EPI in the news

• Next week’s economic data will tell us a lot

  There will also be data from the Labor Department, starting with the Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey, also known as JOLTS. 

  Elise Gould, a senior economist with the Economic Policy Institute, is interested in the “turnover” part.

  “The kind of churn that we’ve been seeing in the labor market as people have quit their jobs in search of better ones.” She’ll also be checking whether layoffs are extending beyond the tech sector. 

  Marketplace | December 1, 2022
• Is it time to take another look at legal immigration?

  Stephanie Kelton: Daniel Costa is an attorney and the Director of Immigration Law and Policy Research at the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank based in Washington DC.

  Daniel Costa: An employer can seek out a worker from abroad using permanent residence, so essentially apply for a worker who would come in with lawful permanent residence status, most commonly referred to as a Green Card. Workers arrive almost with all the same rights as a US citizen and are on their way to becoming a US citizen.

  MarketWatch | December 1, 2022
• The Fed’s Response to Rising Inflation Protects the Wealthy at Workers’ Expense

  Under these circumstances of COVID-lockdown and war-related supply shortages, corporations in turn seized the opportunity to mark up their prices and pad their profits margins. Focusing on the U.S. economy, the Financial Times reported on November 28 that, “Margins of retailers and wholesalers have exploded in the past two years. The basic story here is that a combination of broken supply chains, rising input costs, and high demand created pricing power for producers, who raised mark-ups. Those mark-ups … are fueling inflation.” The economist Josh Bivens at the Economic Policy Institute has confirmed this pattern for the U.S., calculating that 54 percent of the price increases for corporations has been due to rising profit margins.

  Truthout | December 1, 2022
• A Tale of Two Recoveries: What’s Changed since the Great Recession (with Joelle Gamble and Heidi Shierholz)

  Joelle Gamble is the current chief economist at the US Department of Labor; Heidi Shierholz (now the president of the Economic Policy Institute) was its chief economist between 2014 and 2017. 

  Together, they talk with Felicia and Michael about how the shifts in economic policy thinking over the last decade helped produce today’s record-breaking recovery.

  Roosevelt Institute | December 1, 2022
• Wage Violations By Krispy Kreme Lead To $1.2 Million Settlement

  The fact that this figure hasn’t changed since 2009 (in spite of record-high inflation) caused wages to reach their lowest real value (when accounting for inflation) in 66 years, according to the Economic Policy Institute. But, per the investigation, Krispy Kreme failed to meet this less-than-$11 compensation for 516 employees working overtime. (Yikes.)

  Tasting Table | November 23, 2022
• Which is worse, inflation or recession?

  According to the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), “many voices in this debate have implicitly or explicitly argued that recession and inflation cause equivalent damage, or that inflation actually causes worse damage than recession. This view is clearly wrong — the economic damage wrought by recessions is far greater than that by single-digit inflation rates. Inflation, on the other hand, is pure redistribution in the short run, but does not directly reduce incomes in the aggregate.”

  Monroe News | November 23, 2022
• The Great Resignation is (slowly) losing steam

  The number of quits has now exceeded the pre-pandemic high for 19 consecutive months, as more than 4 million Americans voluntarily left their jobs in 17 of the past 19 months. Meanwhile employers, especially in low-wage sectors, are still struggling to fill open positions. The reasons for this trend are of course manifold, but one major driver appears to be that many workers are no longer willing to put up with the pay and/or working conditions they (perhaps grudgingly) accepted prior to the pandemic. “I certainly think that the pandemic has led many people to reevaluate their work and their priorities and what they want to do,” Elise Gould, senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute said in a statement to Business Insider.

   
  World Economic Forum | November 23, 2022

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