.” Al Gore said in 2021 that “you don’t have to trade values for value. Green can enhance returns.” These claims haven’t aged well: ESG (environmental, social and governance) funds have trailed the market since the beginning of the year and are badly underperforming the sectors they shun, including oil, gas and coal.

That may spur retirement fund managers to reconsider their commitments to ESG funds. But new ESG-favoring regulations may come to the rescue. Last year the U.S. Labor Department proposed a regulation that would tell retirement-fund managers to consider ESG factors such as “climate change” and “collateral benefits other than investment returns” when investing employees’ money.

This would encourage America’s perpetually underfunded pension plans to invest in politically correct but unproven ESG strategies. It would also violate retirees’ basic right to have their money invested solely to advance their financial interests.

….

The new regulation may also expose fiduciaries who don’t consider ESG factors to lawsuits. Already, activist shareholders are pursuing litigation against public companies that don’t take ESG-approved steps. NortonLifeLock was sued for allegedly breaching its fiduciary duties by telling investors it was committed to “diversity” when it had no racial minorities on its board. Exxon was sued for allegedly misleading investors by failing to disclose the likely effect of climate change on its bottom line. To date, courts have generally found that no reasonable investor would make investment decisions based on board diversity or, as one judge put it, “speculative assumptions of costs that may be incurred 20+ or 30+ years in the future.”

Author(s): Vivek Ramaswamy and Alex Acosta

Publication Date: 19 Jul 2022

Publication Site: WSJ

Inflation Hits 9.1 Percent, Highest Level in 41 Years

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://reason.com/2022/07/13/inflation-hits-9-1-percent-highest-level-in-41-years/?utm_medium=email

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Excerpt:

Prices were 9.1 percent higher in June than a year before, exceeding expectations and surging to a 41-year high.

Department of Labor data released Wednesday morning showed that inflation picked up speed in June, rather than slowing. Prices rose by 1.3 percent during the month, up from a 1 percent increase in May. A sharp rise in energy prices, and gasoline prices particularly, helped power the annualized inflation rate to its highest levels in more than four decades. Food prices rose by 1 percent during June, and are up 10.4 percent over the past year.

Author(s): Eric Boehm

Publication Date: 13 July 2022

Publication Site: Reason

Undermining Pension Reform

Mary Pat Campbell

Link:https://www.city-journal.org/undermining-pension-reform

Excerpt:

The Biden administration is trying to prohibit California from receiving billions of dollars in new federal aid because, the administration claims, the state’s 2013 Public Employee Pension Reform Act (PEPRA) denied workers the right to bargain for changes to their retirement benefits. The move could undermine state-worker pension reforms passed over the last decade.

In a letter to the state, the Department of Labor says that the 2013 pension-reform act “significantly interferes” with the collective bargaining rights of public employees, including transit workers. As a result, California risks losing some $12 billion in transportation money, most of it from the recently passed federal infrastructure bill. The administration is strong-arming the state and its municipalities to choose between tens of billions of dollars in savings for a deeply indebted pension system and grants from Washington. And its move raises serious questions about similar reforms enacted by other states that allow collective bargaining by public employees, including New York and New Jersey.

….

The Labor Department’s ruling, California governor Gavin Newsom said in a letter to Walsh, “deprives financially beleaguered California public transit agencies that serve essential workers and our most vulnerable residents of critical support, including American Rescue Plan Act funds that those agencies need to survive through the pandemic.” Newsom called the decision a “complete reversal” from a 2019 ruling by the Labor Department, which held that the state’s pension reforms did not represent a violation of federal law.

Author(s): Steven Malanga

Publication Date: 23 Nov 2021

Publication Site: City Journal

A Made-in-Washington Inflation Spike

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-made-in-washington-inflation-spike-11623362377?mod=opinion_lead_pos1

Excerpt:

The Labor Department’s consumer price index surged 5% year-over-year in May, the largest increase since August 2008 when oil was $140 a barrel. But don’t worry, Americans. The Federal Reserve says inflation is “transitory” and that it has the tools to control prices if they start to spiral out of control. Let us pray.

Nobody should be surprised that prices are increasing everywhere from the grocery store to the car dealership. Demand is soaring as the pandemic recedes while supply constraints linger, especially in labor and transportation. As always, this is a price shock largely made by government. Congress has shovelled out trillions of dollars in transfer payments over the past year, and the Fed has rates at zero while the economy may be growing at a 10% annual rate.

The personal savings rate in April was 14.9%, double what it was before the pandemic. Record low mortgage interest rates have enabled homeowners to lower their monthly payments to burn more cash on other things. Congress’s $300 unemployment bonus and other welfare payments for not working have contributed to an enormous worker shortage, which is magnifying supply shortages.

All of this is showing up in higher prices. Over the last 12 months, core inflation excluding food and energy is up 3.8% and much more for used cars (29.7%), airline fares (24.1%), jewelry (14.7%), bikes (10.1%) and footwear (7.1%). Commodity prices from oil to copper to lumber have surged. Higher lumber prices are adding $36,000 to the price of a new home.

Author(s): Editorial Board

Publication Date: 10 June 2021

Publication Site: WSJ

Pay a Living Wage or ‘Flip Your Own Damn Burgers’: Progressives Blast Right-Wing Narrative on Jobs

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.commondreams.org/news/2021/05/07/pay-living-wage-or-flip-your-own-damn-burgers-progressives-blast-right-wing

Excerpt:

Soon after the Labor Department released its April jobs report, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce blamed last month’s weak employment growth on the existence of a $300 weekly supplemental jobless benefit and began urging lawmakers to eliminate the federally enhanced unemployment payments that were extended through early September when congressional Democrats passed President Joe Biden’s American Rescue Plan. 

“No. We don’t need to end [the additional] $300 a week in emergency unemployment benefits that workers desperately need,” Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said in response to the grumbles of the nation’s largest business lobbying group. “We need to end starvation wages in America.”

“If $300 a week is preventing employers from hiring low-wage workers there’s a simple solution,” Sanders added. “Raise your wages. Pay decent benefits.”

Author(s): Kenny Stancil

Publication Date: 7 May 2021

Publication Site: Common Dreams

Has the Pandemic Set Female Leadership Back?

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/pandemic-set-female-leadership-back/

Excerpt:

About 2.3 million women have exited the U.S. labor force since the pandemic began, compared with about 1.8 million men, according to government data. Many were driven out by layoffs in food service, health care, and hospitality — sectors that employ a majority of women and that have been most affected by the economic slowdown. Others left their jobs voluntarily, forced to stay home and care for children suddenly unable to attend school or daycare.

As a result, female participation in the workforce has dropped to 57%, a level not seen since 1988. The situation is dire enough that U.S. President Joe Biden called it “a national emergency.” With schools reopening and vaccines becoming more widely available, there is light at the end of the pandemic tunnel, but questions remain about whether working women will recover from such a deep setback.

Publication Date: 30 March 2021

Publication Site: Knowledge @ Wharton

Characteristics of minimum wage workers, 2020

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.bls.gov/opub/reports/minimum-wage/2020/home.htm

Excerpt:

Age. Minimum wage workers tend to be young. Although workers under age 25 represented just under one-fifth of hourly paid workers, they made up 48 percent of those paid the federal minimum wage or less. Among employed teenagers (ages 16 to 19) paid by the hour, about 5 percent earned the minimum wage or less, compared with 1 percent of workers age 25 and older. (See tables 1 and 7.)

Publication Date: February 2021

Publication Site: Bureau of Labor Statistics

New York Unemployment Claims Show a Year of Economic Devastation

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.osc.state.ny.us/reports/impact-covid-19-march-4-2021

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Excerpt:

Immediately before the pandemic hit New York, for weeks ending in late February and early March 2020, statewide UI claims averaged around 167,000. Those claims almost doubled to over 314,000, as the shutdown went into effect, starting a weeks-long upward spike that reached more than 3.1 million in mid-May. The historic peak of nearly 3.4 million claimants came in the last week of May 2020. The totals from May onward include claimants under the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance program (PUA) which provides benefits to individuals not traditionally eligible for unemployment assistance because of self-employment or certain other reasons. (Due to the PUA and other factors, the numbers of workers claiming unemployment benefits differ from the count of those officially counted as unemployed, which peaked in New York State at 1.5 million or 15.9 percent of the labor force in July 2020.)

The longstanding, regular State program of UI benefits funded by employer contributions was the only source of benefits for the first six weeks shown in the graph and continued to fund the largest numbers of claims into early August. (These payments were supplemented by additional federally funded benefits of $600 or $300 weekly for much, though not all, of the period shown.)

Author(s): Thomas DiNapoli

Publication Date: 4 March 2021

Publication Site: Office of the New York Comproller

Wall Street wants to end Trump-era ESG fund rule for 401(k) plans

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.cnbc.com/2021/03/04/wall-street-wants-to-end-trump-era-esg-fund-rule-for-401k-plans.html

Excerpt:

The Labor Department issued a rule in October, during the Trump administration, that experts say would curb use of ESG funds in 401(k) plans.

Money managers and other stakeholders are pushing the Biden administration to scrap the rule or agree not to enforce it, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal.

Investor demand for ESG funds has grown significantly. 401(k) plans represent a big untapped growth source.

Author(s): Greg Iacurci

Publication Date: 4 March 2021

Publication Site: CNBC