The CPC budget is a detailed and sophisticated document. Prepared in conjunction with the Economic Policy Institute, it is projected in parallel with the Congressional Budget Office baseline. Its assumptions, programs, costs and revenue are laid out for all to see. And it is a ringing indictment of our current course.
The Washington Post
March 22, 2016
Larry Mishel and Ross Eisenbrey of the Economic Policy Institute released a new report last week pushing back on a provocative policy prescription that, in response to an ascendant “gig economy,” calls for a third category of worker that blends the employer flexibility of an independent contractor with the legal protections of a traditional employee. The proposal they were commenting on came from economists Seth Harris and Alan Krueger, who argued that establishing a new class of “independent workers” is necessary to address the legal limbo into which such on-demand workers as Uber and Lyft drivers currently fall. The new EPI report fills a big void in the conversation by refuting the claim that many app-workers’ labor is unmeasurable by conventional metrics. Mishel and Eisenbrey argue that this assertion rests on a “mistaken assessment of an Uber driver’s situation,” going on to say that this type of labor still falls within the confines of traditional employment regulations.
The American Prospect
March 22, 2016
The hustle is real: Women are more likely to hold down a second job than men are, according to the Economic Policy Institute. (Pay gap, it keeps giving.) If you’re one of them, don’t just think of it as a check.
Women's Health
March 22, 2016
For starters, the United States runs an annual trade deficit of about $500 billion. The Commerce Department estimates that every $1 billion of exports creates 6,000 jobs. By extension, one might expect that every $1 billion of imports would eliminate 6,000 jobs. This is not entirely true, because imports of things like rare earth elements in which the United States is not self-sufficient actually create jobs rather than eliminating them. On the other hand, economists at MIT and the Economic Policy Institute in Washington conclude that imports from China eliminated about 2.4 million US jobs between 1999 and 2011.
Boston Globe
March 22, 2016
The manufacturing sector, in particular, is vulnerable to unfair trade and currency manipulation, the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute says. It calculates that trade with the 11 other nations in the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership cost 2 million jobs in the U.S. last year.
Sacramento Bee
March 22, 2016
Tipped workers, like waitstaff, are about twice as likely as non-tipped workers to end up in poverty, according to reports from the Economic Policy Institute, which have been cited by the White House (pdf). (The EPI’s findings are not specific to Olive Garden. They are based on the Current Population Survey from the US Census Bureau.)
Quartz
March 22, 2016
The Economic Policy Institute, a liberal think tank partly funded by unions, estimated that more than 850,000 jobs have been lost due to NAFTA since the agreement was enacted in 1994. During that time, the U.S. trade deficit with Mexico swung from a $1.7 billion U.S. surplus in 1993 to a $61.4 billion deficit in 2012, according to the Council on Foreign Relations.
USA Today
March 21, 2016
Last year, economist Alan Krueger and former Labor Department official Seth Harris penned a much-discussed paper arguing that Uber drivers and other on-demand workers belong to a new category of employee—one that should come with certain workplace protections but not others. On Thursday, economist Larry Mishel and lawyer Ross Eisenbrey of the Economic Policy Institute issued a rebuttal, arguing Uber drivers are workers like anyone else.
The Huffington Post
March 21, 2016
The restaurant industry is among the largest in terms of employing minimum wage workers. In New York alone, restaurants rely on over 400,000 such workers, putting it on par with the retail and care sectors, according to the Economic Policy Institute, a think tank that researches the impact of economic trends and policies on American workers. This institute advocates for increasing federal minimum wage as a means of ensuring decent quality of life to these workers. “A parent who works full time and is paid the federal minimum wage does not currently earn enough through work to be above the poverty line,” Economic Policy Institute David Cooper wrote in a recent EPI report.
Christian Science Monitor
March 21, 2016
China is also responsible for many of the manufacturing job losses that have had such a crippling impact on states such as Ohio, according to a report by the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute in Washington. More than 310,000 manufacturing jobs in Ohio vanished between 2000 and 2014, according to the report, which pins the blame on unfair trade practices that made it easier for foreign nations to export goods to American consumers. “That was the era when China trade was decimating manufacturing,” said Robert E. Scott, senior economist at the institute and author of the report. Saying that productivity growth has slowed massively in the past seven years, Scott said, “Trade is responsible for essentially all of the manufacturing job losses.”
Columbus Dispatch
March 21, 2016