I spoke to economist Valerie Wilson, director of the Economic Policy Institute’s Program on Race, Ethnicity, and the Economy, about the decline in black unemployment. She cautioned that it’s hard to tell how much is real or sustainable employment growth in one month. As we always say here, never put too much stock into one month’s numbers. But, Wilson noted that we’ve seen bigger decreases in black unemployment in recent years thanks to “the economy getting better as a whole.” When the unemployment rate decreases 1 percentage point nationally, it usually translates to about a 2 percentage point drop in black unemployment, she explained. “You get bigger changes in African American unemployment rate when the labor market gets tighter, because they are the ones left who are still looking for work.” Yet, the disparity between unemployment rates remain: The black unemployment rate is still almost double the white unemployment rate of 4.5 percent.
PBS News Hour
January 11, 2016
Despite the progress, there was a lot of room for improvement. Blacks still have higher unemployment than every other demographic. White unemployment is 4.5%, Hispanic unemployment is 6.3% and Asian unemployment is 4%. While it’s “an important improvement,” the black unemployment rate “would be unacceptable if that were the national rate,” says Valerie Wilson, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute, a think tank.
CNN Money
January 11, 2016
Now, the bad news is how far below fully maxing out the economy’s employment capacity we still are, and how long it may still take to get there. Back at the start of 2015, the Economic Policy Institute estimated we’d need to average 246,000 jobs a month in order to return to the balance of forces we enjoyed at the peak just before the 2008 crash. And even then we wouldn’t get there until the summer of 2017.
The Week
January 11, 2016
More than 25 European industry associations, including a group representing steel producers, have banded together to argue in favor of the status quo. The alliance hailed a study released last September by the U.S.-based Economic Policy Institute alleging that unilateral recognition of China as a market economy by the EU would put as many as 3.5 million jobs in Europe at risk.
Bloomberg
January 11, 2016
According to a report published by the Economic Policy Institute that examined income inequality between the top 1% and everyone else between 1917 and 2012, the share of all income held by the top 1% has grown from 9% between 1973 and 1978 to 22% as of 2012. This marks the highest share of income heading into the hands of the richest Americans since 1928, when 24% of all income was being funneled into the hands of the richest rich.
Fox Business
January 11, 2016
The fear that U.S.-based companies, such as Disney, abuse the H-1B program to replace American workers with cheaper, foreign labor is also at a high. (A 2013 report published by the Brookings Institution found that H-1B visa holders tend to earn more than their U.S native-born counterparts, but Ron Hira at the pro-labor think tank Economic Policy Institute disagrees.)
National Journal
January 8, 2016
Through most of the economic recovery, wage-growth has hovered around 2 percent annually. The Federal Reserve’s target for nominal wage growth (not adjusted for inflation) is 3.5-4.0 percent. According to analysis from the Economic Policy Institute, if the economy had achieved the Fed’s target for wage growth, the average American worker would earn $2.61/hour more than they do today.
Marketplace
January 8, 2016
Wealth inequality is spreading through the economy, and the gap in retirement assets may be even wider. Enrollment in 401(k) plans and other retirement accounts rises sharply with income, as Natalie Sabadish and Monique Morrissey of the pro-labor Economic Policy Institute have shown. Of households in the top fifth of the income ladder, they found, 88% had assets in retirement accounts such as IRAs and 401(k) plans in 2010. Of those in the bottom fifth, only 11% had retirement accounts. Retirement savings of the top 20% averaged about 134% of annual income; for those in the bottom fifth it was 58%.
Los Angeles Times
January 8, 2016
Korea’s won hit a three year low earlier this year, while the Japanese central bank has been engaged in massive monetary stimulus in recent years. The Japanese government argues that this is purely to stimulate domestic demand, but economists like Robert Scott of the Economic Policy Institute have argued that Japan’s tactics are different than, for instance, the Federal Reserve’s quantitative easing, and that currency manipulation on the part of Japan has cost the U.S. hundreds of thousands of jobs per year.
Fortune
January 8, 2016
“I think this Time survey is kind of ridiculous,” said Larry Mishel, an economist and president of the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), a left-leaning think tank. Both Mishel and Krueger were baffled by the finding that 14.4 million people derive significant income from the on-demand economy, a number that is 24 times greater than Krueger’s recent estimate of gig economy workers. The Time survey, which was carried out by the polling agency Penn, Schoen & Berland Associates, also found that 10 percent of the U.S. adult population has “offered” a ride-sharing service at some point.
Larry Mishel of EPI thinks the gig economy gets an outsized amount of attention given its modest size. “People are always interested in the fancy new thing,” Mishel said. “A lot of people in the media world live in cities where they’re using Uber a lot. There’s a built-in megaphone for anything tech companies do and there’s an interest from tech companies to sell this as the future.”
International Business Times
January 8, 2016