Having your kid or kids supervised by people, programs or the government while you work can be incredibly expensive depending on where you live and what you do. Last year, for example, the Economic Policy Institute found that rent cost less than child care in 500 out of 618 residential areas it studied. In 33 states, infant care was more expensive than college tuition at four-year public schools. “People save for years and years and go into debt to go to college,” Elise Gould, an economist who worked on the report, told the New York Times. “And here are these young families, they haven’t been saving for 18 years to send their kid to day care.”
International Business Times
May 11, 2016
America’s politicians—beholden to global corporate interests who profit from offshoring—have enabled jobs theft in every imaginable way. They have tolerated foreign trade cheating while enacting trade deals that encourage companies to shift production overseas. In recent months, for instance, we have seen Carrier air conditioning lay off 1,400 workers and move to Mexico. Since NAFTA was signed in 1993, we’ve lost approximately 900,000 jobs to Mexico alone, the pro-labor Economic Policy Institute found.
Reuters
May 11, 2016
The Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning advocacy group in Washington, D.C., estimates that the top CEOs in the US make at least 300 times more than the average worker, a figure which has skyrocketed up from just 20 times as much in 1965. In 2014, for example, a CEO of a top company made over $16 million a year, compared to roughly $53,000 for an average employee.
The Christian Science Monitor
May 11, 2016
Economist Elise Gould at the progressive Economic Policy Institute said that while it is true that the number of job openings has risen substantially, there are still a lot of unemployed job seekers in the labor market. And many companies have been reluctant to actually hire. “They may not really be actively looking for employees to fill them,” Gould said. “Or they may think, ‘Oh, I’ll see if somebody might be interested at this relatively low wage I’m willing to offer, but I’m not willing to fill it if I have to pay a lot more.’”
Marketplace
May 10, 2016
Nearly 87 percent of Maryland students graduate from high school, but not all of them go on to study at colleges and universities. In fact, thousands of them do not continue their education, despite research from the Economic Policy Institute in 2013 showing the lopsided earning potential of Americans with four-year college degrees compared to those without a degree: 98 percent more money per hour on average.
Baltimore Sun
May 10, 2016
It is about time the topic gained momentum. In the US, average pay for a top chief executive is more than 300 times median salaries, according to the Economic Policy Institute. In 1965, it was just 20 times. In the UK, that multiple is now 183 times, according to the High Pay Centre.
Financial Times
May 10, 2016
Clinton has pointed in particular to currency manipulation protections, intellectual property provisions related to the pharmaceutical industry and the impact on American jobs as her primary concerns. But she’s left open some room to potentially change her mind on the deal if certain tweaks are made. “She hasn’t really addressed the issues,” Robert E. Scott, a senior economist who focuses on trade at the Economic Policy Institute, told Bloomberg BNA May 5. “She supported most of the other major trade deals over the last 20 years, so she seems to be someone inclined to go with the status quo here in Washington.”
Bloomberg
May 10, 2016
Economic Policy Institute analyst Elise Gould is among those who believe Friday’s report should prompt the Fed to keep its powder dry until it is certain that the job market recovery has been completed. The Fed raised rates in December for the first time in nearly a decade. “There’s no incentive for a rate increase in the near future,” Gould wrote.
Reuters
May 9, 2016
Not everyone is convinced that the long-term unemployed have become permanently disconnected from the labor market. In 2014, researchers at the Federal Reserve argued that the long-term unemployed were actually finding jobs as the economy improved. Other economists believe that the slow improvement in the fortunes of the long-term unemployed are a result of the sluggish recovery. “I don’t think there’s anything permanently damaging about being long-term unemployed in this recession in terms of their ability to work or be gainfully employed,” said Elise Gould, a senior economist at the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute. “Whether the economy completely gets back to full employment or whether or not it strengthens enough to pull those people back in is another question.”
Politico
May 9, 2016
And after showing signs of progress in recent months, the country’s labor force participation rate—which represents the share of Americans who are either employed or actively looking for work—dropped to a three-month low of 62.8 percent. “In general this indicator has been on the rise, and hopefully this is just a one-month blip. Rising labor force participation is a sign that more people are getting off the sidelines and starting to look for work,” Elise Gould, a senior economist and director of health policy research at the Economic Policy Institute, wrote in a research note Friday. “Many workers have been waiting in the wings for a while, and as they begin to more actively seek work, this can put downward pressure on wages.”
U.S. News & World Report
May 9, 2016