Here’s why the black unemployment rate hit a 16 ½-year low
Yahoo Finance/Melody Hahm
But how about when you break down the 4.3% unemployment rate by race? Two groups fall below the overall level — with the white unemployment rate at 3.7% and the Asian unemployment rate at 3.5%. Meanwhile, the Hispanic unemployment rate is 5.2% and the black unemployment rate is 7.5% — its lowest level since December 2000. The obvious reason for its decline is the overall strengthening of the labor market, said Heidi Shierholz, senior economist and director of policy at The Economic Policy Institute. (Heidi and Valerie quoted throughout)
Yahoo Finance
June 7, 2017
“It’s a big deal,” said Economic Policy Institute economist Elise Gould. “If you look back from mid-century…you see that men have been declining for a very long period of time, and the trends since 2000 are really a continuation of what’s been happening.” It’s not just men who are dropping out of the labor force but women as well. After decades of increases in labor force participation among prime-age women, it has slowly been dropping off since the turn of the century. “The fact that that has been declining over the last 16 years is a conundrum,” Gould said. (Elise quoted throughout)
The Street
June 7, 2017
The United States, where the average new teacher makes $44,000 and can expect to earn up to $67,000 at the peak of a career (by OECD’s calculations), ranks 7th worldwide in how well it pays high school teachers and 5th for elementary teachers. Within the country itself, the pay gap between U.S. teachers and all workers in other fields with the same education and experience has grown significantly in recent decades, according to a 2016 study from the Economic Policy Institute. (My colleague Kristine Kim recently wrote about the best-rated U.S. cities for educators. If only looking at salary, Alaska has been rated as the highest-paying state for teachers in the country, with Las Cruces, N.M., as the city with the highest median salary).
Education Week
June 7, 2017
It’s Not Avocado Toast But Stagnant Wages Dimming American Dream
NBC News/Ben Popken
“It certainly means that families are going to have a harder time making ends meet,” said Elise Gould, a senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute, a DC-based nonpartisan think tank. “We see a relatively slow growth in wages compared to faster rising expenses; we see that in homes, healthcare, childcare, many of the necessary expenses families pay.”
NBC News
June 6, 2017
Silicon Valley’s H-1B Secret
Bloomberg/Joshua Brustein
For years, the H-1B visa program has been a key public policy priority for Silicon Valley — and a source of broad controversy. Each year, the government grants 65,000 of the temporary visas through a random lottery, with another 20,000 set aside for applicants with advanced degrees. The visas are good for three years, and can be extended beyond that. There were about 460,000 people working in the country on H-1B visas in 2013, according to an estimate by the Economic Policy Institute. The American technology industry argues the visa program is a vital way to attract foreign-born workers with rare technical skills. But critics decry the visa program as a way for outsourcing companies to undercut the American labor market by paying low wages to mostly Indian-born workers.
Bloomberg
June 6, 2017
As discussions of wage hikes and income inequality rage on, the pay gap between fast-food CEOs and their employees appears to be widening. The Economic Policy Institute shows that in 1970, American CEOs (not limited to fast-food industries) made only 30 times as much as the average employee. Today, they make more than 300 times as much in total compensation (not limited to base salary), which is still lower than 731 times for the CEOs in our analysis.
Eater
June 6, 2017
Why the highly coveted visa that changed my life is now reviled in America
CNN/Moni Basu
But I also read an Economic Policy Institute analysis that found American colleges graduate 50% more students in engineering and computer and information science than are hired in those fields each year. Read the EPI analysis
CNN Money
June 5, 2017
Congressional GOP Looks to ‘Rig’ Union Voting System
Rewire/Nicole Knight
Celine McNicholas, labor counsel with the Economic Policy Institute, said some of Trump’s proposals are a departure from the traditional Republican playbook. “What you have to look at here is the significance of the cuts,” McNicholas told Rewire. “The 20 percent cut to the Department of Labor is shameful.” The budget funnels an additional $6 million to the Office of Labor-Management Standards (OLMS), which monitors union finances, while it imposes a 6 percent cut on the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), which enforces workers’ rights under the National Labor Relations Act. (Celine quoted throughout)
Rewire
June 2, 2017
U.S. job market stumbles in May, adding just 138,000 jobs
The Washington Post/Ana Swanson
“The unemployment rate fell for all the wrong reasons,” said Elise Gould, a senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute. “The slight drop in the unemployment rate is due to would-be workers leaving the labor force and not getting jobs.”
The Washington Post
June 2, 2017
U.S. jobless rate falls to lowest level in 16 years
CBS Moneywatch/Irina Ivanova
“[T]he slight drop in the unemployment rate is due to would-be workers leaving the labor force, not getting jobs,” Elise Gould, senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute, wrote on Friday.
CBS Moneywatch
June 2, 2017