The Economic Policy Institute

EPI in the news

• Black Unemployment Is Still Shamefully High

  This year, Washington’s political class hasn’t merely given up on trying to fix U.S. unemployment; it’s given up on even discussing the subject. This is shameful, and not simply because the jobless rate is still two or so percentage points higher nationwide than it should be, or because the long-term unemployed have been left out to dry. No, it’s shameful because many communities across the country are still simply being ravaged by the lack of work.

  Particularly the black community. Even in good times, the unemployment rate tends to be roughly twice as high for blacks as whites, if not worse. Nationwide, black workers today are facing 13.2 percent joblessness. In some large states, the rate is far worse, as shown in the graph below, which was recently posted by the Economic Policy Institute. In Michigan, it was 18.7 percent by the end of 2012. In New Jersey, Illinois, North Carolina, California, and Ohio, the rate was above 15 percent.

  The Atlantic | May 23, 2013
• The 1 Percent Are Only Half the Problem

  The decline of labor unions is what connects the skills-based gap to the 1 percent-based gap. Although conservatives often insist that the 1 percent’s richesse doesn’t come out of the pockets of the 99 percent, that assertion ignores the fact that labor’s share of gross domestic product is shrinking while capital’s share is growing. Since 1979, except for a brief period during the tech boom of the late 1990s, labor’s share of corporate income has fallen. Pension funds have blurred somewhat the venerable distinction between capital and labor. But that’s easy to exaggerate, since only about one-sixth of all households own stocks whose value exceeds $7,000. According to the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute, the G.D.P. shift from labor to capital explains fully one-third of the 1 percent’s run-up in its share of national income. It couldn’t have happened if private-sector unionism had remained strong.

  The New York Times | May 23, 2013
• Obama urged to make economy a bigger, bolder topic

  “They should declare victory,” said Lawrence Mishel, president and CEO of the liberal Economic Policy Institute. “Making the big policy and political project the grand bargain has been digging us in a deeper and deeper hole.”

  Associated Press | May 23, 2013
• Asian-Americans: Smart, High-Incomes And … Poor?

  Asian-Americans have the highest income and education levels of any racial group in the country. So it might be surprising that they have a higher poverty rate than non-Hispanic whites. Michel Martin discusses the issue with Algernon Austin of the Economic Policy Institute and Rosalind Chou, co-author of The Myth of the Model Minority.

  NPR | May 23, 2013
• Clearing NLRB nominees is a clear step forward

  For more than a year, the National Labor Relations Board has been in limbo, with two of its five seats vacant, and two others under legal challenge. Controversy surrounding the board and broader political battles resulted in Senate deadlock over nominations. But there is an opportunity to bridge the divide and provide some stability to this federal agency.

  Politico | May 20, 2013
• 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

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