Idaho's current cigarette tax is 57 cents per pack.
Idaho lawmakers won’t take up a plan to raise the state’s cigarette tax. Â The House Revenue and Taxation Committee killed a bill that would have done just that by a 11 to 5 vote.
The plan, supported by the American Cancer Society and about 25 other groups, would have raised Idaho’s cigarette tax by $1.25 per pack. The state currently charges a 57 cent tax on a pack of cigarettes, which is one of the lowest tax rates in the country.
Rep. Lenore Hardy Barrett (R-Challis) told the committee the bill was “the most blatant case of social engineering” she’d ever seen. Continue Reading →
Spc. David Hampton, 21, returned to Hayden, Idaho, in September and is still looking for work.
The Idaho Department of Labor estimates there are at least 63,000 people in the state without work. That doesn’t include thousands more who are underemployed or have stopped looking for a job. This is the latest story in our “Jobless in Idaho” series, that follows several Idahoans in their search for work.
We brought you a story a few months ago about two soldiers from the Northwest. They had just returned from Iraq with their National Guard unit. Both started looking for new civilian jobs. Neither is satisfied with what they found. Both soldiers are now thinking about signing up for another overseas tour with the military. Continue Reading →
The Joint Finance-Appropriations Committee this morning approved a $1.9 billion Medicaid budget
The Joint Finance-Appropriations Committee this morning voted in support of a $1.9 billion Medicaid budget.
That appropriation includes $1.5 million to reverse two key Medicaid cuts approved last year. It will cost $900,000 to rectify the dual choice problem, according to Division of Medicaid estimates. Reinstating preventative and restorative dental services for adults who are eligible for an institutional level of care through Medicaid will cost about $640,000.
Rep. Shirley Ringo (D-Moscow) favors those changes, but said they don’t go far enough. “I think we’re dealing with a squeaky wheel here, because the disability community really had a lot of advocates to speak up for them,” she said. “I still have concern for people who don’t belong to that category and do not have the money to afford to visit the dentist, when needed. I think we all recognize the value of preventive care, so i think there’s a little more work to do in that area.”
If dairy farmers could predict their monthly profits or losses, the industry would likely be a more stable place. But as StateImpact Idaho reported last year, that uncertainty (among other things) is making the industry a tough place to do business.
NPR‘s ‘Planet Money‘ co-founder and economics writer for The New York Times Magazine, Adam Davidson, revisited the struggle many dairy farms have. While technology has made it more efficient to milk hundreds or thousands of dairy cows, the profit margins have changed dramatically. Dairy products and feed for the cows are now globally traded commodities. Continue Reading →
Andrew Sum is the director of Northeastern University's Center for Labor Market Studies
In reporting StateImpact’s recent story on Idaho’s high teen unemployment rate, one of the people I consulted was Andrew Sum, of Northeastern University in Boston. He’s an economist, and an expert on the youth labor market. Here, he explains the magnitude of the shifts Idaho has seen in terms of teen employment.
Q: First, you say we should look at the teen employment rate rather than the unemployment rate. Why is that?
A: When we’re trying to judge how well any group is doing in the labor market, the employment rate measure is a better measure of understanding how many individuals are able to get work. Continue Reading →
Young workers’ wages have fallen off in the last ten years, a period that a new report terms the “lost decade.” D.C.-based think tank the Economic Policy Institute analyzed entry-level workers’ earnings going back to 1979.
“From 2000 to 2011, a period of disappointing overall wage growth, wages actually fell among every entry-level group regardless of education,” report author Lawrence Mishel writes. For high-school-educated men, entry-level wages fell by nearly 9 percent over that period, according to the study’s analysis. For high-school-educated women, the decline was slightly higher, at 9.2 percent. Continue Reading →
General fund tax collections have exceeded forecasts for three straight months, putting revenue almost $33 million above the forecast for the fiscal year. The Division of Financial Management reports February tax collections were nearly $20 million above projections. DFM says it’s the largest surplus of the fiscal year.
The House Health and Welfare Committee has given unanimous support to a bill that would reinstate key Medicaid services, in the wake of deep cuts last session.
“Since the legislation was passed last year, we have learned more about the impact of some of these cuts on certain populations,” Chairwoman Rep. Janice McGeachin (R-Idaho Falls) said, introducing the measure.
The bill, HB 609, would reinstate preventative and restorative dental services for adults who are eligible for an institutional level of care through Medicaid. It would also ensure that people with dual diagnoses will not have to choose between receiving skill training for mental illness management or for a developmental disability. Continue Reading →
Last summer almost 70,000 Idahoans were out of work. That doesn't include people who've stopped looking for a job.
New numbers show Idaho’s unemployment rate hasn’t significantly improved in the last two years. The rate hasn’t been below 8 percent since August 2009. That means at least 60,000 Idahoans have been jobless since that time. Now, data from the Labor Department show while the number of people out of work hasn’t been as high as first thought, the rate hasn’t gone down much, either.
Explaining the Process
Calculating the state’s unemployment rate is a strange process. Each month, the U.S. Census Bureau talks with about 600 Idaho households to collect data on employment, salary and other demographic info. It’s called the Current Population Survey.
That information then goes to the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Idaho Department of Labor for data analysts to estimate how many people in Idaho are out of work. Those monthly figures are always estimates and once a year the data gets a second look. Continue Reading →
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