Hunter Blair, a former budget analyst at the left-leaning think tank Economic Policy Institute, noted that inflation-adjusted non-real estate fixed investment “continued along its pre-TCJA trend” and hit a high of 6.9% in 2018 before falling all the way to 1.3% in 2019.
“To be clear, if the TCJA’s corporate rate cuts were working, we would be seeing a permanent rise in investment,” Blair wrote in 2019. “Instead, investment growth is cratering.”
Helena Independent Record
November 2, 2020
Then there’s income inequality, which has surged in the past 40 years (including during 16 years of Bill Clinton and Obama) from technological change, globalisation and the decline of unions and collective bargaining. Pew estimates that income inequality in the US increased by 20% between 1980 and 2016. The non-profit, non-partisan thinktank the Economic Policy Institute estimates that CEO compensation in America has grown 940% since 1978. Typical worker compensation rose 12% during that time.
The Guardian
November 2, 2020
The Economic Policy Institute estimated that the three-year process to raise the minimum wage from $5.15/hour to $7.25/hour added $10.4 billion in annual consumer spending. Considering that Dollar General now operates more than 16,000 stores across the country and will bring in around $30 billion in sales this year, it’s likely to benefit from another minimum wage hike.
Motley Fool
November 2, 2020
Under the Trump administration, the Black unemployment rate steadily improved, dropping to 5.4 percent at its bottom in August 2019, compared to 7.5 percent when Trump took office in January 2017. But that achievement is attributable to economic growth that was already revving when Trump took office, economists say.
“Oftentimes, the gains to a growing economy are not accrued to those most historically disadvantaged,” said Elise Gould of the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute, “until you get to a much tighter labor market, and that is the natural consequence of workers becoming more scarce and employers having less discretion to discriminate. “
Politico Morning Shift
November 2, 2020
But federal policy is likely crucial if sectors like manufacturing are to be goosed by green demand, said Robert Scott, a senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute.
Scott published a white paper last month arguing that federal investment in clean energy and infrastructure, alongside policy to drive up U.S. exports, could support up to 13 million high-paying jobs and help restructure a post-COVID-19 U.S. economy away from the service sector.
Trump’s infrastructure promises — the White House was reportedly preparing a $1 trillion infrastructure plan geared toward highways, bridges and rural broadband earlier this year — have fallen flat, he said.
“He’s said he is going to have an infrastructure agenda for four years, and nothing,” Scott said.
The Trump campaign did not respond to a request for comment.
E&E News
November 2, 2020
A 2018 report from the Economic Policy Institute found when Amazon opens a new fulfillment center, the county gains 30% more warehousing jobs but does not experience an increase in jobs county-wide.
“It is possible that the jobs created in the warehousing and storage sector are offset by job losses in other industries, or that the employment growth generated by Amazon is too small to meaningfully detect in the data,” the study said.
Knoxville News Sentinel
November 2, 2020
Trump hasn’t brought back manufacturing jobs as he has repeatedly promised and boasted. At least 1800 factories have shuttered under Trump, whose much-promoted trade deals have done nothing to stem this long-term trend, according to the Economic Policy Institute.
Common Dreams
November 2, 2020
According to a new report by the Economic Policy Institute, young workers have been hit the hardest by the economic fallout of COVID-19. Unemployment for people between the ages of 16 and 24 hit a high of 26.9% in April, and as of September, it’s still higher than that of the rest of the population. In September, it was 12.5% for people between 20 and 24, and 15.9% for people 16 to 19, compared to a national unemployment rate of 7.9%. The unemployment rate for young people is partially so high because, like Zarate, many are in industries like food service and retail which have been particularly vulnerable. It has also affected young people of color more than their white peers: In spring of this year, the unemployment rate for young Black people was 29.6%; for young Asian-Americans, 29.7%; for young Latinx people, 27.5%. Women have been affected more as well: In September, a shocking 865,000 women left the U.S. labor market, roughly four times the number of men, many of them due to childcare or other caregiving duties.
Refinery29
November 2, 2020
The Economic Policy Institute reported that the minimum wage, if adjusted for inflation, should have exceeded $15 by 2020.
“Yet since the late 1960s, lawmakers have let the value of the minimum wage erode, allowing inflation to gradually reduce the buying power of a minimum wage income,” according to a 2019 report.
The Independent
November 2, 2020
The Economic Policy Institute’s study of Amazon fulfillment centers (Feb. 1, 2010, and updated March 2018) concluded they “do not generate broad-based employment growth.” The study “reinforces just how completely ineffective Amazon fulfillment center openings have been in providing any boost to overall local employment.” We should all be skeptical of the promises of job and local economic growth for this type of development.
Buffalo News
November 2, 2020