Total Environmental Scan

The coronavirus, or COVID-19, has been declared by the World Health Organization to be a global pandemic. As the number of people infected in the United States grows exponentially, we must focus on prevention and containment in the criminal and immigration legal systems. Vera and Community Oriented Correctional Health Services have created a series of fact sheets to guide actors in these systems, who have a unique and critical role to play.

The year 2030 marks a demographic turning point for the United States. Beginning that year, all baby boomers will be older than 65 years of age. This will expand the size of the older population so that one in every five Americans is projected to be of retirement age. Later that decade, by 2034, we project that older adults will outnumber children for the first time in U.S. history. The year 2030 marks another demographic first for the United States. That year, because of population aging, immigration is projected to overtake natural increase (the excess of births over deaths) as the primary driver of population growth for the country.
 

Published since 1962, PRB’s annual World Population Data Sheet tracks global population data. This year’s edition provides 24 population indicators for more than 200 countries and territories. Users can also explore key trends through an interactive map.

“As the experience with the COVID-19 pandemic has shown us, population changes such as aging and rapid urbanization are important factors for countries to consider as they plan for future disease outbreaks, long-term health care needs and other developments,” said Jeff Jordan, PRB president and CEO. “PRB’s World Population Data Sheet provides objective data and analysis policymakers need to make these decisions.”

Among the key findings for 2020:

This website features all the BOP Coronavirus resources, policies, guidance and statistics.

Employers in the United States are increasingly in pursuit of workers who are adept in social skills, like negotiation and persuasion, and have a strong grounding in fundamental skills, such as critical thinking and writing. In the past nearly four decades, employment in the U.S. has expanded most rapidly in jobs in which these skill sets are most valued. Jobs attaching greater importance to analytical skills, such as science, mathematics and programming, are also hiring workers at a brisk pace. 

COVID-19 has disrupted all forms of human mobility through the closing of national borders and halting of travel worldwide. Preliminary estimates suggest that the pandemic may have slowed the growth in the stock of international migrants by around two million by mid-2020, 27 percent less than the growth expected since mid-2019, according to a report by the United Nations.

Growth in the number of international migrants has been robust over the last two decades, reaching 281 million people living outside their country of origin in 2020, up from 173 million in 2000 and 221 million in 2010.  Currently, international migrants represent about 3.6 per cent of the world’s population.

UCLA Law collected data on COVID-19 in prisons, jails, and immigration detention centers, as well as pandemic-related prison and jail releases, legal filings and court orders, and grassroots and community organizing efforts. The website reports the data and is updated regularly.

The state and local governmental public health workforce plays a critical role in protecting and improving the lives of the individuals it serves. As is the case with state and local employment generally, the workforce in public health is changing. Recruitment and retention of the next wave of employees presents challenges, particularly at a time of continued retirements, low unemployment, and competition from the private sector for talented graduates and other career entrants. To better understand the U.S. public health workforce, this primer describes its current size, expectations for growth, employee demographics, job tenure, and the skill sets most in demand. This description is offered against the broader backdrop of the overall state and local government sector.

The COVID-19 pandemic-induced lockdowns and related global recession of 2020 have created a highly uncertain outlook for the labour market and accelerated the arrival of the future of work. The Future of Jobs Report 2020 aims to shed light on: 1) the pandemic-related disruptions thus far in 2020, contextualized within a longer history of economic cycles, and 2) the expected outlook for technology adoption jobs and skills in the next five years. Despite the currently high degree of uncertainty, the report uses a unique combination of qualitative and quantitative intelligence to expand the knowledge base about the future of jobs and skills.

Can it really be true that most people in jail are being held before trial? And how much of mass incarceration is a result of the war on drugs? These questions are harder to answer than you might think, because our country’s systems of confinement are so fragmented. The various government agencies involved in the justice system collect a lot of critical data, but it is not designed to help policymakers or the public understand what’s going on. As public support for criminal justice reform continues to build, however, it’s more important than ever that we get the facts straight and understand the big picture.

The federal deficit in 2020 was $3.1 trillion, equal to 14.9 percent of gross domestic product.