The Economic Policy Institute studied child care workers nationwide and found that only 15 percent of them receive health insurance from their employer and only 9.6 percent have a pension plan. Nearly 15 percent of them live below the poverty line
The Huffington Post
August 30, 2016
Josh Bivens talked about his recent Economic Policy Institute report on U.S. economic recovery. He asserted that Republican policymakers are to blame for what he said is one of the slowest economic recoveries in recent history.
C-SPAN
August 30, 2016
Washington Post
August 30, 2016
In May 2008, U.S. school departments employed 8.4 million teachers, administrators, and other staff. Today, they employ just 8.2 million, despite the fact that those schools now serve 1 million more students, according to Department of Education estimates. And while those teachers are being asked to serve more students, they’re making less money: According to a new analysis from the Economic Policy Institute, weekly wages for public-school teachers have declined 5 percent over the past five years.
New York Magazine
August 30, 2016
The trend is especially bleak since the financial collapse. Black households overall experienced a major income decline with the recession as well as the subsequent years, according to Economic Policy Institute: “the weak labor market of the 2000–2007 business cycle, along with the Great Recession, have wiped out all improvements in median black income since 1994.”
The Nation
August 30, 2016
The first complication here is that, even from a technical perspective, it’s hard to see why the Fed is even contemplating another interest rate hike in December. Rod Adams, a neighborhood organizer from Minneapolis, noted in a particularly impassioned moment that there’s essentially no indication that inflation is on the rise. Fed officials’ own projections show inflation will just barely touch 2 percent through 2018. Josh Bivens, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute who joined Fed Up at Jackson Hole, argued that fully healing the damage from the Great Recession will require a prolonged period of overshooting the Fed’s inflation target…There are practical policy changes the Fed could make as well. Bivens has released work on alternative tools the Fed could develop to pop bubbles without causing all that collateral damage: Higher capital requirements for banks, more use of its research powers and public relations to alert the markets to bubbles, and other ideas that already lie in the scope of the Fed’s powers. Rosengren said the Fed should use all tools at its disposal to fight financial instability. But if Fed officials are looking for practical ways to build Fed Up’s concerns more fully into its ways of doing business, it could start by developing those tools and explicitly rejecting interest rate hikes as a way to combat bubbles.
The Week
August 30, 2016
A 2015 study by the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute on the employment effects of President Obama’s climate change policies found that over all, the initiatives would cut jobs in industries like coal mining, but increase jobs in industries like wind and solar development, leading to a net gain of 24,342 jobs by 2030. But that number, the study showed, includes a loss of 202,238 jobs associated with coal mining and coal-fired power generation in regions where they might not be replaced by the 256,177 new jobs associated with the manufacture of energy-efficient lighting and heating and cooling systems.
The New York Times
August 29, 2016
The larger challenge for schools, however, may be longer-term: attracting teachers. Tight school budgets — and the broader pushback against public-sector payrolls in many states — have squeezed teacher salaries. Average weekly wages for public school teachers have dropped 5 percent over the last five years, according to a new analysis by the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute. Moreover, teacher salaries are falling further behind those of other professions that require a college degree; the trend holds up even after accounting for more generous public-sector benefits. The growing gap could have serious consequences: As my former colleague Hayley Munguia wrote last year, evidence shows that fewer top students are going into, or staying in, teaching.
FiveThirtyEight
August 29, 2016
On taxes, Boushey’s major points have included that the tax code has not kept up with income inequality, that tax increases meant to alleviate income inequality won’t necessarily harm economic growth, that a more progressive tax code could help taxpayers across the board and that there’s no evidence that the top marginal rate has much of an impact on job growth. (Boushey, executive director of the Washington Center for Equitable Growth, also wrote a book recently on the economic impact of families struggling with work-life balance, and has advocated a higher minimum wage and closing the gender pay gap.) “Her passion these days is about helping individuals balance work and family,” Larry Mishel of the Economic Policy Institute told MarketWatch. “And that is really an important part of the Clinton agenda.”
Politico
August 29, 2016
“There is still a lot of hope that Janet Yellen is more ally than adversary,” said Josh Bivens, research and policy director at the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank that was involved in the protest. “But we also realize that the Fed has a lot of cross-cutting political pressures.”
Washington Post
August 26, 2016