However, camouflaged in the good news was some not-so-good news, economists said. Despite the latest gaudy unemployment numbers, an apparent lack of so-called “good jobs” has resulted in a surge of hiring to fill low-wage positions. The Economic Policy Institute (EPI) responded to the November jobs report with a somber reality check for those celebrating the low levels of unemployment.
News One
December 9, 2019
“It doesn’t make sense. We would expect in a tightening labor market to see stronger wage growth,” said Heidi Shierholz, senior economist and director of policy at the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute. “Instead, wage growth has been backsliding this year.”
The Washington Post
December 9, 2019
“There was a lot of talk about a recession potentially coming 4-6 months ago. Part of it was rational. There was a pronounced slowdown in the growth rate from 2018-2019. I think people were wondering were we going to head all the way to zero growth which is essentially a recession,” said Josh Bivens, the director of research at the Economic Policy Institute, during a recent interview.
WJLA
December 9, 2019
However, Elise Gould at The Economic Policy Institute noted that wage growth is “slower than expected in an economy that has had historically low unemployment.”
PayScale
December 9, 2019
MORE JOBS, MODEST WAGES: Employers added an unexpectedly high 266,000 new jobs in November, and earnings were up 3.1 percent over the last 12 months, BLS reported Friday. “But one of the few head-scratchers in this strong jobs picture is why wages aren’t growing as fast as they did in the late 1990s, when yearly wage growth routinely topped 4 percent,” Heather Long reports for The Washington Post. Wage growth peaked in February at 3.4 percent and “has been backsliding this year,” Elise Gould, an economist at The Economic Policy Institute tweeted.
Politico
December 9, 2019
Many hoped this would be the year wages really accelerated. After all, business leaders have been complaining for months they can’t find enough workers — both highly skilled and not — and the natural response to that is usually to bump up pay. But wage growth peaked in February at 3.4 percent and has pulled back since then, puzzling economists. “From late 2017 through late 2018, it looked like wage growth was picking up. That ended. Wage growth has been backsliding this year,” tweeted economist Heidi Shierholz, senior economist at the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute.
Mother Jones
December 9, 2019
Elise Gould at the Economic Policy Institute writes:
On its face, the pace of job growth in 2019 hasn’t been particularly troubling. The economy continues to move in the right direction—though at a slightly slower pace than the last couple of years—soaking up sidelined workers as the unemployment rate remains at historically low levels. But, when you factor in the preliminary benchmark revisions—which showed a half million fewer jobs created between April 2018 and March 2019—the data indicate weaker employment growth this year than originally reported. The final benchmark revisions won’t be released until the January 2020 employment numbers are released in February, but the preliminary release is troubling. And large downward revisions are sometimes associated with early signs of a recession because it means the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS)’s model for predicting the births and deaths of firms is off, often accompanied by a turning point in the economy. These revisions don’t tell us a recession is necessary on the immediate horizon, but they are certainly something to keep in mind as the year winds down.
Daily Kos
December 9, 2019
The evidence shows that wages in states with right-to-work laws are about 3 percent lower (approximately $1,550 a year) than in states that do not have such laws (Elise Gould and Will Kimball, Economic Policy Institute, April 22, 2015).
The Daily Progress
December 6, 2019
There are a few other proposals (here’s a good rundown), but those are the most significant ones. It’s true that it doesn’t contain the kind of wealth tax that Warren and Sanders have proposed. And as Josh Bivens of the Economic Policy Institute pointed out to me, it does accept some features of the Obama-era tax code as the limits of what you can do, like precisely a 39.6 percent top rate (when he could have proposed 40 percent or 50 percent).
But in other ways, Bivens noted, “It’s a far more ambitious plan than anything even the Obama aspirational budgets,” the yearly President’s Budget released by the White House, proposed.
The Washington Post
December 6, 2019
According to the Economic Policy Institute, a non-partisan think tank, a new consensus has emerged among leading economists that minimum wage increases raise wages without any substantial job loss.
The Conway Daily Sun
December 6, 2019