Data from the Labor Department’s Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey show that there are about three to four unemployed construction workers available for every job, Elise Gould, a labor market economist for the Economic Policy Institute, told Bloomberg BNA June 30. “We’ve made great strides in recovery,” Gould said. “There are still more unemployed workers out there for every job opening. That’s true across most sectors. If you look at something like construction, you still see that there are many multiples of unemployed construction workers for every job opening out there. It looks like there are a lot of construction workers lining up for every job.”
Bloomberg BNA
July 7, 2016
Today, the Economic Policy Institute released a brief on a student survey on internships and jobs. The survey found: Overall, an employer was far more likely to offer a job to a student prior to graduation if he or she had an internship or co-op — especially a paid position. The gap in offer rates between students with internship/co-op experience and those without such experience grew from 12.6 percent in 2011 to 20 percent in 2015 (56.5 percent versus 36.5 percent).
The Atlanta Journal Constitution
July 7, 2016
Unpaid internships are less likely to lead to paid job offers. Seventy-two percent of graduates who took paid internships got job offers, according to a survey of class of 2015 graduates released this year by the National Association of Colleges and Employers that was recirculated Wednesday by the Economic Policy Institute. For unpaid internships the percentage falls to 44 percent.
The Huffington Post
July 7, 2016
A new report from Oxfam and the Economic Policy Institute reveals that nearly half of all U.S. workers earn under $15 an hour. Almost half of private sector workers lack even one single paid sick day; over 80 percent of low-wage workers have no access to earned sick leave. In fact, the United States has both the highest percentage of workers in low-paid work, and the fewest required number of sick days, of any rich country on earth.
U.S. News & World Report
July 6, 2016
The bigger increases for low-wage workers partly reflect a tightening labor market that saw that group lag behind higher earners for years, but they mostly stem from the minimum wage hikes, says Moody’s Chief Economist Mark Zandi. Earnings gains for the 10th percentile of workers grew nearly twice as fast last year in states that passed minimum wage increases, an Economic Policy Institute study showed.
USA Today
July 6, 2016
During the past few decades, retirement plans shifted from traditional pensions with set payouts to 401(k)s, where you pay into a personal investment account with no guarantees.
“The recession had a huge impact on retirement savings, and on other forms of wealth,” said Monique Morrissey with the Economic Policy Institute. She recently published a report showing 401(k)s mostly benefit the highest earners. That’s because middle- and low-income people may not have the tools to manage their investments successfully, or may not be able to afford to pay into the accounts at all.
And the recession decimated savings for many people, but lower-income people have recovered less of that wealth in the recovery. She said most working-age Americans have little to no money saved to retire, a problem that was compounded by the collapse of the housing market.
“At the same time that people’s 401(k) balances went south, their housing values also tanked,” she said. “Most people think they’re alone and they feel very anxious about that. They should feel anxious. But they’re not alone.”
Marketplace
July 6, 2016
Mark Price is labor economist for Keystone Research Center in Pennsylvania who worked on a report calculating income inequality county by county for the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank based in Washington DC. He says some small counties in Texas had people with very high incomes, which drove up the gap. “I think it’s a mixed picture,” Price says. “Certainly there are some rural Texas counties that have some folks with some high incomes, very high relative to everyone else’s incomes.”
Texas Standard
July 6, 2016
Meanwhile, decades of studies show that not only have minimum-wage increases not undermined workers’ overall economic security but also that New Jersey has suffered some of the country’s worst wage stagnation. The state’s richest 1 percent of households have captured over 80 percent of the rise in earnings since 2009, according to the Economic Policy Institute. Between 2007 and 2013, moreover, according to census data, the working-poor population has risen steadily statewide from 20.9 percent to 25.3 percent.
The Nation
July 6, 2016
At the same time, many families are contending with stagnant or even declining wages, which is placing even more stress on already strained household budgets. In 33 states and the District of Columbia, child care costs more than college tuition, while day care costs more than rent in most American cities, the Economic Policy Institute found in a 2015 report.
CBS News
July 6, 2016
“If your parents are living paycheck to paycheck, how are you going to do it?” said Ross Eisenbrey, vice president of the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal think tank that focuses on labor and economic issues. “It restricts access to jobs in government to a narrower group of people.”
The New York Times
July 6, 2016