EPI in the news

• American made brings American gains

  First, making American products creates American jobs. According to a 2015 report from the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), the U.S. lost a total of 5.7 million manufacturing jobs between 1998 and 2013.  This was partly due to the Great Recession of 2008, but mostly because of trade imbalances with foreign nations like China and Mexico. China and Japan manipulate their currencies to make their goods and labor cheaper, which in turn reduces the demand for U.S. manufacturing goods. This collapses the manufacturing output, which reduces jobs. More American manufacturing jobs not only reduce the unemployment rate but also benefit the country in numerous other ways, including expanding the tax base to pay for benefits like Medicare and Social Security.

  The MSU Exponent | February 28, 2020
• Worker strikes on the rise in recent years

  The Economic Policy Institute notes the increase in major strike activity in 2018 and 2019 resulted in a 35-year high for workers involved in significant work stoppage over this two-year period.

  The Business Journals | February 28, 2020
• Trump supporter yells ‘lock him up’ after president talks about ‘Barack Hussein Obama’ at Arizona rally

  Elise Gould from the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) said comparing the median household income across time is difficult due to changes in data methodology, and told CNBC that “2018 is not the highest it’s ever been.”

  However it did note that 2018 median household income of $63,179, was 2.3 percent higher than in 2016 when it was $61,779, according to EPI data.

  Newsweek | February 28, 2020
• The impact of economic inequality on the incidence of mass shootings

  According to the Economic Policy Institute, the three states with the highest income inequality are New York, Connecticut, and Florida. Ironically, those same states have seen some of the deadliest mass shootings in U.S. history. Thirteen people were killed at an immigration center in Binghamton, New York in 2009. On June 12, 2016, In Orlando, Florida, 49 people were killed, and 53 were wounded in a shooting at Pulse, a gay nightclub. Then, on Valentine’s Day 2018, a former student at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School—in Parkland, Florida—killed 17 and wounded 17 more.

  Kevin MD | February 28, 2020
• The disappearance of the American middle class

  That’s less than an appropriate average living wage of $16.87 per hour, as calculated by Alliance for a Just Society (AJS), and it’s not enough — even with two full-time workers — to attain an “adequate but modest living standard” for a family of four, which at the median is over $60,000, according to the Economic Policy Institute.

  Black Star News | February 28, 2020
• New report on Chipotle food safety, staffing, threatens margins and profits

  The Economic Policy Institute describes fair work week laws as

  …laws (that) provide workers with greater stability, predictability, and flexibility in their work schedules; in many cases, they also require employers to give part-time staff opportunities to increase their hours before adding new staff. These comprehensive laws primarily apply to retail and fast-food workers-who are more likely than other workers to be subject to volatile work hours. The nearly 740,000 workers protected by these comprehensive fair workweek laws include an estimated 327,000 workers in New York City; 175,000 in San José; 172,000 in the state of Oregon; 40,000 in Seattle; 23,000 in San Francisco; and 2,500 in Emeryville, California.

  Seeking Alpha | February 28, 2020
• Economic snapshot: Nevada’s diving middle class incomes

  Nevada was among the states hardest hit during the Great Recession; it held the record for the highest unemployment in the country in 2010 (at 14.9 percent) and experienced some of the highest foreclosure rates. The state’s GDP has increased 14.9 percent from 2009 to 2018, but per capita GDP has only increased an anemic 1.7 percent over those years — placing it 44th in the nation for the breadth of recovery, according to an Economic Policy Institute analysis.

  While Nevada has seen economic gains since the end of the recession, they have flowed overwhelmingly to the state’s highest income earners. The top five percent of households saw their inflation-adjusted incomes increase almost 15 percent between 2009 and 2018, while the poorest 20 percent of households saw their incomes decline by about the same amount, according to an analysis by the Economic Policy Institute. The richest Nevadans — the top 1 percent — experienced average real income growth of 22 percent, more than 16 times that of the bottom 99 percent between 2009 and 2015, according to a 2019 report from the nonpartisan Guinn Center. From 2017 to 2018, Nevada households saw their median income decline about 1 percent, as the U.S. overall saw median household income grow about 1 percent.

  Capital & Main | February 28, 2020

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