In a new report for Demos, Stuck: Young America's Persistent Jobs Crisis, authors Catherine Ruetschlin and Tamara Draut examine the state of the youth workforce in the United States and find that while the overall economy is showing signs of improvement, young workers are still in a state of crisis. The authors warn that if policy isn't changed to address the challenges young people face, "we risk a generation marked by the insecurities of the Great Recession for the rest of their working lives."

Locked-out workers at American Crystal Sugar plants in Minnesota, North Dakota and Iowa will soon be returning to work after they ratified a contract late last week. The company locked out 1,300 workers, members of the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers (BCTGM), in August 2011.

As previously reported, the Mine Workers (UMWA) contend that Patriot Coal was set up by Peabody Energy and Arch Coal purposely to fail in order to dump costs associated with retirees who had worked for the two companies. Now Ben Hatfield, the current CEO of Patriot, says that he agrees with UMWA President Cecil Roberts that the creation of Patriot seemed destined to fail. Hatfield was, at the time, CEO of International Coal Group. Patriot recently has filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy in order to shed retiree costs, mostly from Peabody and Arch.

Tax season is upon us. Whether you use an online filing service or a certified public accountant or your mom still helps you fill out your taxes, here are five things you probably won’t learn from your 1040.

Did you know that the CEOs of the Campaign to Fix the Debt, the corporate front group that wants to cut Social Security and Medicare and lower corporate taxes, have parked more than $418 billion of untaxed corporate profits overseas? Overall it is estimated that U.S. corporations have as much as $1.9 trillion sheltered overseas. That would make a nice down payment on fixing the debt.

You can read about "Fix the Debt" and more in the 2013 edition of the AFL-CIO’s Executive PayWatch launched today. PayWatch not only shines a light on Fix the Debt hypocrisy, but it also explores the huge wage gap between CEO pay and the average U.S. worker. PayWatch started in 1997. 

Visit www.paywatch.org.

As a nation, we need to face that fact that austerity simply does not work; our nation’s infrastructure will continue to crumble if we do not invest in its repair, and our economy will continue to stagnate if we do not expand our infrastructure to meet the needs of our growing population.

In just about any small town that has lost a big factory, you'll hear it was the union's fault. I live in Mayfield, Ky., population about 10,000. A big Continental General Tire plant was our factory. It’s been gone for a half-dozen years.

House Republican leadership rammed through a bill (H.R. 1120) earlier today that would effectively put the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) out of business. 

The NLRB enforces rules established under the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), which protects the rights of workers to form unions, bargain collectively and have a voice on the job. 

Saru Jayaraman, co-director and co-founder of ROC-United, will appear on HBO's "Real Time with Bill Maher" tonight at 10 p.m. EDT to discuss the importance of raising the tipped minimum wage for our country's 10 million restaurant workers. 

If you have HBO, be sure to tune in. 

AFL-CIO will be hosting two powerful Book Club events in Washington, D.C., that will help explain the current state of the U.S. economy, income inequality and the politics of austerity. On Monday, April 15, Nobel Prize-winning author Joseph Stiglitz will be discussing his book The Price of Inequality: How Today's Divided Society Endangers Our Future. On Tuesday, April 16, Robert Kuttner will talk about his book Debtors' Prison: The Politics of Austerity Versus Possibility.