A recent study by the Rand Corporation predicted out-of-pocket medical expenses will decline for most people who are newly insured or change their health plans. Then there are the almost nine million more people who will be covered by Medicaid, says Josh Bivens with the liberal Economic Policy Institute. Others will get subsidies to buy insurance.
“In my mind this is kind of like a delayed, small stimulus program, because it’s actually providing people who are otherwise cash-constrained to give them more income in the next couple years,” Bivens says.
Marketplace
November 19, 2013
It’s hard to say exactly how many of Washington’s households in the top 1 percent draw their incomes from the broad business of serving, supplying or influencing the government. But an analysis of tax data by the Economic Policy Institute shows that the area’s 1-percenters are most likely to be lawyers and executives, or people who work in management consulting or IT. Nearly 1 in 10 of those households is headed by a government worker.
The Washington Post
November 18, 2013
“It’s slowing the recovery from the recession because people have less money in their pockets to spend on goods and services provided by other businesses,” noted Ross Eisenbrey, vice president of the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal think tank. “These young people are delaying their saving for retirement, their ability to accrue capital to buy a home—all of the things a middle-class person does.
CNBC
November 18, 2013
While unemployment is a problem for both men and women, a recent report by the Economic Policy Institute found that although women fared better than men in the great recession that began in 2007, in the sense that more men lost their jobs than women did, during the economic recovery, men are seeing stronger gains in employment than women are. For example, while both men and women saw employment gains in the health care and social assistance sector, male employment grew by 50 percent more than female employment. As the author of the report, Hilary Wething explained, “While the jobs gap for men is larger than it is for women, men are nevertheless seeing strong gains than women within most industries.”
The Washington Post
November 18, 2013
The left-of-center Economic Policy Institute has estimated that the expiration of the emergency jobless benefits program would reduce job growth by 310,000 positions next year because consumers over all would have less money to spend.
The New York Times
November 18, 2013
“It is absolutely clear that educational wage differentials have not driven wage inequality over the last 15 years,” said Lawrence Mishel, who heads the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal-leaning center for economic policy analysis. “Wage inequality has grown a lot over the last 15 years and the educational wage premium has changed little.”
… In coming weeks, Mr. Mishel and two co-authors, Heidi Shierholz of the Economic Policy Institute and John Schmitt of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, expect to publish a study called “Don’t Blame the Robots: Assessing the Job Polarization Explanation of Growing Wage Inequality.”
The New York Times
November 13, 2013
Massachusetts had the highest rate of employer-sponsored health insurance coverage in the country during 2011-2012, according to a study by the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank in Washington.
The study found that in 11 of the past 12 years, rates of employer-sponsored health insurance have declined. Between 2011 and 2012, the national figure was 58.4 percent. In Massachusetts, it was 70.8 percent.
Boston Business Journal
November 12, 2013
One of the advantages of pervasive corporate culture is health coverage — and Connecticut ranks No. 3 in the percentage of non-elderly people covered by a employer-based health plan, a new report shows.
This state had 69.7 percent of the under-65 population covered by policies from a workplace in 2011-12, the report by the Economic Policy Institute shows. That trails only Massachusetts (71 percent) and New Hampshire (70 percent).
Hartford Courant
November 12, 2013
At the October pace of job creation, “it will still take five years to get back to the pre-recession unemployment rate of 5%,” said labor economist Heidi Shierholz at the Economic Policy Institute in Washington.
Los Angeles Times
November 12, 2013
To reach the 5 percent unemployment rate that prevailed in mid-2008 shortly before the bust, the country still needs to add 8 million jobs. Economist Heidi Shierholz of the Economic Policy Institute notes that if payrolls continue growing at the same rate as they have over the last 12 months, unemployment won’t reach its pre-recession level until 2018.
CBS Moneywatch
November 12, 2013