By Diane Harris and Nat Baldino
When workers in the United States face a serious illness or need to care for a loved one, they often have nowhere to turn. Without a national paid family and medical leave program, many are forced to choose between their financial stability and their health and well-being. The Family and Medical Insurance Leave (FAMILY) Act seeks to change this by building on the successes of state programs to create a comprehensive and inclusive federal paid leave policy that meets the needs of workers. We urge Members of Congress to support the FAMILY Act, which would improve the health of workers, reduce poverty for families, increase the U.S. GDP by $775 billion each year, and generate cost savings for employers.
>> Read the full fact sheet here
Washington, D.C., September 9, 2025—Today’s release of the U.S. Census Bureau’s national Income, Poverty, and Health Insurance data for 2024 shows that while the overall economy is strong, the nation has much more to do to reduce poverty, especially among women and Black Americans.
For the most part, the poverty rate remained largely unchanged from 2023 to 2024. But the poverty rate among Black Americans increased from 17.9 percent in 2023 to 18.4 percent in 2024. And while overall child poverty rates dropped very slightly from 2023, the number of Black children living in poverty increased from 20.3 percent in 2023 to 22.7 percent in 2024, according to the Supplemental Poverty Measure. This measure looks at not simply earnings, but the resources people have after factoring in work and medical expenses, taxes, as well as tax credits and non-cash benefits.
For the second year in a row, women faced a large earnings gap. The median earnings for women in 2024 were $45,380, while the median earnings for men were $60,020. This gap is greater than in 2023, when median earnings for women were $43,200 and $57,740 for men.
“These numbers are not surprising,” said Wendy Chun-Hoon, president and executive director of CLASP. “The wage gap between men and women has existed for decades, as has the disparity in Black poverty rates compared to the rest of the country. While the nation has made incremental improvements, the reasons for these disparities are systemic, and we must do more to disrupt them. There’s no silver bullet to remedy these inequalities; rather, we need sustained investments to close the gender-racial wage gap—higher wages, more equal access to quality jobs, affordable family care, equitable tax policy, and paid leave. We should solve for people’s basic needs, not eviscerate our social safety net.”
Signs already point to a weakening economy in 2025. For instance, the August 2025 Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) jobs report showed an addition of only 22,000 jobs last month, well below economists’ expectations, and unemployment at a four-year high of 4.3 percent.
Black families are the last to do well, even when the economy is growing. The most recent BLS report made that clear, showing the unemployment rate for white men was 3.7 percent, but was 7.1 percent for Black men. The report also showed the unemployment rate for Black women was 6.7 percent, compared to 3.2 percent for white women.
The gender wage gap persists for a variety of reasons, notably that women are still concentrated in some of the lowest-paid jobs, the price of child care remains out of reach for families, and employers are implementing return-to-office policies. The real-world effects of inflexible work policies and unaffordable care are already being felt: the share of working mothers ages 25-44 in the labor market has fallen every month in 2025 and dropped three percentage points between January and June. This is the lowest level of labor force participation from women with children in more than three years.
Increased poverty in 2025 is all but assured due to the severe restructuring of programs that support basic needs in July’s reconciliation bill and the Trump Administration’s executive actions aimed at people with low incomes, immigrant families, women, people of color, and other historically marginalized communities. Congress, with the administration’s approval, has consistently chosen to exclude many families with low incomes and immigrants from the Child Tax Credit, cut Medicaid and SNAP, increase immigration enforcement, and boost tax breaks for the ultra-rich.
“The president promised to lower costs. He and this Congress have clearly broken that promise for so many, making it more expensive for families to afford not just gas and milk but other family basics like housing, health care, and child care. This is not just a broken promise. It’s a breach of contract to the American people,” said Chun-Hoon.
Poverty is not inevitable. It’s the direct result of policy decisions. We know how to reduce it, and now it’s time for policymakers to choose dignity for all and invest in our communities.
By Lulit Shewan
Temporary Protected Status (TPS) is a legal status that was created by Congress in 1990 to provide work permits and protection from deportation to migrants from designated countries where conditions like war and natural disasters can make it unsafe for people to return. While this program was initially intended to be temporary because it does not provide a pathway to permanent legal residence (green card) or citizenship, over a million people have relied on the program and built enduring ties to the United States. TPS has allowed them to better adjust to life in the U.S., earn money to support themselves and their families, and contribute to their communities.
The Trump Administration and its Department of Homeland Security (DHS) are following through on their plans to come after TPS and strip hundreds of thousands of migrants of their legal status. Discontinuing TPS status will immediately render beneficiaries undocumented, deprived of legal standing, and exposed to the threat of detention and deportation. Curtailing TPS is yet another instance of the Trump Administration demonizing a humanitarian program to satisfy its anti-immigrant agenda and create new deportation pathways for those who have established their lives here.
The author would like to thank CLASP colleagues Lorena Roque and Suma Setty for their data extraction of TPS-eligible individuals by state, as well as Sivan Sherriffe for the design of this paper. The author would also like to thank former Hunger Fellow Emily Rodriguez for her thoughtful contributions to the writing and data analysis in this paper.
CLASP recently submitted comments in opposition to the Department of Labor’s proposed rule, “Occupational Safety and Health Standards; Interpretation of the General Duty Clause: Limitation for Inherently Risky Professional Activities,” which would modify or remove more than 25 “obsolete” employment regulations, particularly the effort to further dismantle OSHA enforcement power by limiting their use of the General Duty Clause. This rule proposes a change that would restrict OSHA’s ability to cite employers under the General Duty Clause for workplace hazards deemed “inherent and inseparable” from certain professions in high-risk sectors. The General Duty Clause must be understood as a foundational part of our worker safety system. It provides workers with a baseline level of protection against preventable hazards when OSHA standards do not dictate specific and necessary safety protocols. Limiting this standard will allow employers to overlook known hazards in the workplace without requiring them to take reasonable steps to prevent or regulate the environment. The protection and enforcement of this clause safeguards hundreds of thousands of people, and its weakening is a clear threat to the state of occupational safety.
This statement can be attributed to Wendy Chun-Hoon, president and executive director of the Center for Law and Social Policy (CLASP)
Washington, D.C., September 3, 2025—On September 9, the U.S. Census Bureau will release national Income, Poverty, and Health Insurance data for 2024. We expect the numbers to show more poverty in 2024, particularly among children, and more people without health insurance. When we see the data, however, we must consider that the outlook for 2025 and beyond is ominous, given how precipitously the conditions for people facing economic insecurity have declined this year.
Since the beginning of President Trump’s second term, the administration and Congress have unleashed a cascade of attacks on people with low incomes, including communities of color, immigrants and their families, and others who have been historically marginalized. These attacks have included slashing public benefit programs; issuing executive orders dismantling diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility initiatives; ripping families apart through a horrific mass deportation effort and gutting protections and services to immigrants, including U.S. citizen children; eliminating labor protections for millions of workers; and decimating the nation’s data collection efforts that are critical to accurate and equitable decision-making. Through these and other actions, the Trump Administration’s reckless disregard for people’s health, safety, and well-being will have dire consequences for the future of the country.
These attacks are particularly evident in the reconciliation bill passed by Congress, which is causing unprecedented harm to workers, people of color, immigrants, women, and children. In addition to excluding many families with low incomes from the Child Tax Credit, the bill cuts essential benefit programs, including Medicaid and SNAP. Although these changes will not be fully implemented until 2026 and beyond, they are already having a chilling effect among people who rely on these programs to meet their basic needs. Congress made these cuts to fund historic increases in immigration enforcement that undermine family unity and well-being and to provide tax cuts to the wealthy, which will only exacerbate poverty and wealth inequality.
The September 9 data will likely show another annual increase in people without health insurance coverage. The end of Covid-era protections for Medicaid coverage caused many people to lose coverage in 2024, although the availability of enhanced premium tax credits in the Marketplace likely offset some Medicaid losses. Congress’s action in 2025 to cut Medicaid and enhanced Marketplace tax credits by more than $1 trillion is estimated to cause nearly 15 million people to lose coverage in the coming years.
The full effect of millions of people losing health insurance, food assistance, and other supports—and how that loss will harm not just individuals but their families, communities, and the larger economy—will drive even more people deeper into poverty and instability for years to come.
We will have more to say after the Census Bureau releases the data next week. For now, CLASP reiterates our commitment to fighting for policies that center the dignity and autonomy of all people, especially those whom the Trump Administration and the current majority in Congress are most focused on harming with their punitive and dangerous actions.
CLASP recently submitted comments in opposition to the proposed rescission of the Department of Labor’s coordinated enforcement regulations, urging that the DOL not remove regulations outlining the procedures for the coordination of enforcement activities by the Wage and Hour Division, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, and the Employment and Training Administration relating to migrant farmworkers. The coordinated enforcement regulations ensures that information is shared in real time; agencies develop cross-cutting strategies to target systemic and emerging abuses; and that the DOL engages in meaningful outreach and transparency, as well as other procedures that protect migrant farmworkers, a population that is uniquely vulnerable to abuse and exploitation. Rescinding these regulations will harm these workers and, by extension, the entire agricultural sector.
CLASP recently submitted comments in opposition to the Department of Labor’s proposed rule rescinding worker protections in the H-2A program. Created through the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986, the H2-A visa program was intended to help labor shortages as an alternate source of labor in the agriculture and farm industries, and included labor protections to prevent discrimination, low wages, and displacement of U.S. workers and improve the labor certification process. Rescinding this rule will affect the labor protections of all U.S. workers, including the right to organize, the right to just cause termination, and the disclosure of applicable wage rates and overtime opportunities. CLASP urges the Department of Labor to preserve the worker protections in the H-2A program, not just to ensure a thriving workforce in the agricultural and farm sectors but to protect all workers.
CLASP recently submitted comments in opposition to the Department of Labor’s proposed rule, “Application of the Fair Labor Standards Act to Domestic Service.” The proposed rule would remove the 2013 regulation that protects minimum wage and overtime for home care workers. Care work makes all other work possible and has been devalued by design. For working families to thrive when they need time to care for themselves or loved ones, care workers need to thrive. CLASP urges the Department of Labor to not merely preserve the 2013 rule as a floor, but to focus on creating high-quality care jobs with living wages, strongly enforced labor standards, and community partnerships.
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Lulit Shawan, writing for the Center for Law and Social Policy, was even more critical of Carey’s record. She called Carey’s nomination “a direct attack on worker’s rights.”
Carey’s “confirmation would severely weaken the NLRB’s ability to safeguard workers, protect collective bargaining and fair working conditions, and uphold fair labor practices, as well as shift the balance of power even further in favor of corporations. Carey also advocates limiting corporate oversight and mitigating union growth, stances bound to be reflected in the NLRB’s enforcement priorities upon her confirmation,” she wrote.
This statement can be attributed to Lorena Roque, Interim Director of Education, Labor, and Worker Justice of the Center for Law and Social Policy (CLASP)
Washington, D.C., July 16, 2025 – Last week, U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer announced the department’s deregulatory efforts, which include 63 actions that will harm workers and working families.
Under the guise of “putting the American worker first,” the DOL’s plan in the Wage and Hour department includes eliminating minimum wage and overtime protections for millions of home health care and domestic workers under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), while also proposing to classify caregivers as exempt from FLSA minimum wage and overtime protections. Coming at a time when families are already in a child care and caregiving crisis, these proposed cuts only exacerbate the precariousness of these jobs and their already low wages. DOL also plans to rescind Biden-era proposed rules aimed at ending subminimum wages for workers with disabilities and the right to collective action for Seasonal H-2A visas.
On worker safety protections, DOL intends to revise reporting thresholds, training mandates, and change enforcement priorities and inspection frequencies at the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). This proposed rule would limit OSHA’s capacity to oversee work that is inherently hazardous, like the sports and entertainment industries. The DOL also plans to deregulate respiratory protection requirements and substance-specific safety standards in high-risk industries and remove some OSHA regulations entirely for migrant farmworkers, including a longstanding rule that outlines the internal procedures of DOL for coordinating enforcement action among OSHA, the Wage and Hour Division, and the Employment and Training Administration. The agency also proposes slashing critical workplace safety standards in the construction field that deal with hazard prevention and the informed development of safety rules.
The Trump Administration recently announced its goal of creating over 1 million apprenticeships for workers in the country. At the same time, by rescinding affirmative action requirements for these programs, the administration is destroying the labor infrastructure it claims to want to build up. This is only the latest attack on workers and working families from the Trump Administration, which has used numerous executive orders and immigration enforcement to attack unions and their leaders.
We urge our partners and allies to submit public comments where possible and join us in opposing efforts to strip away essential protections from working families and undermine labor unions that fought hard to secure the rights we have as workers in this country.