Lost in the flurry of activity is the pressing question of how to deal with the American retirement crisis. The median working-age family had $5,000 saved for retirement in 2013, according to an Economic Policy Institute analysis of Federal Reserve data. Nearly half of working-age families had no retirement savings at all, the analysis showed.
Bloomberg
February 3, 2017
Marketplace
February 3, 2017
It is too early to tell if Yellen’s appointment could lead more women to be interested in economics. But representation matters and seeing a woman appointed to one of the top economic posts in the world could inspire a new generation of female economist, said Elise Gould, senior economist at the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute. “It’s important to have a black president to see that it’s possible. It doesn’t change the world, right? Having that. Obviously, we didn’t end racism in the country. But, it matters,” she said. As in other professions, Yellen’s gender has been a cause of concern for some.
The Guardian
February 2, 2017
Ohio lost 121,500 jobs due to the United States’ trade deficit with China, according to a new report.The jobs that disappeared, between 2001 and 2015, represented more than 2.3 percent of Ohio’s employment, according to the report released Tuesday by the liberal Economic Policy Institute in Washington, D.C. The rankings in the report were based on the share of employment a state lost to trade with China. Ohio ranked 24th out of the 50 states and Washington, D.C.
Cleveland Plain Dealer
February 2, 2017
Research has found that this has a serious impact on everyone’s wages, even those not in unionized workplaces. According to a paper from the Economic Policy Institute, wages in right-to-work states were 3.1 percent lower as of 2012 than in those without these laws, even when controlling for a variety of factors. That translates into a loss of more than $1,500 a year for an individual full-time worker.
Think Progress
February 2, 2017
Republicans have long insisted that repealing the Affordable Care Act will create jobs. A new report out Tuesday suggests that the Republicans have it wrong ― that, if anything, repeal will cause more joblessness, at least of the involuntary kind. Like all such reports, this one reflects assumptions that critics will question. But the finding is consistent with other recent studies challenging the conservative arguments about repeal. It also jibes with some pretty standard theories about how the economy works.
Huffington Post
February 1, 2017
Donald Trump’s promise to be the “greatest jobs president God ever produced” could brush up against his antipathy to the Affordable Care Act, according to a new analysis. An Economic Policy Institute (EPI) study released Tuesday (incidentally, the last day of Obamacare enrollment, potentially ever) finds that repealing former President Barack Obama’s signature health law would lead to nearly 1.2 million fewer jobs in America by 2019. In fact, there would be fewer jobs in every single U.S. state.
Fortune
February 1, 2017
About 3.4 million U.S. jobs were lost because of China’s mercantile trade policies between 2001 and 2015, according to the Economic Policy Institute, a Washington, D.C. think tank that backs policies supporting the lower and middle classes. Over that period, the U.S. trade deficit has grown from $83 billion to $367.2 billion, according to Robert Scott, the institute’s senior economist and author of the report. About 2.6 million of the jobs lost were in manufacturing, the report found. Mr. Scott said China’s aggressive export strategy also has forced down the wages of the average American worker by $1,800 annually.
Pittsburgh Post Gazette
February 1, 2017
Josh Bivens, research and policy director at the Economic Policy Institute, agreed. “Even in more conventional administrations in the past, there has been a tension between the Fed and the president,” he said. “This is a much less conventional administration, so I think they will be pretty free to express their displeasure.”
The Washington Post
February 1, 2017
Programs targeting skilled workers, like the ones identified in the memo, are even more clearly beneficial. Proponents of programs like H-1B claim virtually magic properties for them. Skeptics argue, plausibly, that this is overhyped. But their counterarguments involve arguing, as Ross Eikenberry does at the Economic Policy Institute, that “H-1B visas do not create jobs or improve conditions for US workers.” This criticism, based on careful, methodologically rigorous, firm-based analysis, shows that while companies that win H-1B lottery slots do hire more people, that’s because “new H-1Bs substantially and statistically significantly crowd out median employment of other workers.”
VOX
February 1, 2017