Media clips
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In 2001, the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute tallied up the job losses from the North American Free Trade Agreement (better known as NAFTA) passed in 1993. Only California lost more jobs from NAFTA than Michigan, EPI estimated. Michigan shed more than 46,000 jobs, 40,000 of them in manufacturing alone—mostly in the automotive sector.
The Washington Post March 4, 2016 -
Mr. Johnson, who came to the T.V.A. in 2013 after working his way up the ranks to become chief executive of the investor-owned utility Progress Energy (now a part of Duke Energy), has generally won favorable reviews. That includes a 2015 report by the liberal Economic Policy Institute saying the agency appeared to be “on a more sustainable financial path” under his leadership.
The New York Times March 4, 2016 -
Economist Monique Morrissey of the progressive Economic Policy Institute on Thursday delivered some hard evidence of the problems facing the average American retiree with release of her updated Economic Inequality Chartbook: 32 interactive graphs that show how the shift from defined benefit pensions to 401(k)’s “has failed the majority of workers.” This shift, which relieves much of the burden and risk of saving for retirement from employers and places it on employees’ shoulders, has increased wealth inequality for older workers and left them on average with meager resources, even as their periods of retirement grow longer.
Los Angeles Times March 4, 2016 -
You have a better chance of retiring in dignity in the United States if you are white. African-American and Latino workers are far less likely than their white peers to have any savings in a 401(k) plan or other retirement account, according to “The State of American Retirement,” a report released by the Economic Policy Institute on Thursday. The report finds that among households headed by someone aged 32 to 61, just 41 percent of black families and 26 percent of Latino families had any retirement account savings at all, compared with 65 percent of non-Latino white families.
Monique Morrissey, the EPI retirement policy expert who authored the report, told reporters on Thursday that the data on African-American families is particularly disconcerting, because when pensions were more common, participation in employer-based retirement plans was a rare area of relative equality with whites.
The Huffington Post March 4, 2016 -
According to a new report from the Economic Policy Institute, “retirement disparities have grown with the shift from traditional pensions to retirement savings accounts.” People who are rich, white, college-educated, and married are far more likely to participate in a 401(k) plan than others. More than two-thirds of people in the top fifth of the income distribution are enrolled in 401(k)s, compared to just 4 percent of the poorest fifth; about half of white workers are enrolled, versus 32 percent of black workers and 20 percent of Hispanics. While there are also disparities in pension use, it’s far starker among defined-benefit plans.
Think Progress March 4, 2016 -
The privatization of retirement plans has helped make retirement inequality even greater than income inequality. Over the past couple decades, the shift from pensions to 401(k)s has driven retirement inequality to an all-time high, making it harder for the majority of Americans to retire comfortably—or at all, as new analysis from the Economic Policy Institute shows. “We used to have a fairly egalitarian retirement system. We don’t anymore,” EPI economist Monique Morrissey said during a press call Thursday. Morrissey says that’s largely due to the rise of 401(k)s as primary retirement plans, which she says was never supposed to happen. Initially, 401(k)s were created to be a supplement to pensions.
The American Prospect March 4, 2016 -
The retirement savings gap is growing, according to a chartbook from the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute released today. The gap comes as more people are enrolled in defined-contribution plans instead of defined-benefit plans. According to EPI economist Monique Morrissey, “participation in retirement savings plans is highly unequal across income groups. In 2013, nearly nine in 10 families in the top income fifth had retirement account savings, compared with fewer than one in 10 families in the bottom income fifth.” Read the chartbook here: http://bit.ly/1Y2YutD
Politico March 4, 2016 -
The Economic Policy Institute makes a basic argument in a new paper it released this morning: The U.S. trade relationship with TPP members is already unbalanced, and the Asia-Pacific pact will just make it worse without enforceable restrictions on currency manipulation. The report, authored by Robert Scott and Elizabeth Glass, says the United States’ $177.9 billion deficit in goods traded with the other TPP countries cost two million jobs last year, including nearly 419,000 direct jobs in commodity and manufacturing industries “that competed with unfairly traded goods from TPP member countries.” This pre-existing trade deficit means the trade deal could be more damaging than the North American Free Trade Agreement, the report says, because the U.S. and Mexico had a balanced trade relationship before NAFTA took effect. Click here to read the full paper: http://bit.ly/1RHQLyC.
Politico March 4, 2016 -
Though some members of the Iowa Legislature have yet to figure it out, they are supposed to be working on behalf of Iowans. Raising the minimum wage would do that. A 2012 study from the Economic Policy Institute estimated that increasing the wage to $9.80 per hour would affect 332,000 Iowans, 81 percent of them 20 years old or older.
Des Moines Register March 4, 2016 -
Economist Monique Morrissey of the Economic Policy Institute makes this case with 32 charts that present a sobering picture for our nation’s retirees. She first analyzed data from the Federal Reserve Survey of Consumer Finances for all families with heads of household between the ages of 32 and 61, covering the thirty years before Social Security’s early retirement kicks in at age 62. And she found major disparities caused by the shift from pensions to 401(k) plans.
Fiscal Times March 4, 2016