Media clips
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The February jobs report showed wages rising 2.8 percent in February from the prior year. According to Elise Gould, a senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute, economic growth is finally leading to worker shortages, which gives employees more bargaining power and translates into wage gains. But wages still have a lot of progress to make, says Gould. In the decades following World War II, growth translated into broad-based gains for workers. But in the late 1970s and early 1980s, something in the economy shifted. For the last four decades, workers have been producing steadily more, but their wages haven’t kept pace.
The Washington Post March 10, 2017 -
“This is very much in line with the kind of job growth we’ve seen over the last several years,” says economist Elise Gould of the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute… “I would love to see that job growth rate for the next two to four years,” Gould says. But she notes that it can’t go on forever. The economy is already close to full employment, which most economists think is somewhere around 5% unemployment. (There will always be people looking for work, even in a very healthy economy.) Adding 208,000 jobs a month won’t be possible after awhile, Gould says. There won’t be enough workers left to fill the posts, at least not without immigration, something Trump is pushing to limit.
CNN Money March 10, 2017 -
HORSLEY: Some forecasters were expecting even stronger job gains after an encouraging payroll report earlier in the week. Economist Elise Gould of the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute notes hiring in February was roughly on par with the last month of the Obama administration.
ELISE GOULD: It’s important to remember that President Trump inherited an economy that was already making steady progress towards full employment. Today’s numbers of 235,000 are very much in line with what we saw in January – 238,000 jobs added – or what we saw in February of last year – 237,000 jobs.
NPR March 10, 2017 -
“The share of adults between the ages of 25 and 54 with a job hasn’t even recovered to pre-Great Recession levels, which were, in turn, far below the peaks reached in the late 1990s,” said Josh Bivens, director of research at the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute. “And most importantly, no durable and significant acceleration of wage growth to healthy levels has happened yet.”
The New York Times March 10, 2017 -
In the United States, employers have been hiring solidly for so long that in some industries, they’re being compelled to raise pay. Hourly wages for the typical worker rose 3.1 percent in 2016, according to a report this week by the Economic Policy Institute. That’s much higher than the 0.3 percent average annual pay gain, adjusted for inflation, since 2007, the EPI said. Minimum wage increases last year in 17 states and Washington, D.C., helped raise pay among the lowest-paid workers, the EPI found. Pay increases for the poorest 10 percent of workers were more than twice as high in states where the minimum wage rose as in states where it did not.
The Associated Press March 10, 2017 -
For decades, the story was simple: The gap between the rich and the poor grew ever-wider as incomes increased faster at the top than the bottom. The story was true, too. Wages have been rising faster for the top 5 percent than for the bottom 20 percent almost every year this century. But in a remarkable reversal, annual wage growth has been greater (as a percent) for the poor than for the rich in the last few years. A new report by the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute found that wages grew faster in 2016 for the poorest quintile than for the richest. The trend was particularly pronounced for white workers. The poorest 10 percent of white workers collectively saw a 5.1 percent raise in 2016, twice as faster as the 2 percent growth among the richest decile percent.
The Atlantic March 10, 2017 -
Some demographic groups lag even further behind. According to an analysis from the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal think tank, while white women make 81 percent of what a white man does, black women only earn 65.1 percent of what white men do, while Hispanic women make just 59.3 percent as much as white men. The gender gap has persisted despite the fact that women are now earning bachelor’s and advanced degrees at higher rates than men. Women earn less than men, on average, at every level of education. “If women can’t educate themselves out of the gender wage gap, then there must be something else going on,” said Elise Gould, senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute.
FiveThirtyEight March 10, 2017 -
In addition to the H-1B visas for skilled professionals, the government offers a wide variety of other visas, including H-2A and H-2B visas to bring in low-skilled workers for jobs that Americans supposedly won’t do, such as picking produce and landscaping. An Economic Policy Institute analysis in 2015 found that the wages of low-skilled guest workers were 11 percent lower than the wages of legal immigrant workers ― and about the same as undocumented immigrants earn ― largely because their employers control their visas. The labor-backed think tank has also reported that wages are flat or falling in the top 15 occupations for H-2B visa holders. Guest-worker programs represent a bigger threat to American workers than immigration does, according to the institute’s Daniel Costa. “The place where you should start is fixing the guest-worker programs,” Costa said. “That’s where there’s actual evidence it’s keeping wages low.”
Huffington Post March 10, 2017 -
The people who take care of America’s children, and make it possible for their parents to work outside the home, are paid less than dog trainers or janitors. “Despite the crucial nature of their work, child care workers’ job quality does not seem to be valued in today’s economy,” wrote Elise Gould, the author of a 2015 report by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI). Child care workers — including people who care for children in day care centers, in preschools, as nannies, through religious organizations, and in other facilities — are paid almost 40 percent less than all other workers.
VOX March 9, 2017 -
Women make up 47 percent of the workforce, according to economist Kate Bahn of the left-leaning Center for American Progress. But it’s unclear how many of those women chose — or were able — to strike. “Even as the economy has improved, there’s still a lot of economic insecurity,” said Elise Gould, an economist with the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute. That point was highlighted by some critics of the march, engaged in an emerging debate over whether women were undervalued, or whether the strike was elitist; “the chasm between the haves and the have-nots is creating tension within the feminist movement,” the Washington Post writes.
PBS News Hour March 9, 2017