All these factors mean it’s probably best to take the black unemployment rate numbers with a grain of salt. As Janelle Jones, an analyst with the Economic Policy Institute told me in January, “We don’t get to set a very low bar for economic success for black workers and then applaud ourselves when we reach it.”
VOX
June 4, 2018
Elise Gould of the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) added a caveat to an otherwise solid job report, warning a large percentage of the drop in unemployment is for “the wrong reasons.” In the past two months, about 85 percent of the drop in unemployment was the result of people leaving the labor force, including a large number of Baby Boomers entering retirement. Only about 15 percent actually found jobs, according to Gould.
WJLA
June 4, 2018
“Upwards of 70 percent of the newly employed are coming from out of the labor force as opposed to those ‘actively’ looking for work,” said Elise Gould, a senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute in Washington. “Employers and workers alike seem to recognize the slack out there and workers still do not have sufficient leverage to bid up their wages.”
Reuters
June 4, 2018
As a result, some “two-thirds of the drop in the unemployment rate in May was because workers found jobs, while about one-third of the drop was from people leaving the labor force,” the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute noted.
The Epoch Times
June 4, 2018
This decline has had two big effects — one economic and one political — about which Democrats should to care. First, lower rates of unionization have translated into lower wages for workers, both union and non-union alike. According to the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal think tank, the wages of non-union men would be five percent higher if union levels had stayed consistent since 1979. Fully one-third of the growth in wage inequality among men and one-fifth of that among women since the 1970s can be explained by declining unionization rates. (The gender difference is due to the fact that women have never reached the same levels of unionization as men.) There’s plenty of other research that comes to similar conclusions.
NBC News
June 4, 2018
As the U.S. Labor Department’s former chief economist Heidi Shierholz has noted, 4 out of every 5 full-service restaurants the department investigated between 2009 and 2015 were violating wage and hour laws, with one of the most common violations being the failure to adequately compensate tipped workers. Tipped workers are significantly more likely than untipped workers to report that their hourly wages, including tips, are below the minimum wage. (EPI chart used)
The Washington Post
June 1, 2018
Robert Scott, senior economist at the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute, said tariffs that failed to distinguish between America’s trade allies and countries like China, which the U.S. has accused of illegal trade practices, could make it more difficult resolve trade disputes.
NBC News
June 1, 2018
Labor unions also are optimistic that younger workers will boost membership rolls in the South and elsewhere, with the pro-union Economic Policy Institute reporting 75 percent of gains in membership last year came from workers who are under 35 years old. Young workers appear to be drawn to unions, the EPI said in a recent report, “to address current workforce trends that are increasing work insecurity from the rise of part-time work and unpaid internships to increased numbers of contract workers.”
The Charleston Post and Courier
June 1, 2018
Other researchers have narrowed their focus to online gigs such as driving for Uber or Lyft. Economist Larry Mishel of the Economic Policy Institute recently published research showing that about 1% of American workers were engaged in online hustles such as Uber or TaskRabbit. Few are getting rich off their gigs. Mishel found that Uber drivers made $11.77 per hour on average after deducting their overhead and marginal costs but before paying payroll and income taxes. Most work less than 20 hours a week, and turnover is very high.
MarketWatch
June 1, 2018
As Andrew Cuomo, Cynthia Nixon and Marc Molinaro argue over who’s a real progressive, who’s a faux progressive and who’s a conservative, a new study indicates it’s more than just a campaign debate. The answer could shape the state’s economic destiny. The study from the Economic Policy Institute compared the economic performances of Wisconsin and Minnesota since 2010 to determine which state yielded the best results for working people. The neighboring states were chosen not only because of their proximity, but also because they are similar in terms of demographics, population and industries. That makes comparing their performance since the recession “a useful natural experiment for assessing how state policy is affecting economic outcomes and residents’ welfare,” according to the study by EPI senior economic analyst David Cooper. Where the two states differ is in terms of policy after each elected their governor in 2010. (whole column)
Buffalo News
May 31, 2018