5 harsh job market realities the Class of 2017 faces
The Plain Dealer/Olivera Perkins
You’ll probably have an easier time landing a job than your counterparts who graduated in the years following the Great Recession, which ended in 2009. (It began in 2007. )However, the labor markets for recent high school and college graduates in Ohio and the United States remain weaker today than in 2000 and 2007, according to a recent report on the Class 2017. The report by the Economic Policy Institute, the left-leaning Washington, D.C.-based think tank, says the Class of 2017 faces other harsh realities. They include unemployment rates for workers under 25 that are about double the overall rate, high underemployment, a gender wage gap and employment-related racial disparities. “Overall, the graduating class of 2017 is facing a better labor market than their older brothers and sisters, who graduated four, five or six years ago, but it’s still not a strong labor market for them,” said Elise Gould, the senior EPI economist who co-authored the report with Teresa Kroeger, a research assistant.
The Plain Dealer
June 12, 2017
Women hold most of the US’s student loan debt
The Boston Globe/Deirdre Fernandes
Just out of college, women this year made on average $17.88 an hour compared with the $20.87 that men earned, according the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute. While all college graduates are seeing their wages climb again after the 2008 economic crisis, for women, the increase has been much slower and they are still making up lost ground. Male college graduates earn 5.4 percent more than they did in 2000, while women earn 2.2 percent less than they did at the start of this century, according to the economic group. The wage gap has been persistent, even as more women go to college and earn advanced degrees, said Elise Gould, a senior economist at the institute. “It’s hard to not think there’s some discrimination in pay or promotion,” Gould said. “There’s a sizable gap. It’s pretty striking.”
The Boston Globe
June 10, 2017
The Hill
June 9, 2017
“The private sector is not going to build our roads and bridges for free, they expect something in return,” says Hunter Blair, a budget analyst a the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning research group.
CNN Money
June 9, 2017
Trump’s job numbers lower than advertised
Politico/Ayanna Runice
“Public-sector jobs would stimulate more private-sector jobs,” said Elise Gould, a senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute, a Washington think tank. “Local jobs like school teachers — we’re not keeping up with things like enrollment in terms of the number of teachers we have.”
Politico
June 9, 2017
“This signals they want to redo the rule,” Heidi Shierholz, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute said Thursday. “They are hoping to get information that they can use as legal justification for putting out a new rule that will have a lower threshold.” (Heidi and Celine quoted throughout)
The Hill
June 9, 2017
More legal challenges are possible if the administration disregards the work authorizations under the program before they expire, said Daniel Costa, director of immigration law and policy research at the Economic Policy Institute.
Costa added that despite the potential consequences, the government could remain “in an OK position legally speaking.”
Politico
June 9, 2017
In a setback for unions, Labor Department moves to revoke Obama-era ‘persuader rule’
The Washington Post/Juliet Eilperin
But Heidi Shierholz, senior economist and director of policy at the Economic Policy Institute, said Friday that the old standard “had a loophole that you can drive a truck through” because outside firms focus on providing strategic advice. Noting that such consultants operated openly rather than behind the scenes in the late 1950s, she said, “The landscape has evolved, and so in a fully functioning government, those regulations should catch up with a changing landscape.” Shierholz, who served as the Labor Department’s chief economist from 2014 to 2017, said that “the primary reason” that the average median wage in the United States has risen less than 7 percent in the last four decades is “because of the decline of unions.” Reversing this regulation, she said, would further contribute to that decline.
The Washington Post
June 9, 2017
Josh Bivens, the director of research at the Economic Policy Institute, said in a conference call that allowing inflation to run higher will provide the Fed some policy cover when the next downturn hits, where it could keep policy looser for longer. “The last decade should have shown us that the political system severely controls the tools that policymakers have to fight recessions,” he said. “I see the higher inflation target as one of these buffers.”
CNBC
June 9, 2017
Trump’s infrastructure plan is missing some nuts and bolts
CBS Moneywatch/Jonathan Berr
For one thing, the Trump plan specifies only $200 billion in new federal spending even as the administration’s budget includes “enormous cuts to public investment,” according to the liberal Economic Policy Institute. The administration also did not specify just where the remaining $800 billion would come from and how the spending increases would jibe with the huge cuts in infrastructure spending envisioned in its proposed budget.
CBS Moneywatch
June 8, 2017