Author

Casey Quinlan

Casey Quinlan

Casey Quinlan is an economy reporter for States Newsroom, based in Washington, D.C. For the past decade, Quinlan has reported on national politics and state politics, LGBTQ rights, abortion access, labor issues, education, Supreme Court news and more for publications including The American Independent, ThinkProgress, New Republic, Rewire News, SCOTUSblog, In These Times and Vox.

sign is posted on the exterior of a First Republic Bank office on March 16, 2023, in San Francisco

Regulators end week like they started — tamping down fears, rescuing a bank

By: - March 20, 2023

Financial regulators, policymakers, and bank executives spent last week trying to abate fears that a banking crisis will spread across the U.S. financial system.  On Friday, President Joe Biden released a statement calling on Congress to take action to make it easier for regulators to hold senior bank executives accountable for their mismanagement.  “It should […]

Federal Reserve police officer guards the entrance to the Federal Reserve’s William McChesney Martin Building

Silicon Valley Bank’s collapse differs from our last financial crisis

By: - March 13, 2023

After the largest U.S. bank failure in more than a decade, regional bank stocks plunged on Monday as the federal government — with the 2007-2008 financial crisis still a fresh memory for many — rushed to reassure Americans that the U.S. banking system was stable. President Joe Biden told Americans that the risks taken on by failed […]

now hiring sign

Powell signals higher interest rates. Here’s why Friday’s jobs report will affect Fed’s decision.

By: - March 9, 2023

Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell said this week that interest rate increases could be higher and come faster if Friday’s unemployment data shows the nation’s labor market isn’t cooling off. Stock indexes fell after his comments. That’s been a familiar pattern over the past year as the federal bank has tried to combat inflation.  A […]

child tax credit supporters attend a D.C. press briefing

Child poverty dropped to a record low last year. A new report shows how to keep it that way.

By: - March 2, 2023

The expanded child tax credit that families received in 2021 helped reduce child poverty across the country, but particularly in the South where families lack a sufficient safety net, according to a paper released on Wednesday. The report by the Hamilton Project, the Brookings Institution’s economic policy initiative, comes as some Democrats appear ready to […]

food is distributed at a drive-in in Kansas City, Kansas.

Families are taking a hit as pandemic aid ends, inflation continues

By: - February 27, 2023

Forty million people in the U.S. are having difficulty affording household expenses, and a little more than 25 million people say they sometimes or often do not have enough to eat, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s most recent Household Pulse survey data.  The survey is designed to collect data on household experiences during the […]

JBS meat processing plant in Greeley, Colorado

Food sanitation company fined $1.5 million for illegal child labor

By: - February 21, 2023

A company responsible for cleaning meatpacking plants across the country has paid $1.5 million in civil penalties for making children as young as 13 work in dangerous conditions. The fine, announced Friday by the U.S. Department of Labor, followed an investigation by the agency into Packers Sanitation Services Inc., at 13 plants in eight states, […]

A health care worker in scrubs and PPE dons a surgical mask in the hallway of a hospital

Rural hospitals gird for unwinding of pandemic Medicaid coverage

By: - February 20, 2023

Donald Lloyd, CEO and president of St. Claire HealthCare in Morehead, Kentucky, has spent more than a year dealing with higher costs for food and medical supplies for his regional hospital. Now he’s trying to prepare for another financial hit — the loss of Medicaid reimbursements for treating people in rural Appalachia. “We are all […]

Children waiting for baggage at a Michigan airport

Advocacy groups ask FTC to expand Biden administration efforts to rein in junk fees

By: - February 13, 2023

President Joe Biden devoted 19 sentences of his State of the Union speech to “junk fees,” which includes credit card late fees, service fees for concert tickets and airplane seating preferences that he said strain families’ budgets. Biden did not mention the numerous and opaque fees faced by prisoners and their families every day. But […]

consumer picking a credit card out of a wallet

Proposed federal rule would lower credit card late fees

By: - February 7, 2023

As Americans continue to struggle with high credit card rates, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has proposed a rule to help lessen some of their financial burden — in the form of lower late fees.  The new rule would limit late fees to $8. Currently credit card companies can charge as high as $41 — […]

COVID-19 Delta Variant Hampers New York City's Economic Recovery

States criticized for spending federal relief funds on tax cuts, prisons

By: - February 6, 2023

As states plan how they’ll spend the $25 billion remaining in federal COVID-19 relief funds, some also are facing criticism and renewed scrutiny over how they allocated money already received from the American Rescue Plan Act. Of the $198 billion authorized by Congress in 2021, $173 billion already has been appropriated by states, the District […]

Advocates, Legislators, And Pregnant Workers Rally On Capitol Hill For The Pregnant Workers Fairness Act

Here’s what you need to know about new workplace protections for pregnant, nursing workers

By: - January 5, 2023

The $1.7 trillion federal spending bill President Joe Biden signed last week ushers in expanded protections for workers who are pregnant or nursing. Proponents of the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act and the PUMP for Nursing Mothers Act — both included as amendments to the spending bill — say the measures clarify rights for these workers, […]

Fast Food Workers Rally For Higher Wages

Child poverty rates highest in states that haven’t raised minimum wage

By: - December 26, 2022

Of the 20 states that have failed to raise the minimum wage above the federal $7.25 an hour standard, 17 have more than 12% of their children living in poverty, according to a States Newsroom analysis of wage and poverty data. Anti-poverty advocates say that’s a sign that there’s an urgent need for lawmakers to […]