FiveThirtyEight noted that it’s not clear how big of a concern this decline is, or if it really represents the “death of the middle class.” For example, one reason the middle class is shrinking is that more people are getting richer, while others are getting poorer. Moreover, FiveThirtyEight added, the “typical American household has changed dramatically over the past three decades” — for example, the aging population earns less in retirement. The Sanders campaign previously has pointed to the Economic Policy Institute’s data that American workers’ wages have not kept up with inflation since 1968.
The Washington Post
July 26, 2016
According to the Economic Policy Institute, in 33 states and the District of Columbia, infant care costs exceed the average cost of in-state college tuition at public four-year institutions. In New York, for example, where the full-time minimum wage salary is $18,720 a year, the average annual cost of infant care is $14,144. This means that a minimum-wage worker in New York would need to work full time for thirty-nine weeks, or from January to September, just to pay for child care for one infant.
CBS News
July 23, 2016
“My point of view is that these trade deals have been bad especially for workers in the US,” Robert Scott, senior economist at the labor-affiliated Economic Policy Institute, says in an interview with The Christian Science Monitor. “This particular deal looks worse than NAFTA,” the trade deal signed by Bill Clinton that created a trade bloc between the US, Canada, and Mexico. “They encourage the globalization of the economy, which increases exports of capital-intensive goods and increases imports of labor-intensive goods,” said Dr. Scott. “Even if balanced, it reduces demand on workers without college degrees. All of it leads to downward pressure on wages.”
The Christian Science Monitor
July 22, 2016
The data were generally positive, a “nice reversal” from the more negative tenor of the last few monthly reports, said David Cooper, a senior economic analyst at the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute. But the report should not be viewed as a sign that “the current job market is as good as it gets,” Cooper said. “The prime-age employment-to-population ratio is still below the lowest level reached in the previous two recessions prior to the Great Recession,” he noted. The labor market is a key component of the U.S. economy, with job trends shaping the performance of other sectors.
MarketWatch
July 22, 2016
“We’ve seen a lot of states taking action in light of federal inaction,” said David Cooper, a senior economic analyst at the liberal Economic Policy Institute (EPI), which notes 26 states and the District of Columbia have set a higher minimum wage than the federal level… About 28 million American workers, or a quarter of the workforce, currently make less than $12 an hour, estimates Cooper at the EPI. Another 7 million would indirectly benefit by increased pay as employers adjust their wages accordingly, he added….”At its high point, in 1968, the minimum wage was equal to about $9.65 in today’s dollars. If you adjust for inflation, that means at $7.25, it’s worth about 25 percent less than it was a generation ago,” said the EPI’s Cooper. “It’s lost 10 percent of its value since it was last raised.”
CBS Moneywatch
July 22, 2016
Lawrence Mischel, president of the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute, calculated that the wage hike, which will go into effect in 2017, amounts to a 3.2% annual increase. “That’s good, but it’s not other-worldly. The fact is those wages are not all that high. For a leading sector, they should pay more,” Mischel said.
The Guardian
July 22, 2016
Robert Scott, an economist whose research on trade policy has been favorably cited by Donald Trump’s campaign, rebuked the Republican presidential nominee on Thursday by criticizing his plan to negotiate trade deals and combat currency manipulation by imposing tariffs on Chinese imports. Trump’s campaign has cited research by Scott, a senior economist and director of trade and manufacturing policy research at the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute, saying as recently as last month in a campaign email that “according to the Economic Policy Institute, enforcing restrictions on currency manipulation as Trump has proposed could create up to 5.8 million jobs in just three years,” followed by a link to a 2014 report authored by Scott
Morning Consult
July 22, 2016
All that said, Robert E. Scott, a senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute, has argued that the United States could penalize countries that manipulate their currencies more severely than it does, which would improve U.S. manufacturers’ competitive advantage on the global stage and is more important that restructuring trade deals. (The liberal think tank, incidentally, was cited by Mr. Trump in a recent speech; its leader later called Mr. Trump’s approach to trade policy a “scam.”)
The New York Times
July 22, 2016
Elise Gould, a senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute, has heard that claim a lot since she published research showing that women earn $4 an hour less than men right out of college. Gould and EPI researcher Jessica Schieder published a paper on Wednesday explaining why the pay gap has little to do with real choice. “People were not understanding the full picture,” Gould told The Huffington Post.
The Huffington Post
July 21, 2016
Nearly half of American families have no retirement savings at all, the Economic Policy Institute reported in March.
Fiscal Times
July 21, 2016