There’s a broad, national boom in part-time gigs that don’t deliver huge paychecks, including hospitality jobs, experts say. “The leading job growth [in the nation] since the recession has been in low-wage labor, particularly in restaurants. There are jobs, but great jobs aren’t the ones coming back,” said Janelle Jones, an analyst at the liberal Economic Policy Institute in Washington, D.C.
Los Angeles Times
November 18, 2016
The face of the working class is increasingly a woman of color standing behind a cash register or caring for an aging relative. And while the white working class does have plenty of economic gripes, people of color have fared worse. It’s true that among all workers, including whites, wages fell or stagnated for the vast majority over the last several decades. But black workers have long been paid less, on average, than white ones, and that gap has actually increased over the last three decades, according to the Economic Policy Institute. Wages for the poorest 10 percent of white workers managed to increase a paltry 0.7 percent since 1979, but black people in the same income level saw theirs actually drop 8.5 percent. Similarly, white workers in the middle of the income distribution made about 12 percent more by 2015, but the same black workers were just 1.8 percent better off. Hispanic workers have experienced a similar pattern, with those at the bottom seeing wages rise by just 50 cents per hour between 1973 and 2013 and those in the middle actually seeing a decline of 72 cents.
New Republic
November 18, 2016
A return to that? As a nation we pretty much never left. At best, we were barely ending those things when the 2016 election came along. The wage gap between blacks and whites was the worst it’s been in 40 years, said the Economic Policy Institute. Last year, the hourly pay gap between blacks and whites widened to 26.7 percent. Whites earned an average of $25.22 an hour compared to $18.49 for blacks, the EPI found. The EPI said the gap has little to do with access to education and much more to do with “discrimination … and growing earnings inequality in general.” But sure, the 1950s were just great. For some.
The Huffington Post
November 18, 2016
But Lawrence Mishel, president of the progressive Economic Policy Institute, said the defeat of Hillary Clinton and her allies sends a different message: that the neoliberal, pro-free-trade wing of the Democratic Party can’t attract enough working-class votes to win national elections. “There needs to be a populist progressive policy agenda,” said Mishel, “and that’s the agenda of labor.”
Marketplace
November 17, 2016
“After the 9/11 terrorist attacks, we sealed the border with Mexico and Canada, and within a week auto plants in Michigan had to begin shutting down because they were not getting access to parts they depended on from Mexico,” Rob Scott, director of trade and manufacturing at the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank in Washington, DC, told me.
VOX
November 17, 2016
Jabil’s experience underscores the integral roles of China’s armies of migrant workers and Asia’s decades-old supply chain in global electronics production. It is an issue Mr. Trump will need to address if he wants to bring large-scale production back to a U.S. economy that Washington, D.C. think tank Economic Policy Institute estimates has lost more than 5.4 million manufacturing jobs and 82,000 factories between 1997 and 2013.
Wall Street Journal
November 16, 2016
Robert Scott, director of trade and manufacturing policy research at the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute, said he’d like to see NAFTA “fixed” to raise income for Mexican workers so “there is more demand for products made in the U.S.”
CNN Money
November 16, 2016
The White House has argued the updated rule will help restore overtime privileges that have dwindled significantly over the decades. The Economic Policy Institute (EPI) found that repealing the overtime rule would increase inequality, lower incomes and increase the hours of almost a million workers. “The only clear beneficiaries of repeal would be business owners and shareholders, who would see higher profits from reduced payroll costs,” EPI said in an email statement provided to InsideSources. “It makes no sense to reverse the rule and take those raises away from hard-working employees.”
Inside Sources
November 16, 2016
ADetails are scarce, which makes it difficult to assess the plan’s potential effects, said Daniel Costa, the Economic Policy Institute’s director of immigration law and policy research. “It’s hard to know if he’s really going to do all of this,” Costa told ATTN:. “I’m certainly worried, and other people who care about immigrants’ rights are worried.” A Republican-controlled House and Senate could grant Trump’s plan the funding it needs. “There may be some push-back from business Republicans and people who are more fiscally conservative, but I think the Republican Party has shown a willingness to go down this route,” Costa said. But the proposals’ ultimate cost could turn off fiscal conservatives: Cost estimates for Trump’s immigration plan run as high as $166 billion, according to Politico.
ATTN:
November 16, 2016
A report from the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute last year found that the top 10 recipients of the visas in 2012 “were all in the business of outsources and offshoring high-tech American jobs.”
The Hill
November 16, 2016