Media clips
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See excerpt: Wage stagnation and wage inequality easily top the list of economic issues Americans are most concerned about—look no further than the presidential election, which has largely focused on economic issues. This concern is also evident in invigorated efforts to raise the minimum wage, expand paid leave, and strengthen the collective bargaining power of workers. These issues resonate with nearly every worker, because wages are at the heart of the American dream. Money earned from work is the main source of income for most American households. This is the money Americans use to meet basic living expenses and to save for down payment on a home, college tuition, or retirement. This is especially true for African American and Latino workers, who have less inherited wealth and rely almost exclusively on their paychecks to support themselves and their families. Concern over wage inequality is also fully justified by the data. Since 1979, wages for the vast majority of workers—regardless of gender, race or ethnicity—have been stagnant or declining.
CNBC February 26, 2016 -
As I note in my new book, “Schools on Trial: How Freedom and Creativity Can Fix Our Educational Malpractice,” one of the dark stains on the Obama legacy is the administration’s enthusiastic embrace of corporate education reform, which is characterized by high-stakes standardized testing, charter schools, school closures, attacks on teachers unions, and others. This has been lavishly funded by Wall Street financiers, foundations and billionaires. In 2013, the Economic Policy Institute’s Broader, Bolder Approach to Education published a report concluding that market-oriented reforms “delivered few benefits” and “often harm the students they purport to help.”
Salon February 26, 2016 -
When the AFL-CIO canvassed the Rust Belt cities of Cleveland and Pittsburgh, the researchers found that Republicans and some Democrats in the traditional labor strongholds were drifting toward the golden-haired Manhattan real estate icon. The key factor? Economic insecurity. “It’s the first time within the Republican field that someone has reached out with an economic message that resonates with these voters,” said Robert E. Scott of the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute. At times, Scott said, that means scapegoating immigrants and foreigners. “But frankly, some of those issues are related to trade and the insecurities of the working class,” Scott said. Recently published studies have found that as many as 2 million American manufacturing jobs have been lost to China since 2000. “Growing trade deficits are the single largest cause of the elimination of jobs in the U.S. manufacturing sector, and the number one culprit is China,” Scott said. In the past two decades, the trade deficit with China has increased more than tenfold.
International Business Times February 26, 2016 -
Despite Walmart Ties, Support For Free Trade, Hillary Clinton Touts Commitment To Manufacturing Jobs
Most recently, Walmart heir Alice Walton donated $353,000 to the “Hillary Victory Fund,” which is backing her presidential run, a Walmart lobbyist held a Mexico fundraiser for her and the consulting firm of her campaign’s top strategist lists Walmart as a client. Before that, Clinton was a member of Walmart’s board in the late 1980s and early 1990s. As PBS Frontline documented, that was when Walmart began offshoring its supply chain to China. A recent study by the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute (EPI) estimated that Walmart’s shift to China ended up eliminating more than 300,000 manufacturing jobs in the United States.
International Business Times February 26, 2016 -
The figure below plots the 20th-percentile wage for blacks in recent years, using data from the Economic Policy Institute (this is a good proxy for low-wage work; 80 percent of blacks earn more while 20 percent earn less). In 2015, as the tightening job market finally gave them a smidgen of bargaining power, these workers’ wages were finally starting to trend up (low inflation helped, too).
The Washington Post February 25, 2016 -
The second initiative is a re-launch of a “Broader, Bolder Approach to Education,” a group which first started in 2008 and has pushed for more comprehensive, “whole-child” strategies for educating students in poverty that was meant to be a counter-force to the “no-excuses” strategy, which tended to focus on reforms related to the teaching profession. Leaders of the group say there is new momentum for their policy agenda, including passage of the Every Student Succeeds Act which requires states and districts to judge schools’ success on a broader set of metrics than test scores.
Education Week February 25, 2016 -
To put that into perspective, the Economic Policy Institute estimates that the typical three-person household in Longmont, Colorado should set aside $66,000 a year to cover annual necessities, including housing, food, child care, transportation, healthcare, other necessities, and taxes.
Business Insider February 25, 2016 -
The last two years haven’t really fixed that: Overall between 2007 and 2015, low-wage occupations grew as a share of the labor market by 0.6 percent, middle-wage occupations shrank by 4 percent, and high-wage occupations grew by 0.3 percent. And people are still mostly making less money than they were before the recession: Median wages for low and middle-earning occupations sank 1.5 and 1.8 percent respectively, according to a breakdown by the Economic Policy Institute’s Dave Cooper. “We don’t think there’s evidence of any major shifts in the composition of jobs in recent years that’s different from the longer-term trends,” Cooper wrote in an email. “And consequently, changes in the composition of the workforce should not be used to explain the broader wage trends – there’s been poor wage growth across the board due to overall weakness in the labor market.”
The Washington Post February 24, 2016 -
For a number of years, a national campaign called the Broader Bolder Approach to Education has been working to better the conditions that limit many children’s readiness to learn. A project of the nonprofit Economic Policy Institute, Broader Bolder has long recognized that the impact of social and economic disadvantage on many schools and students is profound and can’t be alleviated with academic “accountability” systems. Now, with a new K-12 federal education law taking effect, the campaign is relaunching with new leaders and an expanded mission. Here is a post about what 21st Century school reform should look like to really even the education playing field, as reflected in the Broader Bolder Approach’s new mission. It was written by Elaine Weiss, the program’s national coordinator.
The Washington Post February 24, 2016 -
A report from the Economic Policy Institute in 2005 studied the workforce qualifications in early-childhood education and found a decline in the percentage of the field’s teachers and administrators with college degrees—from 43 percent in 1983-1985 to 30 percent in 2002-2004—because of low wages and benefits.
Education Week February 24, 2016