Economic inequality — the differences between the top 1 percent and the rest of us — has been growing in the United States since the 1980s and stands at its highest point in a century. Houston is not immune: In 2015, the Houston metropolitan area ranked seventh among nearly one thousand metropolitan areas in its share of people who reside in the top 1 percent of incomes nationwide, according to a recent study by the Economic Policy Institute.
Houston Chronicle
February 12, 2020
“It’s trade deficit which maintains the US dollar as that global unit of account. Without that trade deficit, the US dollar could not be the world’s reserve currency. So that trade deficit harms American workers, but it helps Wall Street bankers,” Stacy Herbert said, discussing what is causing job losses and the recent study from the Economic Policy Institute.
RT
February 12, 2020
LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — Arkansas lost more than 24,000 jobs between 2001 and 2018 because of the ongoing trade deficit with China, according to a new report from the Economic Policy Institute.
Public News Service
February 12, 2020
Asian-American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) women had to work until Feb. 11 to earn the same amount of money the average white male made in 2019, according to the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning Washington, D.C., think tank.
“Put another way, the average AAPI woman needs to work almost an extra month and a half to make up for the shortfall in annual earnings relative to the average non-Hispanic white man,” the nonprofit said in a blog post about Asian American/Pacific Islander Equal Pay Day.
MarketWatch
February 12, 2020
North Carolina’s teachers weren’t the only ones who walked out on the job en masse last year. Data released this week from the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that 2019 had a higher number of “major work stoppages,” meaning strikes and lockouts, involving 1,000 or more workers than any year since 2001. The Economic Policy Institute notes that 2019 also saw the most strikes involving 20,000 or more workers than any year since 1993, when BLS first started keeping track.
Mother Jones
February 12, 2020
An analysis by Heidi Shierholz and Margaret Poydock of the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute noted that 10 of the 25 stoppages last year involved at least 20,000 workers. In a time of historically low unemployment, they argue, the increase suggests workers “know that if they are fired for strike activity, they will be more likely to find another job,” and that if the tight labor market isn’t offering enough leverage to secure higher wages, “they must join together to demand a fair share of the recovery.”
Politico
February 12, 2020
The Economic Policy Institute (EPI) report, entitled Continued Surge in Strike Activity Signals Worker Dissatisfaction With Wage Growth, noted that the spike marked “a 35-year high for the number of workers involved in a major work stoppage over a two-year period.”
“Strike activity surged in 2018, with 485,200 workers involved in major work stoppages—a nearly twentyfold increase from 25,300 workers in 2017,” according to the report, which cited data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). “The surge in strike activity continued in 2019, with 425,500 workers involved in major work stoppages.”
Common Dreams
February 12, 2020
After decades of declining strike activity, data analyzed by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) show that there was a substantial upsurge in 2018 and 2019, with 485,000 workers involved in major work stoppages in 2018 and 425,500 workers involved in major stoppages in 2019. This is the largest two-year average in 35 years.
Workday Minnesota
February 12, 2020
For decades, the decline of the American labor movement corresponded to a decline in major strike activity. But new data released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, or BLS, indicates a recent and significant increase in the number of Americans who are participating in strikes or work stoppages. As a report from the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute explained on Tuesday, strike activity “surged” in 2018 and 2019, “marking a 35-year high for the number of workers involved in a major work stoppage over a two-year period.” 2019 alone marked “the greatest number of work stoppages involving 20,000 or more workers since at least 1993, when the BLS started providing data that made it possible to track work stoppages by size.” Union membership is declining, but workers themselves are in fighting shape.
New York Magazine
February 12, 2020
According to the Economic Policy Institute, 2018 and 2019 accounted for the largest two-year average of striking workers in more than three decades.
Huffington Post
February 12, 2020