Government regulation isn’t impeding the recovery
Equipment and software investment has increased more in the first three years of this economic recovery than in the comparable period during the three prior recoveries. This week’s Economic Snapshot shows that the share of GDP going to investment in equipment and software has grown more than twice as much as during the 1982, 1991, or 2001 recoveries.
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EPI founder Jeff Faux will discuss how the economy can work for everyone, not just the elite
On Wednesday, August 15,EPI invites you to join EPI Founding President and Distinguished Fellow Jeff Faux as he discusses his new book,The Servant Economy: Where America’s Elite Is Sending the Middle Class, and outlines how we can restore the American Dream.
Jared Bernstein, senior fellow at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, and Harold Meyerson, Washington Post op-ed columnist and editor-at-large of The American Prospect, will join Faux to provide perspectives on middle-class insecurity.
Wednesday, August 15, 2012, 3:00 – 4:30 p.m.
In the news
What’s the Value of a College Degree?
EPI President Lawrence Mishel discussed with The Village Voice’s Neil deMause the decline of young workers’ wages in the last decade and why obtaining a college degree will not necessarily mean higher wages for future graduates. “If you look at young college graduates, the wages they earn now are substantially below what it was in the year 2000.”
Job openings at 4-year high in June but hiring slows
Reuters reporter Lucia Mutikani turned to EPI economist Elise Gould’s analysis of the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ release of June’s Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) last Tuesday to determine what it signaled for the labor market’s health. Gould noted the drop in the number of people voluntarily quitting their jobs, “which would signal that workers are more confident about outside job opportunities,” explained Gould.
U.S. added 163,000 jobs in July; unemployment rate ticks up to 8.3 percent
EPI labor economist Heidi Shierholzexplained to Washington Post business reporter Peter Whoriskey why the jobs deficit that accrued during the recession is still holding back the recovery, despite two years of steady job growth. “Even if the rate of job growth were 350,000 a month, the job recovery would take three years. … It’s just the hellacious recession that preceded this recovery that makes it look so bad,” she said.
Stock market jumps at news that economy added 163,000 jobs in July
Shierholz reiterated the significance of the recession’s lingering effect on the current rate of job growth to Ron Scherer of The Christian Science Monitor. Last month’s “kind of job growth would be totally fine if we were at full employment. But it is not what we need given the jobs deficit we have,” said Shierholz