Media clips
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Max Sawicky, a former economist at the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal think tank in the U.S., outlined a progressive case against basic income in 2013, calling it a “distraction” from raising the minimum wage, guaranteeing full employment, rolling back Clinton-era welfare reforms and supporting unions — all policies, he argues, “more in keeping with our current system and our political culture.”
FiveThirtyEight April 25, 2016 -
Gabler laments that he might have avoided his fate if his “income had steadily grown the way incomes used to grow in America.” But, he says, “it didn’t, and they don’t.” He claims that inflation-adjusted hourly wages peaked in 1972. That is flat-out wrong. The liberal Economic Policy Institute says that the median hourly wage peaked in 2009. My re-analyses of its estimates—which use a better inflation adjustment—indicate that last year, the median hourly wage was 17 percent higher than in 1973.
National Review April 25, 2016 -
According to a recent report by the Economic Policy Institute, the labor market for recent high school and college graduates has gotten better since the recession, but young people—especially minorities—still face elevated unemployment and weak wage growth. In the report “The Class of 2016,” researchers found the unemployment rate to be 5.6 percent for young college graduates and 9.4 percent for young black college graduates, which is higher than the 9 percent unemployment rate for young white college graduates at the peak of the recession. For young high school graduates, the unemployment rate jumps to 17.9 percent, which is also higher than before the recession. Meanwhile, the unemployment rate for young, black high school graduates is 28.4 percent.
The Boston Globe April 22, 2016 -
The Economic Policy Institute released a report today that shows that for all those advantages, young women still earn far less than young men. According to the EPI’s annual report, male college graduates earned 8.1 percent more in 2016 than in 2000, while female college graduates earned 6.8 percent less than in 2000. Meaning, it’s not only that circumstances aren’t improving as quickly for women as they are for men—they’re getting worse.
Elle April 22, 2016 -
There’s more bad news for women about the gender pay gap. Although more women are graduating from American colleges and universities than ever before, they are still being paid less than their male counterparts when they enter the workforce, the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) indicated in a new report Thursday.
The study published by the Washington-based think tank affiliated with the U.S. labor movement found that the gender wage gap has continued to grow among college graduates since 2000 and that black and Hispanic students have higher unemployment rates than their white peers.
International Business Times April 22, 2016 -
That’s the depressing takeaway from a new report from the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal think tank. The report finds that recent high school graduates are still struggling to find jobs despite the dramatic improvement in the overall labor market. More than one in seven recent high school graduates, which the institute defines as those ages 17 to 20, are neither working nor enrolled in college; their unemployment rate is nearly 18 percent. (Both numbers are elevated compared with before the recession.) Those who do find jobs are experiencing sluggish wage growth.
FiveThirtyEight April 22, 2016 -
Paychecks, meanwhile, just aren’t growing fast enough. A report last year from the Economic Policy Institute found that growth in worker productivity is outstripping wage growth. From 2000 to 2014, productivity increased by 21.6 percent, while median compensation in the U.S. rose by only 1.8 percent.
The Huffington Post April 22, 2016 -
Just as many former renters briefly became homeowners during the housing boom, only to return to renter status, so too did many stock-market dabblers take what was left of their capital and go home. Sure, more than half of American households still own equities, but for most of those investors it’s a modest amount (and the other half owns precisely zero); about two-thirds of equity ownership is held in the top 5 percent of portfolios. The top 20 percent owns 85 percent of all financial assets, according to the Levy Institute; the Economic Policy Institute is even more specific at 87.2 percent. Income gains have been even more skewed toward the top.
Bloomberg April 22, 2016 -
This year’s college grads have good reason to feel a notch better — the unemployment rate for recent college graduates is 5.6%, the lowest rate since June 2008, according to a new report published Thursday by the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning research group. New graduates have been taking it in the chin during the Great Recession and in the years after. They have been stereotyped as unemployed or underemployed — the college grad baristas — for being unable to find jobs that would use their four-year degrees. That situation is improving, but not enough. A lack of quality jobs that pay well continues to plague newbies in the job market. Add to that the burden of skyrocketing college costs, and it’s a tough situation to be in.
CNN Money April 22, 2016 -
Even though the economy has improved since the recession, the class of 2016 is entering a job market that’s still hobbled by weak trends, such as higher levels of unemployment for young Americans and stagnant wages, according to a new study from the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute.
Young college grads, for instance, are suffering from an underemployment rate of 12.6 percent, compared with 9.6 percent in 2007, before the recession started. It’s even worse for recent high-school graduates, with about one-third currently underemployed, compared with roughly 27 percent in 2007, the study found. Underemployment means people who want a full-time job but are working in a part-time role, or who are working in a job that requires fewer skills than they have.
CBS Moneywatch April 22, 2016