But critics argue that MES will kill traditional industries, including steel, ceramics and textiles, because it will become far harder to retaliate against Chinese dumping with countervailing tariffs. The left-leaning Economic Policy Institute in Washington has concluded that MES would endanger as many as 3.5m jobs in the EU.
Financial Times
January 4, 2016
The effect could be similar to what globalization did to blue-collar positions in the manufacturing sector, which lost more than 3 million jobs between 2001 and 2013, according to data from the Economic Policy Institute.
CNBC
January 4, 2016
But some labor experts say the ruling’s effects could go far beyond political speech ramifications: If agency fees are optional when union representation is guaranteed, then what incentive exists for employees to fork over hefty union dues? Jeffrey Keefe, a researcher at the Economic Policy Institute and former professor at Rutgers University in New Jersey, said it’s not surprising to see a great deal of free riding in right-to-work states.
International Business Times
January 4, 2016
The Pew data went back to 1970 but the middle class likely held the crown even longer, going back to the late 1940s. To be fair, the conclusion is less stunning to those who have been following the work of the Economic Policy Institute, specifically its State of Working America, and other scholars.
Seattle Times
January 4, 2016
The new provision blows that compromise out of the water. It could lead to a doubling or tripling of the 66,000 seasonal workers who come under the existing program, will weaken the requirements that employers seek out American workers first, lower the wages paid to many foreign workers, and reduce federal oversight of employers. Daniel Costa of the Economic Policy Institute says the new provision will “create a huge incentive to hire temporary foreign workers instead of the local U.S. workers who reside in communities where the jobs are located.”
Council on Foreign Relations
December 23, 2015
The Economic Policy Institute gets the nod for a figure that captures a) the growth of inequality, as a huge gap has evolved between the typical worker’s compensation and the productivity growth they themselves are helping to create, and b) what we believe will be a key issue in the 2016 campaign.
The Washington Post
December 22, 2015
The black unemployment rate is about twice the white unemployment rate regardless of education status, the Economic Policy Institute has found in a recent article. However, the black unemployment rate has always been twice the rate of whites.
The rate for blacks with only a high school diploma is 9.6 percent — without a diploma, the jobless rate shoots up to 16.6 percent. In comparison to white workers who only have a high school diploma or less, the numbers were at 4.6 percent and 6.9 percent, respectively.
“The broader significance of this disparity suggests a race penalty whereby blacks at each level of education have unemployment rates that are the same as or higher than less educated whites,” Valerie Wilson, director of the Economic Policy Institute’s Program on Race, Ethnicity, and the Economy, wrote. “Persistent disparities in unemployment are constant reminders of how race continues to have an undue influence on life in this country.”
The Huffington Post
December 22, 2015
A higher percentage of white Americans obtain college degrees: 41 percent, compared to the black population’s 22 percent. But data from the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) show that differences in education can’t explain fully the entirety of the unemployment gap. According to research from Valerie Wilson, an economist at EPI, for black Americans with the same level of education level as white Americans, the unemployment rate is consistently nearly twice as high. Wilson looks at census data and finds, unsurprisingly, unemployment is highest for those who didn’t attend college at all. Among those who hadn’t completed high school, whites had an unemployment rate of 6.9 percent. But for black Americans, the situation was much more extreme: Their unemployment rate was almost two-and-a-half times higher, at 16.6 percent.
The Atlantic
December 22, 2015
Louisiana is among the biggest users per capita of the H-2B program. It attracted 2,648 H-2B workers in 2013, the most recent year for which data is available, according to the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal Washington think tank that advocates for low- to middle-income families in the U.S. Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., was a co-sponsor of Mikulski’s language. But in contrast to Mikulski, the Economic Policy Institute said there is no evidence of an employee shortage in landscaping, seafood processing or hospitality jobs, the main occupations for which employers hire H-2B workers. The institute says the bill will drive down wages that H-2B employers must pay, providing a strong incentive for U.S. businesses to employ foreign seasonal workers at the expense of U.S. citizens.
New Orleans Times-Picayune
December 22, 2015
But not everyone agrees with that 5% threshold. “While most indicators have been trending in the right direction, nominal wage growth and the prime-age employment-to-population ratio remain far outside of target ranges, and provide ample evidence that the economy has a way to go before reaching full employment,” said Elise Gould, an economist at the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute.
Wall Street Journal
December 21, 2015