Economy

April 2, 2020 - Many states and local communities in the South have ordered restaurants to move to takeout-only to help stop the spread of the new coronavirus, and business is down even in places where they're still open. That means tough times for low-wage food servers, especially given the stingy unemployment benefits offered in some states.

March 27, 2020 - With the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic forcing Americans to work and study from home, access to high-speed internet is critical — but in the South far fewer people have access than providers report, and many states have erected barriers to community networks.

March 19, 2020 - The global coronavirus pandemic lays bare the existing problems in health care systems that were already stretched to the breaking point.

February 20, 2020 - Raising Wages NC held a people's hearing about the difficulty of living under North Carolina's $7.25 hourly minimum wage. Workers shared their stories of hardship and called on elected officials and candidates for state office to support a wage hike. 

February 14, 2020 - Now under Democratic control, Virginia's legislature is rushing to pass progressive laws. But the recent failure to repeal a state law that undermines organized labor shows what such policies are up against in Southern states. Meanwhile, Tennessee's GOP-controlled legislature wants to enshrine anti-unionism in the state constitution.

January 28, 2020 - With Southern states' monopoly electric utilities clinging to a business model that's worsening the climate crisis, polluting the environment, and costing consumers dearly, there's growing interest in opening markets to competition. While a ballot initiative to end Florida's electricity monopoly was recently rejected by the state Supreme Court, there are efforts underway to end Virginia's monopoly system and to study the question in the Carolinas.

January 15, 2020 - With the cost of higher education skyrocketing, many young Americans from economically struggling communities across the South and elsewhere have turned to the military as a solution for student debt.

January 10, 2020 - In a sales pitch to the Pentagon over a decade ago, the Virginia-based military contractor imagined a hypothetical war with Iran by 2020. With its dream edging closer to reality following the recent Trump-ordered killing of Iranian military leaders, Northrop Grumman — which has received billions of dollars' worth of government contracts despite a record of fraud — saw a dramatic jump in its stock price.

December 6, 2019 - An industry lobby fronting as a pro-consumer group is undertaking a public advocacy campaign for a proposed pipeline stretching from West Virginia to Virginia and North Carolina. The Consumer Energy Alliance was created by an oil industry lobbyist who now chairs the N.C. Republican Party — and its members include major gas companies as well as Dominion Energy, the pipeline's lead partner.