Media clips
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Live-in domestic servants are uniquely vulnerable to abuse because their work takes place out of sight, experts say – which also makes it difficult to estimate how many are in the United States. Roughly 2 million people work in “in-home” professions, from housecleaning to elder care, according to a 2013 report from the Economic Policy Institute. Those who are live-in workers, or immigrants, are especially difficult to tally, and especially vulnerable.
Christian Science Monitor February 10, 2016 -
The Economic Policy Institute says the biggest decline in wages from 2013 to 2014 occurred among those with undergraduate and advanced degrees. Just think what it would mean to Walmart if those Americans were paid better salaries: more customers in stores and online.
Philadelphia Inquirer February 10, 2016 -
While collectors for other types of loans also pursue debtors behind bars, federal student loans are different because the government is the collector, which means taxpayer money is spent trying to reach borrowers who cannot easily communicate with the outside world and have few opportunities to earn money to repay the debt. McMillan, for example, said she was making less than a dollar per hour at her job as a suicide-prevention aid worker at Rikers. The average federal prison worker makes about 92 cents per hour, according to the Economic Policy Institute.
Bloomberg February 10, 2016 -
Government assistance helps millions of Americans afford health care, housing, food, and child care. Such programs have become the right wing’s go-to scapegoat for budgetary bloat and government dependency. But a new report from the Economic Policy Institute shows that a large chunk of government-assistance spending is due to the prevalence of low-wage work in this country.
The American Prospect February 10, 2016 -
But the reality is that tens of millions of Americans with full-time jobs are working for low hourly wages and cannot afford to cover the monthly basics, according to David Cooper, a poverty and minimum wage analyst at the Economic Policy Institute in Washington. In a government data analysis released Tuesday by the liberal-leaning think tank, Cooper said there are 41.2 million working people, or nearly 30 percent of the workforce, receiving public assistance such as food stamps, housing subsidies and cash assistance to make ends meet. Nearly half of those workers, 19.3 million people, had full-time jobs and most were earning less than $12.16 per hour in wages, Cooper wrote in his analysis. “When corporations pay wages so low that working people must rely on public assistance, taxpayers are effectively subsidizing these companies to make up the difference between what workers make and what they need to support themselves and their families,” he wrote.
International Business Times February 10, 2016 -
See excerpt: The results of the Program for International Student Assessment, or PISA, the test that is used to do an international ranking of students’ academic performance, will be trumpeted later this year, and the responses will undoubtedly repeat those of previous years: U.S. officials will wring their hands and lament that American student achievement is stagnant, that it is lagging woefully behind our economic competitors’, and that we therefore need to import features of schooling from higher-scoring countries. This edu-masochism—a distinctly American way of focusing on our educational shortcomings—can be traced at least back to the late 1950s and the Soviet Union’s launch of Sputnik. Perhaps the nation’s early trailblazing successes in establishing mass schooling and developing a uniquely excellent system of higher education have left U.S. educators particularly vulnerable to charges that other nations are surpassing us.gar
Education Week February 10, 2016 -
In a study a few years ago, Robert E. Scott, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute, found that New Hampshire had suffered more on a percentage basis than any other state from the loss of jobs to China. His analysis can be read here. He calculated that jobs lost to China in the ten years to 2011 totaled 20,400. That’s a big number for a small state and it represented 2.94 percent of the state’s total workforce.
Forbes February 10, 2016 -
See excerpt: On Tuesday, the White House will unveil its annual federal budget. In recent years, the traditional hand-wringing over budget deficits sensibly took a back seat to ensuring that spending cuts did not drag on the still-incomplete economic recovery. Now, however, pressure is building again to reduce deficits. There’s still little economic evidence, however, that we should start cutting spending to reduce the deficit. In the near term, with interest rates and inflation both ultra-low, it’s clear that the primary problem in the economy remains insufficient demand, which keeps labor markets weak and wage growth slow. Rapid deficit reduction through spending cuts would exacerbate this and further stall a full economic recovery.
USA Today February 9, 2016 -
Now there is a report, released by the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute earlier this month, that adds further credence to this line of analysis. Titled “Balancing paychecks and public assistance: How higher wages would strengthen what government can do,” EPI’s new report shows that policy designed to give American workers a raise wouldn’t just be the right thing to do in terms of economic and social justice. It’d help create a more efficient and effective government, too. Recently, Salon spoke over the phone with David Cooper, the study’s author, about his findings as well as their larger implications. An edited version of our conversation can be found below.
So what was the overarching public policy question you wanted to address with this study?
The motivation behind the study is the recognition that it takes a lot of income for folks to have a decent quality of life. We have a tool called the Family Budget Calculator that calculates throughout the country what we would consider a modest, but adequate, standard of living. It tells you exactly what we expect one would need to cover everything from housing, rent, a car payment, childcare, healthcare, and when you add up all those numbers, it comes up with a budget. In most parts of the country, those numbers are a lot higher than you would get if you were, say, earning the minimum wage in most places.
Salon February 9, 2016 -
The critical benchmark was not average wages but the experience at the median, where outcomes had been depressed by an unequal distribution of pay and growth, he said. Real median hourly wages fell an annual 0.3 per cent from 2007-14, according to the Economic Policy Institute.
Financial Times February 9, 2016