OKPOLICY.ORG
What’s up this week at Oklahoma Policy Institute? The Weekly Wonk is dedicated to this week’s events, publications, and blog posts.
This week at OK Policy, we posted one large Oklahoma employer’s internal analysis showing they would be better off keeping workers’ coverage under the new health law – about $771K better off. A guest blog post from a veteran teacher explored what’s behind the best performing educational systems in the world.
Also this week, we explained why direct spending is usually the simplest and most efficient way to achieve public goals. OK Policy Director David Blatt was quoted in a NewsOK article about a little-known committee that reviews state tax breaks. Lastly, watch this video posted to our blog charting the persistent and unprecedented spike in long-term unemployment:
In The Know will return on Monday morning.
- 315,000 – Number of people who dropped out of the labor force in November, more than double the number who found jobs.
- 2,440 – Avg weekly initial unemployment claims in Oklahoma, down 19.5% from the same period in 2010
- $816M – In online sales on Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, up 26 percent compared with the same day a year ago.
- 2.5 percent – Amount Oklahoma’s appropriated state budget is projected to grow from FY ’12 to FY ’13.
- 22.2 percent – Percentage increase in child abuse and neglect investigations conducted in Oklahoma between September 2010 and 2011.
