The Economic Policy Institute, however, pegs the jobs loss from NAFTA at about 700,000 through 2010. (Trump in the past has cited EPI estimates.) New York, for instance, has lost about 400,000 manufacturing jobs since 1993, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics—and EPI estimates the job losses in New York from NAFTA to be about 34,000. So, clearly, something else is going that has affected manufacturing jobs. Robert E. Scott, EPI’s chief economist, says his estimates show that trade with China and other Pacific Rim nations has accounted for 277,000 jobs lost in New York state. “For some countries, such as China and Japan, currency manipulation is a key driver of those processes,” Scott said. “The failure to include enforceable prohibitions on currency manipulation in these deals is a major flaw that has contributed significantly to the growth of trade deficits and job losses.” EPI’s estimates are not universally accepted, but it is striking that even skeptics of free-trade agreements find Trump’s claims regarding NAFTA to be overblown. Trump’s campaign never responds to fact-checking questions, but it could be that Trump is just using NAFTA as shorthand for all trade deals. “I don’t speak for Trump or defend his claims,” Scott said. “However, I do believe that NAFTA was the template for dozens of trade deals done by the United States and other countries in the post-’93 period.”
The Washington Post
May 9, 2016
But it’s important to remember, as Jamelle Bouie reminds us at Slate this week, that while the white working class is interesting, the working class as a whole is a lot less white than it used to be. And ignoring the views and interests of the black and brown elements of the working class is as big a mistake empirically and morally as ignoring non-college-educated voters generally. Marshaling data from the Economic Policy Institute, Bouie notes the trends that are steadily eroding the stereotypes of “blue-collage” wage earners as white folks: As recently as 2013, more than 60 percent of working-class Americans between 25 and 54 years old were white. If you extend the age bracket to 64, that increases to nearly 63 percent. But in 2014, those numbers—for the first category—dropped to 59.6 percent. In 2015, it was 58.8 percent. This year, non-Hispanic whites are 58 percent of the working class, a historic low.
New York Magazine
May 9, 2016
According to the Economic Policy Institute, any Americans who started their working careers in the mid-1960s have witnessed seven recessions—in 1969, 1973, 1980, 1981, 1990, 2001, and 2008—and have lived through inflation, stagflation, oil shocks, oil rationing, the stock market crash of 1987, the savings and loan collapse, the bursting of the dot-com bubble, the bursting of the housing bubble, and the stock market crash of 2008.
Salon
May 9, 2016
The city is attuned to the risk of aiming too high. Last November, a ballot proposal for a citywide $15 minimum wage by 2019 was voted down. “Fifteen dollars an hour? Let’s not get too greedy. Small businesses can’t absorb that impact,” says White, the laundromat attendant, as a machine goes into the spin cycle. Raising the wage floor has a ripple effect, say experts. “Workers making around or near minimum wage will get a raise because employers like to maintain a wage ladder,” says David Cooper, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute in Washington.
The Christian Science Monitor
May 9, 2016
A recent report from the Economic Policy Institute found that Florida is one of 33 states and Washington, D.C., where the annual cost of infant care is more expensive than college tuition. Average infant care is $8,694 annually, and for a 4-year-old, it’s $7,668.
Florida Times-Union
May 9, 2016
In 23 states, child care costs more than a four-year college education, according to a recent report from the Economic Policy Institute.
The Christian Science Monitor
May 9, 2016
Many progressives have faulted Malloy for moving too slowly and cautiously on their issues, and the poor have suffered for it. Data from the Economic Policy Institute suggest that wages for the bottom 10 percent of workers have fallen from $9.51 in 2011 to $9.08 in 2014, while wages for the median worker have also declined, from $21.26 to $19.89.
Salon
May 9, 2016
Elise Gould, senior economist at the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute, said Friday’s numbers suggested the economy needed to “see stronger wage growth for a sustained period of time before we can say we’re nearing full employment and a healthy economy.”
Politico
May 9, 2016
The issue of wage stagnation could end up playing a dominant role in this year’s presidential election for the first time, according to Larry Mishel, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute, a pro-labor think tank. Wages and benefits have essentially flatlined or declined for four out of five Americans between 2007 and 2014, and except for a few years in the 1990s, they weren’t rising all that fast before that, Mishel noted.
“There’s been a series of decisions that basically all work to undercut the ability of the typical worker to get a better deal from his or her boss,” Mishel said. Among the policy changes responsible for this divergence are the gradual erosion of unions, the failure of Congress to raise the minimum wage and a weakening of overtime protections for many workers, he added. Globalization has also played a part, forcing U.S. employees to compete with workers in low-wage countries who are willing to work for far less. While joblessness has fallen, the economy is still far from full employment, which means workers have less power to bargain for higher pay, Mishel noted. Meanwhile, higher health care costs mean employers have less money to put into wage increases, even if they want to. “Firms are beseiged by pressure from global competition and from other employers. They don’t want to step out and provide higher wages until they have to,” Mishel said.
NPR
May 6, 2016
A couple of weeks ago in this column, I discussed a report from the Economic Policy Institute, which argued that people finishing school this spring still face tough economic times. That’s certainly true for new high school graduates, whose unemployment rate remains well above prerecession levels. And it’s true up to a point for new college graduates, more of whom are being forced to settle for part-time or low-level jobs than before the recession.
FiveThirtyEight
May 6, 2016