The Economic Policy Institute

EPI in the news

• How the Case for Austerity Has Crumbled

  Reinhart-Rogoff lasted longer, even though serious questions about their work were raised early on. As early as July 2010 Josh Bivens and John Irons of the Economic Policy Institute had identified both a clear mistake—a misinterpretation of US data immediately after World War II—and a severe conceptual problem. Reinhart and Rogoff, as they pointed out, offered no evidence that the correlation ran from high debt to low growth rather than the other way around, and other evidence suggested that the latter was more likely. But such criticisms had little impact; for austerians, one might say, Reinhart-Rogoff was a story too good to check.

   

  The New York Review of Books | May 15, 2013
• While Wall Street soars, jobs market still scarred

  “Most of the improvement that we’ve seen in the unemployment rate hasn’t been due to increased job opportunities. It’s been due to people dropping out of, or never entering, the labor market because of weak opportunities,” said Heidi Shierholz, a labor economist for the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal think tank. “Most of that decline is not coming from what would really be considered meaningful improvement in the unemployment rate.”

  McClatchy | May 15, 2013
• Weak labor market awaits Class of 2013

  “In addition to the substantial share who are officially unemployed, a large swath of these young, highly educated workers have either a job but cannot attain the hours they need or want a job but have given up looking for work,” said Heidi Shierholz, a senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute in Washington.

   

  Reuters | May 15, 2013
• Please Don’t Use a ‘Best Places to Retire’ List to Decide Where to Retire

  This is another misleading one. Economist Monique Morrissey of the Economic Policy Institute argues that standard cost-of-living formulas — the kind used by most “best of” lists — don’t accurately reflect senior citizens’ expenses since they spend more on medical goods and services that are increasing in price faster than the overall rate of inflation.

   

   

  Time Magazine | May 15, 2013
• No Shortage of Science Majors—But We Still Need More

  “If you had majored in computer science instead of art history, you wouldn’t be waiting tables to pay back those student loans.”

  It’s a common refrain, but a recent study from the Economic Policy Institute found, despite conventional wisdom, there is no labor market shortage for science, technology, engineering, and math (also known as “STEM”) graduates.

  If there was, the authors argue, the STEM grads we do have would be seeing rising wages and falling unemployment as demand outpaces supply. But that’s not the case according to the study.

   

  Campus Progress | May 15, 2013
• America’s New Oligarchs—Fwd.us and Silicon Valley’s Shady 1 Percenters

  Ostensibly, the increase in visas for high-skilled computer workers is a needed response to the critical shortage of such workers here—a notion that has been repeatedly dismissed, including in a recent report from the Obama-aligned Economic Policy Institute, which found that the country is producing 50 percent more IT professionals each year than are being employed in the field. The real appeal of the H1B visas for “guest workers”—who already take between a third and half of all new IT jobs in the States —is that they are usually paid less than their pricy American counterparts, and are less likely to jump ship since they need to remain employed to stay in the country.

   

  Daily Beast | May 15, 2013
• Business, labor spar over high-skill visas in immigration bill

  Daniel Costa, an analyst with the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal think tank, also criticized the proposed amendments, saying that the requirements on high-skilled visas “don’t seem to be very onerous.”

  The sweeping immigration bill, written by the bipartisan “Gang of Eight” senators, would tighten border security, provide a 13-year path to citizenship for most of the 11 million illegal immigrants in the country and revamp visa programs.

  Reuters | May 15, 2013

More EPI in the news →