Media clips
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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 -
Raising New York state’s minimum wage to $15 an hour would increase pay for millions of New Yorkers by $15 billion and have the greatest impact on women and minorities in the workforce, according to a new study. The report from the union-backed Economic Policy Institute said a $15 minimum would directly benefit 2.4 million workers. Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo has proposed gradually increasing the minimum from its current level of $9 to $15 by 2021. The proposal is expected to be debated by lawmakers during this year’s legislative session, which gets underway Wednesday in Albany. Of those who would be affected, three-quarters are over the age of 25 and slightly more than half are women or minorities. More than a quarter are the sole providers in their households. “The workers who would benefit from the higher minimum wage do not fit the stereotype of low-wage workers being teenagers from affluent families working part time,” wrote the report’s author, economic analyst David Cooper.
The Associated Press January 6, 2016 -
There are a few ways to look at it. The left-leaning Economic Policy Institute regularly calculates the ratio between executive and median-employee pay — a ratio that has changed dramatically over the years. In 1965, CEOs made 20 times the salary of an average, non-management employee (we’re using the mean here, not the median, as we did above). That means that a CEO would have earned his employee’s salary by Jan. 19, at about 7 a.m.
By 1978, CEOs were making just less than 30 times the average employee. He or she (he) would have earned the average salary by Jan. 13, at about 6 a.m. Then things got crazy. In 1989, CEOs made 58.7 times their employees, pulling in the average income by Jan. 7. In 1995, it was 71.6 times, meaning that by about midnight on Jan. 4, a CEO had earned an average employee’s annual salary. The most recent figure from EPI is for 2014. That year, CEOs earned 303 times as much as the average, non-management employee.
The Washington Post January 6, 2016 -
According to a fact sheet written by the Economic Policy Institute, in the long run immigrants do not reduce the employment rates of native-born Americans. But the institute says in the short run, immigration may slightly reduce the rates of unemployment of native born Americans. The impact is greater when the economy is weak.
NBC News January 6, 2016 -
But other analyses of the academic data, by the left-leaning think tank Economic Policy Institute (EPI) and independent economist Joydeep Roy, place the modern diploma in a more complex economic frame. First, while Achieve compares various states’ graduation criteria, as EPI President Lawrence Mishel explains, “none of their comparisons are historical, showing a change from an earlier period.”
The Nation January 6, 2016