Still, some economists believe that the country hasn’t yet reached a full recovery. They caution that workers with less education and fewer skills continue to lag behind, as do some geographic regions, like the Midwest and South. Compared with before the recession, more workers are sitting out of the labor force entirely, not working and not looking for jobs. And the unemployment rate for African Americans and Hispanics remains above its pre-recession low, said Elise Gould, senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute. “I think we could aim higher,” Gould said.
Washington Post
January 6, 2017
Elise Gould, senior economist at the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute, was more cautious. Gould said that “we can expect to continue to see improvements in the labor market over the next couple of years as we approach full employment,” but added that the pace of wage growth is “still below levels consistent with the Fed’s target inflation rate and trend productivity growth.”
Politico
January 6, 2017
Elise Gould at the Economic Policy Institute said there’s no sign that wage growth is putting any worrisome upward pressure on inflation at the moment. But if there’s a hint wages are starting to push prices up, inflation hawks will be clamoring for the Federal Reserve to hike interest rates more aggressively, to cool things down.
Marketplace
January 6, 2017
Before Obama could even think about shifting structural power, he had to stop the country from hemorrhaging jobs. The Great Recession and its aftermath consumed his first term, and his priority was to keep as many people employed as possible. History will judge him well on this front, said Lawrence Mishel, an economist and president of the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal research group. With help from Congress, Obama extended unemployment benefits for laid-off workers. He pumped vast stimulus into the economy, both through infrastructure spending and aid to states. And he extended a crucial rescue of the auto industry that began under President George W. Bush. “That was over the resistance of his economic team,” Mishel said of the auto bailout. “It was brave, and it was politically unpopular, except in the Upper Midwest. That had a huge effect.”
The Huffington Post
January 6, 2017
This week, minimum-wage workers in 19 states and 23 cities and counties will be getting a bump in their paycheck. In total, 4.3 million people will be getting a raise, according to an estimate by the Economic Policy Institute.
Buzzfeed
January 6, 2017
A 2015 study by the Economic Policy Institute — a nonprofit, nonpartisan think tank that gets just over a quarter of its funding from labor unions — found wages and benefits in right-to-work states were lower than those in non-right-to-work states. The study controlled for variables across states (like demographics, jobs, economic conditions and cost-of-living differences) and still found that wages in right-to-work states were 3.1 percent lower than those in non-right-to-work states. There were disparities in employer-sponsored health insurance and pensions, too.
WFPL
January 6, 2017
The Economic Policy Institute, a pro-labor think tank, reports that right-to-work is associated with lower annual wages of $1,558 for a typical full-time worker. Wages in Kentucky already lag the national average. Pushing wages lower is going in the wrong direction.
Lexington Herald-Leader
January 6, 2017
The poverty rate for African-Americans is 27.4 percent while just 9.9 percent among whites, according to the Economic Policy Institute. The unemployment rates for African-Americans are nearly double that of whites – 8.8 percent in the African-American community and 4.3 percent for whites, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Chicago Tribune
January 6, 2017
It is now apparent to anyone paying attention that the trends driving the working and middle classes’ woes—from decades of expanding corporate power to the silencing of workers’ voices—will be exacerbated by the incoming Trump administration. Here are six charts from the Economic Policy Institute that underscore the systemic inequities for workers that will persist—and almost certainly worsen—under the right-wing doctrine of Trumponomics
The American Prospect
January 6, 2017