Updated Long-Term Projections for Social Security

[Excerpt] The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) regularly prepares long-term projections of the future paths of revenues and outlays for the Social Security program. This latest report presents projections for the 75-year period from 2008 through 2082. (All years referred to in this report are calendar years.) The projections differ somewhat from earlier results because of newly available programmatic and economic data, updated assumptions about future demographic and economic trends, and improvements in CBO’s models. Such long-term projections are necessarily uncertain; nevertheless, the general conclusions presented here hold true under a wide range of assumptions

The Effects of a Minimum-Wage Increase on Employment and Family Income

[Excerpt] Increasing the minimum wage would have two principal effects on low-wage workers. Most of them would receive higher pay that would increase their family’s income, and some of those families would see their income rise above the federal poverty threshold. But some jobs for low-wage workers would probably be eliminated, the income of most workers who became jobless would fall substantially, and the share of low-wage workers who were employed would probably fall slightly

CBO\u27s 2011 Long-Term Projections for Social Security: Infographic

[Excerpt] By 2035, the growing number of beneficiaries due to the aging of the baby-boom generation will cause scheduled spending to climb to 6.1 percent of GDP, CBO estimates. However, there is uncertainty inherent in CBO\u27s projections; in 10 percent of the simulations, outlays in 2035 are below 5.3 percent of GDP and in 10 percent they exceed 7.3 percent of GDP. In most simulations, outlays in 2035 are projected to account for a much larger share of GDP than the share in 2010

Supplemental Security Income: An Overview

[Excerpt] In 1974, the federal government established the Supplemental Security Income (SSI) program to provide cash assistance to people who are disabled, aged, or both and who have low income and few assets. SSI replaced several state-run support programs that had been partially financed by the federal government. In fiscal year 2013, the program will make payments to more than 8 million people at a cost to the federal government of about $53 billion, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates. Currently, about 60 percent of SSI recipients are disabled adults (ages 18 to 64), about 15 percent are disabled children (under age 18), and about 25 percent are aged adults (age 65 or over) with or without disabilities. SSI recipients generally are eligible for health insurance through Medicaid, and many also participate in other income-security programs that provide federal support to low-income people. In coming years, CBO projects that as the economy improves and average Social Security benefits continue to increase, the number of SSI beneficiaries will decline slightly as a share of the population. In addition, SSI payments per recipient are linked to prices, which tend to rise more slowly than GDP per person. As a result of those two factors, CBO projects that total outlays for SSI will decline slightly relative to total output over the next decade, reaching one-quarter of one percent of GDP

Long Term Unemployment

[Excerpt] Even in a strong labor market, many people become unemployed for short periods as they enter the labor force or change jobs. But some people take many months to find a job. Over the past several decades, the percentage of unemployment spells lasting more than six months has increased. Such long-term unemployment may result in serious problems for the unemployed individuals themselves as well as for the overall economy. This Congressional Budget Office (CBO) paper—prepared at the request of the Chairmen of the House Budget and House Ways and Means Committees—uses data from a national survey to examine the extent to which unemployment is concentrated among workers who experienced spells lasting more than six months. It also examines the characteristics of those workers, their sources of income, and their subsequent activities. In keeping with CBO’s mandate to provide objective, impartial analysis, this paper makes no recommendations

Labor Force Experiences of Recent Veterans

[Excerpt] More than 3.8 million members of the U.S. military have left active-duty service since September 2001, a period that some federal agencies call the Gulf War II era (as opposed to the Gulf War I era, which spanned the period from August 1990 to August 2001). More than 2 million of those Gulf War II veterans were deployed in support of military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. For decades, large federal programs have helped service members make the transition to civilian life and employment by offering unemployment insurance benefits, education assistance, and disability compensation. However, the 2007–2009 recession prompted policymakers to focus greater attention on how well veterans have fared in the civilian labor market during and after that downturn

A Guide to Understanding the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation

Although the federal government\u27s Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC) has been providing pension insurance for nearly 30 years, the agency\u27s financial situation has been particularly volatile over the past decade and has deteriorated significantly during the past several years. At the end of 2000, the total value of assets held by PBGC exceeded the estimated present value of its liabilities by $10 billion. But by the end of 2004, the agency\u27s estimated liabilities were$23.5 billion more than the value of its assets. As attention focuses on that situation, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has prepared this paper, which aims to provide a basic understanding of federal pension insurance, the operations of PBGC, and the financial condition of and the outlook for the agency over the next 10 years. In accordance with CBO\u27s mandate to provide impartial analysis, the paper makes no recommendations

CBO and JCT’s Estimates of the Effects of the Affordable Care Act on the Number of People Obtaining Employment-Based Health Insurance

[Excerpt] This document responds to questions that the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) and the staff of the Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT) have received regarding their estimates of the effects of the Affordable Care Act (ACA). In their original analysis of the impact of the legislation, CBO and JCT estimated that, on balance, the number of people obtaining coverage through their employer would be about 3 million lower in 2019 under the legislation than under prior law. As reflected in CBO’s latest baseline projections, the two agencies now anticipate that, because of the ACA, about 3 million to 5 million fewer people, on net, will obtain coverage through their employer each year from 2019 through 2022 than would have been the case under prior law. ... The analysis presented here explains two of the key assumptions about employers’ behavior that affect CBO and JCT’s estimates of the effects of the ACA and presents a range of estimates of sources of insurance coverage and federal budgetary outcomes that would result from the ACA under certain alternative assumptions. The analysis also shows how CBO and JCT’s estimates might differ if firms were able to, and ultimately decided to, undertake more widespread restructuring of their workforces than is reflected in the baseline projections—through strategies such as shifting more of their lower-wage workers into separate firms, contracting for the services of more such workers from other companies, or shifting their workforces toward part-time workers instead of fulltime workers

Disability and Retirement: The Early Exit of Baby Boomers from the Labor Force

A CBO ReportCBO11_22_LaborForce.pdf: 177 downloads, before Oct. 1, 2020

How Policies to Reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions Could Affect Employment

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has analyzed the research on the effects that policies to reduce greenhouse gases would have on employment and concluded that total employment during the next few decades would be slightly lower than would be the case in the absence of such policies. In particular, job losses in the industries that shrink would lower employment more than job gains in other industries would increase employment, thereby raising the overall unemployment rate. Eventually, however, most workers who lost jobs would find new ones. In the absence of policies to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases, changes to the climate also might affect employment; however, this brief does not address such changes because that effect would probably arise after the next few decades, and it has not been studied as carefully by researchers