Economic Policy Institute analyst Elise Gould is among those who believe Friday’s report should prompt the Fed to keep its powder dry until it is certain that the job market recovery has been completed. The Fed raised rates in December for the first time in nearly a decade. “There’s no incentive for a rate increase in the near future,” Gould wrote.
Reuters
May 9, 2016
Not everyone is convinced that the long-term unemployed have become permanently disconnected from the labor market. In 2014, researchers at the Federal Reserve argued that the long-term unemployed were actually finding jobs as the economy improved. Other economists believe that the slow improvement in the fortunes of the long-term unemployed are a result of the sluggish recovery. “I don’t think there’s anything permanently damaging about being long-term unemployed in this recession in terms of their ability to work or be gainfully employed,” said Elise Gould, a senior economist at the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute. “Whether the economy completely gets back to full employment or whether or not it strengthens enough to pull those people back in is another question.”
Politico
May 9, 2016
And after showing signs of progress in recent months, the country’s labor force participation rate—which represents the share of Americans who are either employed or actively looking for work—dropped to a three-month low of 62.8 percent. “In general this indicator has been on the rise, and hopefully this is just a one-month blip. Rising labor force participation is a sign that more people are getting off the sidelines and starting to look for work,” Elise Gould, a senior economist and director of health policy research at the Economic Policy Institute, wrote in a research note Friday. “Many workers have been waiting in the wings for a while, and as they begin to more actively seek work, this can put downward pressure on wages.”
U.S. News & World Report
May 9, 2016
The Economic Policy Institute, however, pegs the jobs loss from NAFTA at about 700,000 through 2010. (Trump in the past has cited EPI estimates.) New York, for instance, has lost about 400,000 manufacturing jobs since 1993, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics—and EPI estimates the job losses in New York from NAFTA to be about 34,000. So, clearly, something else is going that has affected manufacturing jobs. Robert E. Scott, EPI’s chief economist, says his estimates show that trade with China and other Pacific Rim nations has accounted for 277,000 jobs lost in New York state. “For some countries, such as China and Japan, currency manipulation is a key driver of those processes,” Scott said. “The failure to include enforceable prohibitions on currency manipulation in these deals is a major flaw that has contributed significantly to the growth of trade deficits and job losses.” EPI’s estimates are not universally accepted, but it is striking that even skeptics of free-trade agreements find Trump’s claims regarding NAFTA to be overblown. Trump’s campaign never responds to fact-checking questions, but it could be that Trump is just using NAFTA as shorthand for all trade deals. “I don’t speak for Trump or defend his claims,” Scott said. “However, I do believe that NAFTA was the template for dozens of trade deals done by the United States and other countries in the post-’93 period.”
The Washington Post
May 9, 2016
But it’s important to remember, as Jamelle Bouie reminds us at Slate this week, that while the white working class is interesting, the working class as a whole is a lot less white than it used to be. And ignoring the views and interests of the black and brown elements of the working class is as big a mistake empirically and morally as ignoring non-college-educated voters generally. Marshaling data from the Economic Policy Institute, Bouie notes the trends that are steadily eroding the stereotypes of “blue-collage” wage earners as white folks: As recently as 2013, more than 60 percent of working-class Americans between 25 and 54 years old were white. If you extend the age bracket to 64, that increases to nearly 63 percent. But in 2014, those numbers—for the first category—dropped to 59.6 percent. In 2015, it was 58.8 percent. This year, non-Hispanic whites are 58 percent of the working class, a historic low.
New York Magazine
May 9, 2016
According to the Economic Policy Institute, any Americans who started their working careers in the mid-1960s have witnessed seven recessions—in 1969, 1973, 1980, 1981, 1990, 2001, and 2008—and have lived through inflation, stagflation, oil shocks, oil rationing, the stock market crash of 1987, the savings and loan collapse, the bursting of the dot-com bubble, the bursting of the housing bubble, and the stock market crash of 2008.
Salon
May 9, 2016
The city is attuned to the risk of aiming too high. Last November, a ballot proposal for a citywide $15 minimum wage by 2019 was voted down. “Fifteen dollars an hour? Let’s not get too greedy. Small businesses can’t absorb that impact,” says White, the laundromat attendant, as a machine goes into the spin cycle. Raising the wage floor has a ripple effect, say experts. “Workers making around or near minimum wage will get a raise because employers like to maintain a wage ladder,” says David Cooper, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute in Washington.
The Christian Science Monitor
May 9, 2016
A recent report from the Economic Policy Institute found that Florida is one of 33 states and Washington, D.C., where the annual cost of infant care is more expensive than college tuition. Average infant care is $8,694 annually, and for a 4-year-old, it’s $7,668.
Florida Times-Union
May 9, 2016
In 23 states, child care costs more than a four-year college education, according to a recent report from the Economic Policy Institute.
The Christian Science Monitor
May 9, 2016
Many progressives have faulted Malloy for moving too slowly and cautiously on their issues, and the poor have suffered for it. Data from the Economic Policy Institute suggest that wages for the bottom 10 percent of workers have fallen from $9.51 in 2011 to $9.08 in 2014, while wages for the median worker have also declined, from $21.26 to $19.89.
Salon
May 9, 2016