Work-Life Balance: Why Millennials Get Hit Hardest
Even with (or maybe because of) the proliferation of apps and technology to help workers connect with their jobs round-the-clock, finding a balance between work and life is getting harder, according to a new report from Ernst & Young.
The study finds that about half of managers worldwide work more than 40 hours a week, and 40 percent say their hours have increased over the past five years. In addition to technology shifts, the “always on” work culture reflects lingering effects of the recession that has left fewer employees handling larger workloads.
The balancing act is particularly difficult for millennials, who are becoming managers just as they enter into parenthood. U.S. millennial parents are the most likely to have a spouse that’s also working at least full-time, and they’re the less likely than older generations to have taken a career break when having children.
Related: 10 Easy Ways to Improve Your Work-Life Balance
More than one in four millennials is working more after having children, compared to 13 percent of Gen Xers and 16 percent of boomers. Millennial parents place a high value on flexibility, and say that a flexible schedule would make them more engaged, less likely to quit, and more likely to work flexible hours. Even so, one in six says they have suffered a negative consequence for working a flexible schedule.
More than half of those surveyed said that they would make job and career changes in order to find a better work-life balance. Those findings echo the results of a CareerBuilder survey released last year which found that a third of workers don’t want a leadership role because they don’t want to sacrifice work-life balance.
GOP Tax Cuts Getting Less Popular, Poll Finds
Friday marked the six-month anniversary of President Trump’s signing the Republican tax overhaul into law, and public opinion of the law is moving in the wrong direction for the GOP. A Monmouth University survey conducted earlier this month found that 34 percent of the public approves of the tax reform passed by Republicans late last year, while 41 percent disapprove. Approval has fallen by 6 points since late April and disapproval has slipped 3 points. The percentage of people who aren’t sure how they feel about the plan has risen from 16 percent in April to 24 percent this month.
Other findings from the poll of 806 U.S. adults:
- 19 percent approve of the job Congress is doing; 67 percent disapprove
- 40 percent say the country is heading in the right direction, up from 33 percent in April
- Democrats hold a 7-point edge in a generic House ballot
Special Tax Break Zones Defined for All 50 States
The U.S. Treasury has approved the final group of opportunity zones, which offer tax incentives for investments made in low-income areas. The zones were created by the tax law signed in December.
Bill Lucia of Route Fifty has some details: “Treasury says that nearly 35 million people live in the designated zones and that census tracts in the zones have an average poverty rate of about 32 percent based on figures from 2011 to 2015, compared to a rate of 17 percent for the average U.S. census tract.”
Click here to explore the dynamic map of the zones on the U.S. Treasury website.
Map of the Day: Affordable Care Act Premiums Since 2014
Axios breaks down how monthly premiums on benchmark Affordable Care Act policies have risen state by state since 2014. The average increase: $481.
Obamacare Repeal Would Lead to 17.1 Million More Uninsured in 2019: Study
A new analysis by the Urban Institute finds that if the Affordable Care Act were eliminated entirely, the number of uninsured would rise by 17.1 million — or 50 percent — in 2019. The study also found that federal spending would be reduced by almost $147 billion next year if the ACA were fully repealed.
Your Tax Dollars at Work
Mick Mulvaney has been running the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau since last November, and by all accounts the South Carolina conservative is none too happy with the agency charged with protecting citizens from fraud in the financial industry. The Hill recently wrote up “five ways Mulvaney is cracking down on his own agency,” and they include dropping cases against payday lenders, dismissing three advisory boards and an effort to rebrand the operation as the Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection — a move critics say is intended to deemphasize the consumer part of the agency’s mission.
Mulvaney recently scored a small victory on the last point, changing the sign in the agency’s building to the new initials. “The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau does not exist,” Mulvaney told Congress in April, and now he’s proven the point, at least when it comes to the sign in his lobby (h/t to Vox and thanks to Alan Zibel of Public Citizen for the photo, via Twitter).
