“It doesn’t surprise me at all,” said Richard Rothstein, a researcher with the Economic Policy Institute who has written a new book, “The Color of Law,” on how official policies like redlining fostered segregation. These maps — and their lingering effects — derive from a time when the American government, he writes, believed that “inharmonious racial groups” should be separated.
The New York Times
August 24, 2017
“So while I can’t assign causality to why women’s labor force participation has fallen in the United States in the last 16-17 years, it certainly is suggestive that we don’t have policies in place that help women stay or enter the labor force,” said Economic Policy Institute Senior Economist Elise Gould.Gould says better subsidized child care and paid leave would benefit women in particular, because as traditional caregivers who make less on average than men, they’re more likely to stop working. More employed women in the U.S., she and others argue, would spur economic growth. (Video- Elise speaks from 1:21-1:30)
CGTN
August 24, 2017
Young women’s experience stands in contrast to that of their older counterparts, who are starting from a lower level but continue to creep toward equality. The dip is surprising, given that millennial women are increasingly highly-educated relative to their male peers. Part of the explanation could be that in recent years, a big chunk of gender-wage parity had come because men’s wages weren’t doing well. “Men just had been losing ground, and instead are doing better now,” said Heidi Shierholz, senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute in Washington and a former Labor Department chief economist during Barack Obama’s administration.
Bloomberg
August 23, 2017
Interview with Richard Rothstein
The Dallas Morning News
August 23, 2017
“Trump campaigned on the negative impacts of trade and trade deals like NAFTA on working Americans, but here instead he is intervening not to help working people but to help American investors and American multinational companies,” Rob Scott, director of trade and manufacturing at the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank, told me in an interview in the runup to the investigation announcement. … “If Trump is successful, he will make our trade problems with China worse because what it will do is facilitate foreign investment in China — and foreign investment in China is all about outsourcing production,” Scott says.
VOX
August 22, 2017
The Fight for $15 is a union-led movement to increase the minimum wage. So far, it appears to be working. Since launching in 2012, when hundreds of fast-food workers in New York City walked off the job to protest low wages, at least 21 states, plus Washington D.C., have changed their minimum-wage laws, according to the Economic Policy Institute — and the minimum wage has increased in at least 27 states and D.C.
Mic
August 22, 2017
A black person is far less likely to find a job than a white person with the same education and experience, according to the Economic Policy Institute. Let that sink in. Even with the same qualifications, a white person is deemed “more qualified” or more employable than a black person. (chart included)
The Root
August 22, 2017
Los Angeles Times
August 22, 2017
That’s not to argue that the economy and race relations have no connection. White Americans may well be more comfortable with minority groups’ rising economic status when they themselves have secure jobs and rising incomes. But for nonwhites, a strong economy is not a cure-all. Janelle Jones, an analyst at the Economic Policy Institute’s program studying race and the economy, argues that nationwide averages don’t tell you everything you need to know about the economic experiences of African-Americans and other minority groups. “The idea that the availability of jobs is the way to solve race relations is misguided,” Ms. Jones said, in that a job alone doesn’t assure a stable, prosperous standard of living. “Even if you have jobs available, there’s still discrimination in pay and promotion,” she said. “Being able to have a job that pays well and comes with benefits, to buy a house in a place that isn’t racially segregated, to send your kids to a school that is not racially segregated, these are parts of what makes for a quality economic outcome.”
The New York Times
August 18, 2017
Lighthizer’s figure thus covers the first seven years of NAFTA, but does not include later data that might have been affected by China’s admission to the World Trade Organization. The official said the USTR also turned to a 2010 estimate by the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning organization, that estimated job losses of 700,000 due to U.S.-Mexico trade. (EPI actually has an updated 2013 estimate of 851,700 displaced jobs with both Mexico and Canada, but its methodology has been criticized as really meaning jobs changed by trade, not lost.)
The Washington Post
August 18, 2017