Wages improved up and down the scale as the economy hit full employment. The hourly wage of workers at the bottom tenth of the income distribution rose 11 percent from 1995 to 2000, according to the Economic Policy Institute. It rose almost 8 percent for workers in the middle. … Josh Bivens of the Economic Policy Institute replicated the exercise for the economic expansion that ended with the demise of the housing bubble in 2007: Unemployment, he found, had to fall below 4.6 percent to keep workers in the bottom 10 percent from losing ground. At this pace, unemployment will soon have to hit zero for workers at the bottom to get a raise. So what else can be done? There is obviously a role for training and education to help workers meet employers’ rising demand for skills, especially at the beginning of their career. Fatih Guvenen of the University of Minnesota notes that the income of 25-year-old men starting their careers has declined sharply since the early 1970s and is now about where it was in the late ’50s. But a strategy focused on education will not tip the balance. As Heidi Shierholz of the Economic Policy Institute points out, the list of remedies is long. It includes raising the minimum wage, increasing unionization, banning mandatory arbitration for employment claims, ending arbitrary and unpredictable scheduling, and ensuring that companies that subcontract their low-wage work remain in some way accountable for the workers.
The New York Times
February 28, 2018
I’ve had conversations with black people who’ve told me that voting hasn’t changed anything for blacks in America. And while I vehemently disagree with their assessment, a new report from the Economic Policy Institute lends credence to their argument. The new report, titled 50 Years After The Kerner Commission, measures black progress in the half-century since President Lyndon Johnson convened a group to examine the causes of black uprisings that had taken place in cities across America. The Economic Policy Institute found that, as of 2016, the median black family had only 10.2 percent of the wealth of the median white family. As it’s been for the past 50 years, the black unemployment rate today is twice that of the white unemployment rate, and even when blacks are employed, they make only 82.5 cents for every dollar made by whites. Even worse, the share of African Americans in prison has almost tripled since 1968, and today blacks are 6.4 times as likely to be incarcerated as whites.
Philadelphia Inquirer
February 28, 2018
A new report shows just how little progress America has made on racial equality. Lyndon Johnson first commissioned the Kerner Report to investigate the root causes of 1967’s race riots, but Johnson and other policymakers largely ignored the commission’s findings and policy recommendations upon their release in 1968. The Kerner Report found that white racism had sparked the riots. Police brutality, an inadequate social safety net, a broken criminal justice system—these were the forces that pushed people of color into the streets. Fifty years later, the Economic Policy Institute has released a report commemorating Kerner’s 50th anniversary, and while it found that rates of educational attainment among African-Americans have increased, African-American wages still lag far behind those of white workers. In other areas, progress is stagnant: (whole story)
The New Republic
February 28, 2018
How far has the United States come in the years since? For insights, the Economic Policy Institute, a progressive think tank, released a new report this week that looks at what has changed, and what hasn’t, in the last 50 years. Below, four numbers that tell the story of racial progress and persisting inequality in America: (whole story)
Mother Jones
February 28, 2018
The Economic Policy Institute, a liberal think tank, says that unionized black women would suffer the most from an anti-union decision in Janus. Black women make up a disproportionate share of public employees (18 percent, or roughly 1.5 million workers). Despite their ugly histories of racist exclusion, unions have emerged as a key vehicle for collapsing the vast inequality between black women and the rest of the workforce. According to the NWLC, black women who belong to unions make 30 percent more than those who don’t. And while black women earn 65 cents for every dollar earned by white men, that wage gap is 20 percent smaller for unionized black women.
Mother Jones
February 28, 2018
“Nonmembers’ fair share fees cover the union’s expenses related to collective bargaining and contract administration, but not expenses for political or ideological advocacy,” according to Celine McNicholas, Zane Mokhiber, and Marni von Wilpert of the Economic Policy Institute in Washington, D.C. This is not the first time the Supreme Court has heard arguments against public-sector unions’ fair share fees. “More than 40 years ago, the Supreme Court unanimously affirmed in Abood v. Detroit Board of Education that fair share fees could be collected from public-sector workers,” according to McNicholas, Mokhiber and Wilpert.
MultiBriefs
February 28, 2018
More than ever, two workforce groups are emerging: those who are working, staying in the workforce and putting in longer hours; and those who are falling out of, or never got into, the workforce, according to a new Economic Policy Institute (EPI) report. Why? Because opportunities are not universally available, EPI says. (whole story)
HR Drive
February 28, 2018
Convened to examine the causes of civil unrest in black communities, the presidential commission issued a 1968 report with a stark conclusion: America was moving towards two societies, “one black, one white — separate and unequal.” Fifty years after the historic Kerner Commission identified “white racism” as the key cause of “pervasive discrimination in employment, education and housing,” there has been no progress in how African Americans fare in comparison to whites when it comes to homeownership, unemployment and incarceration, according to a report by the Economic Policy Institute released on Monday. (whole story)
Washington Post
February 27, 2018
Black unemployment is near an all-time low, but that only tells part of the story. One in every five working-age black men in the United States did not work at all in 2016, nor earn any income. “It’s staggering that this level of black men are disconnected from workforce,” says Janelle Jones, an analyst at the Economic Policy Institute who co-authored a recently published, wide-ranging report on hours worked by all workers ages 25 to 54. EPI is a left-leaning research group. (whole story)
CNN Money
February 27, 2018