And though many in the education space would argue that a two to four year degree is absolutely necessary for students to be able to get a job, a 2016 report from the Economic Policy Institute shows that the unemployment rate for college graduates still hovers around 5.6% and underemployment at 12.6%, with a 9.4% unemployment rate for black college graduates. And overall, wages for both high school and college are still fairly progressing poorly, having had little to no growth since 2000.
Education Dive
July 13, 2017
Can’t find good workers? Pay up!
CNN Money/Patrick Gillespie
Jobs may be going unfilled, says Lawrence Mishel, president of the Economic Policy Institute, a left learning research group. But, he asks, “at what wage? That’s the question. Will employers start to make job conditions better to attract more workers? If they’re not doing that, then they’re not facing much of a shortage.”
CNN Money
July 12, 2017
REPORT: TRADE DEALS HURT MAJORITY OF U.S. WORKERS: International trade agreements that have focused on corporate interests over workers’ benefits — without doing enough to offset costs or address currency misalignments — have become a “deep economic wound” for the working class and a “political disaster for the country,” according to a new report out today from the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute. “The effects of globalization and our failed policy response to it are not just a problem for white manufacturing workers in the Rust Belt, but in fact affect the majority of workers and likely fall disproportionately on the wages of nonwhite workers,” EPI’s Josh Bivens, the director of research, writes in the report. The administration must take steps to address differences in currency and compensate negatively affected workers and should stop pursuing new omnibus trade deals that “provide increased protection for corporate profits while undercutting American wages,” the report says.
Politico
July 12, 2017
“Since at least 2013, Uber’s individual contracts with its drivers have contained an arbitration clause that prohibits the drivers from participating in a class or collective action,” writes Katherine V.W. Stone in a report for the Economic Policy Institute. “This composite mandatory arbitration/class action waiver clause has been the Sword of Damocles hanging over the Uber class action litigation.” … Plus, in the end, arbitration hearings rarely swing workers’ way. According to the Economic Policy Institute, employees win arbitration hearings about one-fifth of the time; workers are 1.7 times more likely to win hearings in federal court and 2.6 times more likely to win hearings in state court.
CityLab
July 12, 2017
Removing all of the chain stores, he said, “raises a big red caution flag about the representativeness of their sample.” Thus, argues Reich, the interpretation reached by the study is questionable. He adds that the UofW report failed to provide any evidence that “their sample is representative of all jobs in Seattle and Washington.” Similar criticism of the study’s methodology has been leveled by others, including Ben Spielberg of Teach For America and by Ben Zipperer and John Schmitt of the Economic Policy Institute.
Bloomberg
July 11, 2017
Labor economists at the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank, estimate that about 17 percent of US workers have unstable schedules. That, in turn, is linked to higher rates of work-family conflict and stress.
VOX
July 11, 2017
A recent study on Seattle’s $15-an-hour minimum wage law reignited the debate over whether higher minimums help workers by lifting pay or harm them by leading employers to cut hours. The study, by University of Washington researchers, found more harm than good, a result that was at odds with a large body of previous research and was challenged by other economists who saw flaws in the study.
The New York Times
July 8, 2017
It’s tempting to say I thought anyone who worked couldn’t be poor. That’s naïve. Real wages for the two-thirds of Americans without a four-year degree have dropped since 1979, according to the Economic Policy Institute. Meanwhile the cost of a degree has roughly doubled over the past three decades. Today, half of American jobs pay about $37,000 or less each year, a quarter pay about $23,000 or less, and a family of four qualifies for SNAP at $32,000 or less. No wonder just over half of all SNAP families work, according to the United States Department of Agriculture. In America, “real” poverty is not about a lack of work, but a lack of compensation.
The New York Times
July 8, 2017
In St. Louis, the minimum wage was going to increase to $11 an hour in January. Now, that won’t happen. And the Economic Policy Institute estimates 38,000 workers could miss out on a raise.
CBS News
July 7, 2017
Moreover, as law professor and health policy expert Nicholas Bagley notes, arbitration tends “to favor the repeat players who hire them — companies, not consumers.” Several studies have found that forced arbitration typically produces worse outcomes for consumers and workers. An Economic Policy Institute study of employment cases, for example, found that employees are less likely to prevail before an arbitrator, and that they typically receive less money if they do prevail.
Think Progress
July 7, 2017