U.S. tariffs on aluminum imports imposed since the Trump presidency have led to increased output, employment and capital investment by domestic manufacturers, according to a new report from the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute.
Reuters
May 28, 2021
The reason why this is not worrisome is that prices are basically rebounding from a deeply depressed base in the pit of the COVID recession a year ago. In March 2020, before the recession hit, core inflation was running at an annual rate of just 1.5 percent, or well below the Fed’s target rate.
As EPI’s Josh Bivens puts it:
Even several years of inflation above 2% would still not make up for years of too-slow price growth over the past 12 years, and making up for these years of too-slow price growth would go a long way toward reestablishing the credibility of the Federal Reserve inflation target. This is an opportunity, not a threat.
The American Prospect
May 28, 2021
“The idea that these governors are saying, ‘we don’t need that federal money right now, we’re going to turn it down,’ even though that money is providing a boost to their economy — it’s just very short-sighted policy,” Heidi Shierholz with the Economic Policy Institute said.
Experts at the Economic Policy Institute say childcare issues and health concerns are keeping many people from returning to work. They also dispute the argument that many unemployed Americans aren’t returning to their jobs because they’re making more money staying home.
“The vast majority of job growth has been in very low wage sectors. Low-wage workers are the ones going back to work, which is exactly the opposite of what you would expect if unemployment insurance were really keeping people out of work,” Shierholz said.
Hearst TV
May 28, 2021
A 2019 Brookings study calculated that median earnings in metro Atlanta were $18.12 an hour. But about one-fifth of workers made $10.09 an hour or less, below the roughly $12.74-an-hour wage that sets the poverty line for a family of four.
“It does give people a little wiggle room not to take a job that has really low wages and is not safe,” said Heidi Shierholz, former chief economist for the U.S. Department of Labor, and now senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute.
Atlanta Journal Constitution
May 28, 2021
The inquiry comes at a time when there’s been growing scrutiny by local labor enforcers over how workers are being treated by companies. A report this week from the Economic Policy Institute’s Terri Gerstein found a growing number of district attorneys and attorneys general are taking on employers over issues ranging from worker misclassification to wage theft. Meanwhile, gig economy companies like Uber and Lyft are fighting harder than ever to solidify a business model that does not require them to classify certain workers as employees.
CNN Business
May 28, 2021
A 2019 study from the Economic Policy Institute found that “somewhere between 27.8% and 46.5% of private-sector workers are subject to noncompetes,” which means anywhere from 36 million to 60 million American workers have signed a noncompete agreement in their current job.
Business Insider
May 28, 2021
I’m just looking at a study from the Economic Policy Institute this morning shows CEO compensation went up nearly 16% last year. But the average guy only went up 1.8 %. It has a lot to do with the stock packages but it permeates throughout.
WGN News
May 28, 2021
In this powerful episode, Laverne talks with Richard Rothstein, the author of The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America. Rothstein breaks down how the government implemented housing policies in order to segregate Black people primarily in the 1930s and 50s. Though many decades ago, the effects are as present as ever in the education gap, income gap, wealth gap, and “slums.” As violations of the Constitution, it is a requirement to correct past injustices.
The Laverne Cox Show
May 28, 2021
David Cooper, a senior economic analyst at the Economic Policy Institute, a nonprofit think tank in Washington, D.C., said the true indicator of a labor shortage is rising wages, but there’s not accelerating wage growth across the board.
There is evidence, however, of a shortage in leisure and hospitality fields, he added.
“Wages in leisure and hospitality employment make up just 4% of all wages in the U.S. economy, so this is a very small portion of the economy where employers may be struggling to find folks,” Cooper said. “There’s no reason why difficulty for those employers should mean that we should turn off unemployment benefits for everyone.”
Stateline
May 28, 2021
CEO pay skyrocketed 15.9% through the pandemic as the rallying stock market boosted compensation packages, the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute said in a Thursday blog post. That marks an acceleration from the 14% jump seen in 2019 despite COVID-19 roiling the global economy. EPI cited 281 filings from large firms in its preliminary report.
Conversely, annual compensation for the average American worker rose just 1.8% in 2020. The widening pay gap is captured in EPI’s CEO-to-worker compensation ratio, which rose to 307.3 last year from 276.2 among early reporting companies.
To be sure, CEO salaries broadly shrank through the year. The average salary for chief executives fell 5.2% as businesses paused pay hikes during the health crisis, according to EPI.
Yet a broader measure shows the stock market’s meteoric rise through 2020 more than made up for the slump. Realized direct compensation — which includes salary, bonuses, long-term incentive payouts, stock options, vested stock awards — rallied last year as stocks rebounded from their pandemic lows. Among the 281 early reporting firms analyzed, realized compensation rose to $21.4 billion from $18.5 billion throughout 2020.
Business Insider
May 28, 2021