Media clips
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Wages lag inflation target: A paper by the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute — yes, Virginia, there are two EPIs, both of which address workplace issues, one left-leaning and one right-leaning; we find it confusing, too — anyway, the left-leaning EPI finds wages are not growing fast enough for the economy to be considered to be at full employment. Wages should grow 3.5 percent to keep up with the Federal Reserve’s 2 percent inflation target, the report argues, but they grew only 2.4 percent in 2017. “This relatively slow rate of nominal wage growth provides a strong indication that the economy still has a ways to go before reaching full employment,” the study says. Read the report here.
Politico Pro March 1, 2018 -
If the court rules against unions, it’s possible that 1.5 million Black women will no longer have equitable union representation. Membership fees sustain union operations, which tend to support marginalized workers in particular. Public sector unions have fought for equal pay for women of color and have historically served as advocates for workplace integration. According to the Economic Policy Institute, Black women union members have increased their wages up to 94.9 percent of their Black male counterparts, compared to 91 percent of non-union Black women. The National Women’s Law Center found similar outcomes for unionized Latina women as well. While we have not achieved full pay equity across race and gender, unions prove themselves to be one vehicle to push for systemic change.
March 1, 2018 -
Celine is a guest.
Wisconsin Public Radio March 1, 2018 -
Celine is a guest.
Working Life March 1, 2018 -
After Martin Luther King Jr’s 1968 assassination sparked riots across the U.S., President Lyndon B. Johnson commissioned a report to examine the roots of unrest in black communities. The primary cause? “White racism” leading to discrimination and unemployment in, education, and housing, the report found. Some 50 years later, despite milestones including the election of America’s first black president, the economic landscape has barely changed for black Americans, a new report released this week by the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal, nonprofit Washington, D.C.-based think tank, found. “In almost all areas, it is about the same and in other areas there is actually lost ground,” said Valerie Wilson, director of the EPI’s program on race, ethnicity, and the economy and an author on the study. “We have not seen nearly as much progress in economic outcomes as we might expect given the gains in other outcomes.”
Market Watch March 1, 2018 -
Thus, the 50th anniversary of the Kerner commission offers a chance for reflection. Janelle Jones, John Schmitt, and Valerie Wilson offer a useful starting point in the short report, 50 years after the Kerner Commission: African Americans are better off in many ways but are still disadvantaged by racial inequality, from the Economic Policy Institute (February 26, 2018). The report compares black and white America in 1968 and the present, along a number of dimensions. (So that the table would be more readaable on the blog, I’ve trimmed off the last column, which shows changes between the two years.) For example, blacks have made dramatic gains to near-equality with whites in high school graduation rates. But in terms of college attendance, the racial gap remains very large. (whole story)
Conversable Economist March 1, 2018 -
New research from the Economic Policy Institute reveals that, now more than ever, American workers are divided into one of two categories: employed and overworked, and those struggling to enter or re-enter the workforce. The report, written by Valerie Wilson, EPI director of the program on race, ethnicity and the economy, and Janelle Jones, an economic analyst, examines data on trends in the proportion of workers considered non-earners, and prime-age workers’ annual work hours from 1979 to 2016. Prime age refers to men and women between the ages of 25 and 54 years; non-earners comprise prime-age adults who haven’t worked for an entire year. (whole story)
Human Resources Executive March 1, 2018 -
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