So says a new report (pdf) issued by the Commonwealth Institute for Fiscal Analysis, which is part of the Virginia Interfaith Center for Public Policy. Consider this:
• Worker productivity has been steadily climbing in Virginia since 1999, and the state continues to outperform the nation on this measure.
• In 2006, each worker in the Commonwealth produced goods and services worth an average of $64,817.
• Despite being more productive than ever, not all working Virginians see the fruits of their labor returned to them. Growth in median wages has failed to keep pace with the increasing productivity of the state’s labor force.
• Complicating this situation of modest wage growth are spiking food and energy prices, which place further pressures on working Virginians’ household budgets.
And it only gets worse: the number of Virginians without health insurance continues to increase and those with insurance are paying more, private pension coverage has declined, and Virginia ranks 8th from the bottom in the number of unemployed people who actually receive unemployment benefits.
The entire report is worth a read.
VIVIAN J. PAIGE | All Politics is Local 
Vivian, this is so unpatriotic. You can’t point out the deficiencies of this state because it will set us back even further than we already are. You see, we Democrats need to stop whining so much and be thankful for the higher interest rates and inflation with increased hours work because it shows that we love our country. The infrastructure of this country is sound. Carry on!
Any organization which produces a report on the economic status of Virginia’s families in which the word “tax” (or variations thereon) does not even appear is a fraud ab initio.
Did I miss something. Do we not want to be low on the list for the unemployed getting unemployment benefits? That would indicate that there is less money being handed out through the program would it not? Is not our goal to get the unemployed to be gainfully employed? The less resources being used in this area the better overall our economy will be as we encourage those who are out of work to become employed.
Jobs have real value. More than just a paycheck. Or have we forgotten about that in the last few years.
J Scott – dd you bother to read the report? And are you aware that employers pay into the unemployment insurance fund precisely to provide benefits to employees when they are out of work?
The report says only one in 4 unemployed people in VA received unemployment benefits. That’s nothing to be proud of.
Here is a useful analogy I heard. A landowner hired a plowman to plow his fields. The plowman could plow one acre each day with the horse-drawn plow his employer provided. The following year, the landowner purchased a tractor. The plowman (now sitting on the tractor instead of walking behind the plow) saw his productivity increase tenfold! So he demanded a tenfold increase in his hourly pay!
Who should reap the rewards of increased productivity — the laborers, or those who invest in the labor saving tools that increase the laborers’ productivity?
Productivity increases do not always mean that the laborers are working harder.
“The report says only one in 4 unemployed people in VA received unemployment benefits. That’s nothing to be proud of.”
Or perhaps… just perhaps … it means that Virginians are self-sufficient and haven’t bought into the Liberal welfare state.
I notice no one has bitten on the whole issue of the tax burden on Virginia families. Like I said. Fraud. Ab. Initio.
I disagree, James, because our unemployment system in Virginia is a insurance system, wholly paid for by those who are the insured*, but it brings up a good question: Why did only one-in-four unemployed people receive unemployment benefits in 2007?
Were they unemployed so long that their benefits ran out? Were they not unemployed long enough to get benefits? Did they not qualify because they had not paid into the system long enough?
*Theoretically, the employers pay, but the reality is that any payroll taxes are borne by the employee — if the employers were not paying it, that money would be available for wages.
So in reality its more of a net taxing system on employers than an insurance one and begs the question what the right off capacity for employers.
Uh, no. Perhaps I miswrote. The tax eventually falls on the consumer. See The Wealth of Nations, Book V, Chapter II, Part II, Article III, “Taxes upon the Wages of Labour” for a fuller explanation.