Economists at the liberal-leaning Economic Policy Institute have long pointed to the negative effects of free trade, with massive loss of jobs to Mexico and China.
Forbes
March 9, 2016
That’s why a group of us in Congress have introduced the Seniors and Veterans Emergency Benefits Act (SAVE Benefits Act). This bill would give a onetime payment of $581 to those people who aren’t receiving a COLA this year—a raise equal to the 3.9 percent pay increase the top CEOs received. Social Security payments average only about $1,340 a month—and millions of seniors who rely on those checks are barely scraping by. A $581 increase could cover almost three months of groceries for seniors or a year’s worth of out-of-pocket costs on critical prescription drugs for the average Medicare beneficiary. That $50 a month is worth a heck of a lot to the 70 million Americans who would have just a little more in their pockets as a result of this bill. In fact, according to an analysis from the Economic Policy Institute, that little boost could lift more than one million Americans out of poverty.
The Nation
March 8, 2016
Sanders’s campaign did not respond to requests for comment nor provide the data Sanders referenced in the debate. “Yeah, a 50 percent cut could have happened to a particular plant or potentially some small, very disaggregated sub-industry, I guess, but the story of overall wages in manufacturing … is just pretty flat,” Josh Bivens, director of research and policy at the Economic Policy Institute, wrote in an email. More bluntly: “The sentiment is correct. The numbers are not,” said Robert Scott, director of trade and manufacturing research at the institute.
The Washington Post
March 8, 2016
Sanders has cited research from the labor-backed Economic Policy Institute showing that more than 700,000 jobs have been lost in the wake of NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement.
International Business Times
March 8, 2016
The pay gap between whites and Hispanics has not changed during those years either, Valerie Wilson, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute, told HuffPost. “The gaps are really persistent,” she said.
The Huffington Post
March 8, 2016
If you steal $600 worth of merchandise, the police will probably come after you. But if your employer steals $600 of your wages, you are likely to never see that money again. And chances are high that you have experienced wage theft yourself, whether you work a 9-to-5 job or are an independent contractor. The Economic Policy Institute estimates that wage theft is costing US workers $50 billion a year.
VOX
March 8, 2016
The American nest egg is facing financial extinction. Aging workers who thought they could relax in retirement face unprecedented economic stressors, according to new analysis of retirement wealth. Data from Economic Policy Institute (EPI) reveals retirement wealth is turning into retirement poverty for a growing portion of working households. The labor-focused think tank finds that “retirement wealth has not grown fast enough to keep pace with an aging population and other changes.” While retirement wealth has risen in absolute terms since the 1990s, EPI observes that the growth trend has lagged behind changes in the aging population’s size and needs.
The Nation
March 8, 2016
It was no doubt a poor choice of words from the Vermont senator, but not without some basis in reality as The Washington Post points to the Economic Policy Institute, which said, “Nearly half (45%) of poor black children live in neighborhoods with concentrated poverty, but only a little more than a tenth (12%) of poor white children live in similar neighborhoods.”
Teen Vogue
March 8, 2016
And according to the Economic Policy Institute, 42 percent of Hispanic workers and 36 percent of black workers make poverty-level wages, compared with 23 percent of white workers.
The Nation
March 8, 2016
The debate has political implications, too. Loud voices on both the left and the right argue the unemployment rate tells a too-optimistic story about the recovery because the Labor Department’s definition of an unemployed worker doesn’t include someone who gave up on a job search and took early retirement, applied for disability benefits, enrolled in school or otherwise left the workforce. The liberal Economic Policy Institute says February’s 4.9% jobless rate would be 6.3% if “missing workers” were included. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump cites low participation to say the jobless rate is really in double digits.
Wall Street Journal
March 7, 2016