Through most of the economic recovery, wage-growth has hovered around 2 percent annually. The Federal Reserve’s target for nominal wage growth (not adjusted for inflation) is 3.5-4.0 percent. According to analysis from the Economic Policy Institute, if the economy had achieved the Fed’s target for wage growth, the average American worker would earn $2.61/hour more than they do today.
Marketplace
January 8, 2016
Wealth inequality is spreading through the economy, and the gap in retirement assets may be even wider. Enrollment in 401(k) plans and other retirement accounts rises sharply with income, as Natalie Sabadish and Monique Morrissey of the pro-labor Economic Policy Institute have shown. Of households in the top fifth of the income ladder, they found, 88% had assets in retirement accounts such as IRAs and 401(k) plans in 2010. Of those in the bottom fifth, only 11% had retirement accounts. Retirement savings of the top 20% averaged about 134% of annual income; for those in the bottom fifth it was 58%.
Los Angeles Times
January 8, 2016
Korea’s won hit a three year low earlier this year, while the Japanese central bank has been engaged in massive monetary stimulus in recent years. The Japanese government argues that this is purely to stimulate domestic demand, but economists like Robert Scott of the Economic Policy Institute have argued that Japan’s tactics are different than, for instance, the Federal Reserve’s quantitative easing, and that currency manipulation on the part of Japan has cost the U.S. hundreds of thousands of jobs per year.
Fortune
January 8, 2016
“I think this Time survey is kind of ridiculous,” said Larry Mishel, an economist and president of the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), a left-leaning think tank. Both Mishel and Krueger were baffled by the finding that 14.4 million people derive significant income from the on-demand economy, a number that is 24 times greater than Krueger’s recent estimate of gig economy workers. The Time survey, which was carried out by the polling agency Penn, Schoen & Berland Associates, also found that 10 percent of the U.S. adult population has “offered” a ride-sharing service at some point.
Larry Mishel of EPI thinks the gig economy gets an outsized amount of attention given its modest size. “People are always interested in the fancy new thing,” Mishel said. “A lot of people in the media world live in cities where they’re using Uber a lot. There’s a built-in megaphone for anything tech companies do and there’s an interest from tech companies to sell this as the future.”
International Business Times
January 8, 2016
China and the U.S. are interconnected but not enough for trouble in that nation to cause a recession in America, says Lawrence Mishel, president of the Economic Policy Institute. Devaluation of the yuan increases the value of the dollar, so it would discourage purchase of U.S. exports and encourage companies to buy less expensive Chinese products.
U.S. News & World Report
January 8, 2016
As the NEA notes, the numbers of non-union members aren’t significant. Out of the more than 3 million educators the NEA represents, only about 3 percent, or 90,000, are fee payers. And according to an October report from the Economic Policy Institute, 6.8 percent of public sector workers in non-right-to-work states are non-union members.
U.S. News & World Report
January 8, 2016
There is plenty of money flowing through San Francisco, but, where it’s black residents are concerned, there’ve been precious little in the way of tangible benefits. A July 2015 report from the California Labor Market Review found that statewide, the unemployment rate for blacks was 12.9 percent, the highest in the state compared with Latinos (7.8 percent) and whites (6.4 percent); a 2015 review of Census data by the Economic Policy Institute found that the black unemployment rate in San Francisco and the greater Bay Area was 19 percent.
National Journal
January 7, 2016
New York’s women are on the verge of a huge win as the state gets closer to a $15 minimum hourly wage. That would be the highest of any state in the country, and a boon particularly to women. But there’s something missing. Fifty-two percent of the workers in New York who would benefit from a statewide wage increase are women, according to an analysis released by the progressive Economic Policy Institute on Wednesday.
The Huffington Post
January 7, 2016
According to the Economic Policy Institute and the National Employment Law Project, the “minimum wage in 2014 was 24 percent below its 1968 level despite the fact that U.S. productivity more than doubled over that period and low-wage workers now have much more experience and education.”
Glamour
January 7, 2016
The current federal minimum wage is about 36 percent of the median wage, said David Cooper, an economic analyst at the Economic Policy Institute in Washington, D.C., where his expertise includes minimum wage and economic inequality. EPI is a nonprofit think tank that gets about a quarter of its funding from labor unions. A majority of funding comes from foundation grants and the small remaining part from individuals, corporations, and other organizations. “That is a pretty significant gap,” he said. “Back in the 1960s, (when the gap between the minimum and the median was at its smallest,) it was 54 to 55 percent of the median wage. “Twelve dollars by 2020 would put it right back to where it was in 1968 – 54 to 55 percent of the median wage,” Cooper said. “We just don’t know what would happen if we push the minimum wage higher than those levels.”
He said that in Germany, the minimum wage is about 58 percent of that country’s median wage. In France, it is about 63 percent of the French median wage. “There is precedent for other countries to do this,” he said of a minimum wage that is more than 55 percent of the median wage. “It hasn’t been part of the U.S. experience, but that doesn’t mean we couldn’t have a minimum wage/median wage ratio up at that same level.”
Cleveland Plain Dealer
January 7, 2016