But others disagree. In a blog post Wednesday, Josh Bivens of the Economic Policy Institute called the Fed’s decision “disappointing” but “not surprising.” “Today’s hike seems to signal that Fed policymakers think that we’re currently at or very near full employment, and that failing to slow the pace of economic growth in coming months would soon lead to accelerating wage and price inflation. They could be right, of course, but it is important to note that there is little in actual economic data to indicate this,” Bivens wrote.
The Washington Post
March 17, 2017
With tax credits for workers earning up to $215,000, the Republicans’ health care plan would push the incentives for companies not to offer benefits further up the income spectrum, said Elise Gould, senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute. “It could particularly impact high-wage employers because they can send their employees into the nongroup market. There could be a push to do that because the income range on the subsidies is much wider.”
NBC News
March 17, 2017
Children qualify for federally subsidized school meals if their family’s income is at or below 130% of the federal poverty line, or $31,950 for a family of four. In rural Tennessee, where the cost of living is the lowest in the US according to the Economic Policy Institute, that family would still need $49,767 to stay solvent.
The Guardian
March 17, 2017
Saddled with high levels of student loan debt, many college grads feel may they have no choice but to take whatever job they can get. That might help to explain why wages for the college educated haven’t climbed all that much during the recovery: About half of college grads earn less now than they did in 2000. Median earnings for college grads stood at $24.99 per hour in 2016, about 1.5 percent less than they earned in 2000, according to a study by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI).
CBS Moneywatch
March 17, 2017
President Trump’s proposed budget put the administration’s priorities into focus—military, the border wall and defense. Other federal programs such as AmeriCorps and the National Endowment for the Arts would be cut to make way for spending on security. Ross Eisenbrey of the Economic Policy Institute joined the program to provide context for this proposal and discuss the likelihood that it will be passed by Congress.
Minnesota Public Radio
March 17, 2017
And the long-term economic effects of these decreases could be even greater than the sum of their parts, one former administration official warned. “When those programs are cut, that will have an overall detrimental effect,” said Heidi Shierholz, director of policy at the Economic Policy Institute and former chief economist at the Department of Labor. “We’ll not be making the important investments we need for productivity growth.”
CNBC
March 17, 2017
Since 2000, wage inequality has grown more among men than among women, as the accompanying chart from the Economic Policy Institute shows.
The New York Times
March 16, 2017
In a report released earlier this month, the Economic Policy Institute, a Washington, D.C., think tank, found that some of the fastest wage growth in 2016 took place among the bottom tiers of American workers. Hourly wages for people in the bottom 20% gained 6.4%, while those in the 95th percentile and above gained 1.7%, the institute found. “What stands out in this last year of data is that the economic recovery appears to be finally reaching a broad swath of American workers,” wrote institute economist Elise Gould.
The Wall Street Journal
March 16, 2017
Hiring is up, the unemployment rate is down and wages are growing again. Everyone should be feeling pretty good about the economy, right? Not so fast. Some groups are still earning lower wages than they were in 2000, when the economy was at the end of the previous economic expansion. During the current recovery, wages are finally growing, yet a new analysis from the Economic Policy Institute highlights how those benefits aren’t being equally shared among all demographic groups.
CBS Moneywatch
March 16, 2017
Josh Bivens at EPI has the particularly interesting view that letting the economy run hot would induce a virtuous cycle of greater investment and faster productivity, a point I’ll return to below. (I’ll also be interviewing Josh about it in a forthcoming column)… What would work? Bivens raises an intriguing idea, one I too have written about: More water itself makes the glass bigger. If the Fed were to let the economy run hot, higher real wages would squeeze profits. Producers would then be motivated to make productivity-enhancing investments to maintain profit margins amid rising labor costs. One can also easily imagine higher wages pulling more sideliners back into the workforce.
The Washington Post
March 16, 2017