Health insurance coverage in retirement
Access to affordable health insurance is crucial for maintaining the income security of retirees. But in recent years, the skyrocketing costs of medical care coupled with increasingly costly health insurance have caused many employers to reduce or eliminate employer-sponsored retirement health insurance. A new book by EPI and the Center for American Progress, Health Insurance Coverage in Retirement: The Erosion of Retiree Income Security, examines the current data on medical coverage in retirement and raises serious concerns about the future retirement security of the elderly and near-elderly. Visit www.epinet.org to view other EPI publications about issues confronting current and future retirees.

Offshoring Issue Guide
White-collar offshoring—the movement out of the United States of well-paid jobs that were once insulated from foreign competition—has been widely discussed in recent months as the information technology sector has experienced continued labor market slack. EPI's new Issue Guide on Offshoring is a downloadable online resource that includes data, charts, fact sheets, and links to other resources on the topic of offshoring.

EPI Economic Snapshots preview findings from upcoming State of Working America
Starting in June and continuing through the summer, EPI will be offering monthly previews of the forthcoming book The State of Working America 2004/2005. The first installment, in which EPI President and State of Working America co-author Lawrence Mishel examines the deteriorating quality of jobs available to recent high school graduates, appeared as the online Snapshot for June 9.

Understanding the jobs situation
The job market expanded last month, as employers added 248,000 payroll jobs. However, many of these gains are coming in lower-paying industries. And despite last month's good job growth nationally, most states still have not recovered their pre-recession job levels. In fact, 35 states still have fewer jobs than when the recession started, and the shortfall is widespread. For further analysis of the May employment numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, see EPI's Jobs Picture and JobWatch.org.

• On June 16, EPI and the Center for American Progress (CAP) hosted a national media conference call for more than a dozen journalists to discuss the findings of the new joint EPI and CAP study, Health Insurance Coverage in Retirement: The Erosion of Retiree Income Security.
  
  
• A June 1 policy memo by EPI Deputy Director of Policy Amy Chasanov and Rick McHugh of the National Employment Law Project examines how the Personal Reemployment Accounts (PRAs) proposed by the Bush administration fail to address the real needs of jobless workers. Visit Viewpoints to read the full text of the policy memo.
  
  
• A June 14 editorial in The Wall Street Journal argues that, contrary to claims by the Economic Policy Institute, wages are booming and the economy is adding mostly high-quality jobs. The Journal editorial, however, is brimming with inaccuracies and misleading numbers.  For EPI senior economist Jared Bernstein's response to the Journal's editorial, go to Viewpoints.
  
  
• An article by EPI economist Elise Gould detailing the failures of the Bush administration's health care policies appeared in the May/June 2004 issue of Dollars & Sense magazine.
  
  
• EPI President Lawrence Mishel moderated a panel titled "Jobs and Growth: Making the Economy Work for Working People" at the Take Back America conference, sponsored by the Campaign for America's Future on June 3 in Washington, D.C.
  
  
• On June 23, EPI Vice President Ross Eisenbrey participated in a panel discussion of "Jobs and the U.S. Economy" at the New Haven Festival of Arts and Ideas.

The mission of the Economic Policy Institute is to provide high-quality research and education in order to promote a prosperous, fair, and sustainable economy. The Institute stresses real world analysis and a concern for the living standards of working people, and it makes its findings accessible to the general public, the media, and policy makers.