Experience
- U.S. Department of the Treasury
- Roosevelt Institute
- D.C. Fiscal Policy Institute
Expertise
- Tax and fiscal policy
- IRS
- Economic and industrial policy
Education
- New York University, J.D.
- Reed College, B.A.
Recent Coverage
DEC 3, 2023
Business Insider: The forever labor shortage is pitting parents and their childfree coworkers against each other
“Understaffing is one of the ways that corporations and businesses exercise their power over workers,” Kitty Richards, acting executive director of the Groundwork Collaborative, told Business Insider. Over the past 20 or 30 years, workers have been getting “short-changed” by their employers to pad bottom lines in every way possible, Richards said. That includes firms cutting labor costs — which can include cutting benefits, and ensuring that there’s any slack in staffing schedules, “and then making it the problem of the employees to figure out how they’re going to cover shifts.”
“It really is just another way of employers cutting their costs and pushing the consequences of that onto their workers,” Richards said.
NOV 30, 2023
The Hill: GDP, corporate profits soar as Biden calls out companies for ‘price gouging’
“Pandemic-era supply chain disruptions enabled corporations to hike prices and juice profit margins to highs not seen in more than 60 years,” Kitty Richards, acting director of Groundwork Collaborative, an economic research and advocacy group, wrote in an analysis. “Now supply chains have returned to normal, but corporations in many sectors are still charging inflated prices and extracting exorbitant profit margins,” Richards said.
NOV 16, 2023
MarketWatch: Investors are thrilled inflation is down. Consumers aren’t so happy. Here’s why.
“Headline inflation numbers can really obscure important parts of what is really driving the cost of living for families in this country,” said Kitty Richards, acting executive director at Groundwork Collaborative. “If you are a parent who… is making a little bit more in your paycheck, but you couldn’t afford child care before the pandemic and now it’s 30% more expensive, it’s cold comfort to see that prices overall are rising at a much slower rate than they were last year.”
OCT 10, 2023
States Newsroom: Jobs report surprises as employers add 336,000 jobs in September
Kitty Richards, acting executive director of Groundwork Collaborative, a Washington, D.C. think tank, said the growth in federal investments in different industries, such as manufacturing, has spilled over to other parts of the labor market, which is why there is job growth in some of these other sectors.
“These kinds of front line service jobs are places where the strength of the overall economy matters a lot and also where, for many years, we had really terrible wages,” she said. “I think that the wage growth that has been supported overall by these investments in workers and manufacturing and the clean energy transition has driven up wages and spilled over, creating a much more attractive labor market, which is drawing people into the labor force. I think that the specific sectors in this month’s jobs report are more indicative of just a strong economy with growing incomes and wages overall than sort of specific investments.”
SEP 13, 2023
The Hill: What to know about the August inflation spike
The Fed “can’t make homes more affordable or control oil prices by kicking workers out of their jobs. If we care about the cost of living, we need to focus on investing in people and families,” said Kitty Richards, acting executive director of the progressive nonprofit Groundwork Collaborative.
AUG 22, 2023
Spectrum News | Likely battle to avert a government shutdown in the fall becoming more clear
Kitty Richards, the acting executive director of the progressive economic think tank Groundwork Collaborative and a former U.S. Treasury Department official during the Biden administration, said the president is likely to play a less hands-on role publicly on government funding. “The president has really already played his role and that was during the debt ceiling negotiation,” she said. “I think that the message that we’re seeing from the White House is that there has already been a deal struck and now Congress needs to pass appropriations bills that are consistent with that deal.”
AUG 10, 2023
State Newsroom | Consumers seeing relief in some food prices as inflation continues to slow
“We now have two straight months of low, honestly, quite normal levels of inflation,” Kitty Richards, acting executive director of the progressive think tank Groundwork Collaborative, told States Newsroom. “That’s a huge drop from last summer’s peak. And that is something that we should be celebrating, especially given that it has happened in the context of growing real wages and a job market that is still really delivering for American workers. I’m really glad to see that in the inflation report.”
Shelter also continues to have a significant effect on inflation. It made up 90% of the increase this month according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. But there is additional context to consider for shelter data since it is a lagging indicator, Richards said. “Affordability of housing is a huge concern for Americans … The data is really telling us shelter costs in the CPI lag by up to a year and market data, which is much more current, shows that housing costs have cooled dramatically since last summer,” she said. “…What that means is that inflation right now is actually lower than the CPI headline number.”
Interested in speaking with Kitty Richards?
About Kitty
Kitty Richards is the Acting Executive Director at Groundwork Collaborative.
She is the former Director of the State and Local Fiscal Recovery Funds at the U.S. Department of Treasury. Previously, she served as a Senior Strategic Advisor to the Groundwork Collaborative, a Fellow at the Roosevelt Institute, Acting Executive Director of the D.C. Fiscal Policy Institute, Chief of Staff to a local legislator, and Economic Policy Advisor to then-Vice President Joseph R. Biden.
Earlier in her career, Kitty worked on tax and fiscal policy at several think tanks and on the Hill. Kitty has a J.D. from New York University.
