ROOM FOR IMPROVEMENT: Economically troubled communities, cross-governmental coordination and the costs of climate change aren’t getting enough attention when it comes to prioritizing infrastructure projects, the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute charges in a report released Wednesday. Among the group’s proposed fixes: Establish a federal body to oversee infrastructure coordination among federal, state and local governments.
Politico Pro
October 20, 2017
And, indeed, what has happened with wages? According to the Economic Policy Institute, from 1973 to 2013, hourly compensation of a typical nonsupervisory worker like a truck driver or hospital worker rose just 9%, while productivity increased 74%. In other words: People have worked hard, but that hard work didn’t translate into bigger paychecks. (EPI cited throughout)
CNN Money
October 19, 2017
Overall, women earn 83 cents for every dollar that men do, according to data released by the Economic Policy Institute earlier this year. The gender wage gap gets even more complicated when the data gets broken down by race. Consider that for every dollar paid to non-Hispanic white men:
- Asian women earn 88 cents
- White women earn 81 cents
- Black women earn 65 cents
- Hispanic women earn 59 cents
Marketplace
October 19, 2017
In the big picture, about 14 million American jobs depend on trade with Mexico and Canada, according to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, a business organization that opposes Trump’s trade agenda. Trump says NAFTA triggered an exodus of good-paying manufacturing jobs to Mexico. Robert Scott, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute, estimates that roughly 800,000 American jobs went to Mexico between 1997 and 2013. NAFTA became law in 1994.
CNN Money
October 18, 2017
Economists are divided on automation’s impact on employment. A study by Daron Acemoglu of MIT and Pascual Restrepo of Boston University published earlier this year found that the number of jobs, and wages, fell in communities where manufacturers had adopted industrial robots. But Lawrence Mishel and Josh Bivens of the Economic Policy Institute offered a critique in a paper of their own. Mishel and Bivens say there’s no evidence that automation is responsible for wage stagnation or inequality or that automation reduces overall employment, even if it affects particular sectors. They also note that investment in automation technologies has slowed in the past decade. Mishel blames other factors, including offshoring, trade agreements, and the weakening of unions, for wage stagnation. “I’m not sure we should be worrying about the impact of technology 20 years from now on jobs as the crisis to focus on, as opposed to the crisis we are living through, which is wage stagnation, which has nothing to do with automation,” Mishel says. (Larry quoted throughout)
WIRED
October 17, 2017
If NDAs are the documents being put in front of workers in close contact with the rich and famous, binding arbitration agreements create a similar wall around the every-man boss. More than 60 million American workers are covered by them and can’t take employer disputes to court, according to a September study by Colvin for the Economic Policy Institute. That number represents about 52 percent of the nation’s non-union workforce.
The Washington Post
October 17, 2017
An Economic Policy Institute study found that “[o]n average, a worker covered by a union contract earns 13.2 percent more in wages than a peer with similar education, occupation, and experience in a non-unionized workplace in the same sector.” Unions are the most powerful engine for elevated wages, and they are seriously threatened by Trump’s immigration demands.
Jacobin
October 17, 2017
That said, Canada is the state’s top trading partner. If tariffs rise, Diamond District merchants who import precious metals could be hurt, as could dealers of agricultural products. But most of the city’s cross-border business is based on providing financial and other services to international clients, and those sectors probably wouldn’t be affected much if NAFTA were torn apart, said Robert Scott of the Economic Policy Institute. Scrapping the deal would be unlikely to stoke investment in factory towns, Scott added, because operating costs are far less in China and elsewhere overseas. “As for upstate manufacturing,” he said, “that ship has sailed.”
Crain's New York
October 16, 2017
A new study finds that the academic gaps present at kindergarten between students from the highest socioeconomic groups and the lowest went unchanged between 1998 and 2010. That’s despite several programs that have been implemented or expanded during that time to help students living in poverty catch up to their more well-to-do peers. “Early gaps are consequential for children, policy, and society, and it is beyond disappointing that we haven’t found the way to narrow these gaps solidly,” wrote Emma García, a co-author of the study, in an email interview with Education Week. And fixing the problem, she said, will require widescale change. (whole story)
Education Week
October 16, 2017
Those wage increases can make a big difference in the lives of the working poor. For a full-time worker making $10 an hour, another $1 an hour means an extra $2,080 a year, or the equivalent of three months of transportation costs or five months of food for the average low income household, according to research from the Economic Policy Institute. It also means they’re less likely to rely on government assistance. … The impact of Walmart’s pay increase is most pronounced in sections of the country, primarily the Midwest and South, where the state-mandated minimum wage is low, and Walmart is the dominant employer, says David Cooper, an analyst at the Economic Policy Institute. (Dave quoted throughout)
Quartz
October 16, 2017