Media clips
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But the reality is that tens of millions of Americans with full-time jobs are working for low hourly wages and cannot afford to cover the monthly basics, according to David Cooper, a poverty and minimum wage analyst at the Economic Policy Institute in Washington. In a government data analysis released Tuesday by the liberal-leaning think tank, Cooper said there are 41.2 million working people, or nearly 30 percent of the workforce, receiving public assistance such as food stamps, housing subsidies and cash assistance to make ends meet. Nearly half of those workers, 19.3 million people, had full-time jobs and most were earning less than $12.16 per hour in wages, Cooper wrote in his analysis. “When corporations pay wages so low that working people must rely on public assistance, taxpayers are effectively subsidizing these companies to make up the difference between what workers make and what they need to support themselves and their families,” he wrote.
International Business Times February 10, 2016 -
See excerpt: The results of the Program for International Student Assessment, or PISA, the test that is used to do an international ranking of students’ academic performance, will be trumpeted later this year, and the responses will undoubtedly repeat those of previous years: U.S. officials will wring their hands and lament that American student achievement is stagnant, that it is lagging woefully behind our economic competitors’, and that we therefore need to import features of schooling from higher-scoring countries. This edu-masochism—a distinctly American way of focusing on our educational shortcomings—can be traced at least back to the late 1950s and the Soviet Union’s launch of Sputnik. Perhaps the nation’s early trailblazing successes in establishing mass schooling and developing a uniquely excellent system of higher education have left U.S. educators particularly vulnerable to charges that other nations are surpassing us.gar
Education Week February 10, 2016 -
In a study a few years ago, Robert E. Scott, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute, found that New Hampshire had suffered more on a percentage basis than any other state from the loss of jobs to China. His analysis can be read here. He calculated that jobs lost to China in the ten years to 2011 totaled 20,400. That’s a big number for a small state and it represented 2.94 percent of the state’s total workforce.
Forbes February 10, 2016 -
See excerpt: On Tuesday, the White House will unveil its annual federal budget. In recent years, the traditional hand-wringing over budget deficits sensibly took a back seat to ensuring that spending cuts did not drag on the still-incomplete economic recovery. Now, however, pressure is building again to reduce deficits. There’s still little economic evidence, however, that we should start cutting spending to reduce the deficit. In the near term, with interest rates and inflation both ultra-low, it’s clear that the primary problem in the economy remains insufficient demand, which keeps labor markets weak and wage growth slow. Rapid deficit reduction through spending cuts would exacerbate this and further stall a full economic recovery.
USA Today February 9, 2016 -
Now there is a report, released by the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute earlier this month, that adds further credence to this line of analysis. Titled “Balancing paychecks and public assistance: How higher wages would strengthen what government can do,” EPI’s new report shows that policy designed to give American workers a raise wouldn’t just be the right thing to do in terms of economic and social justice. It’d help create a more efficient and effective government, too. Recently, Salon spoke over the phone with David Cooper, the study’s author, about his findings as well as their larger implications. An edited version of our conversation can be found below.
So what was the overarching public policy question you wanted to address with this study?
The motivation behind the study is the recognition that it takes a lot of income for folks to have a decent quality of life. We have a tool called the Family Budget Calculator that calculates throughout the country what we would consider a modest, but adequate, standard of living. It tells you exactly what we expect one would need to cover everything from housing, rent, a car payment, childcare, healthcare, and when you add up all those numbers, it comes up with a budget. In most parts of the country, those numbers are a lot higher than you would get if you were, say, earning the minimum wage in most places.
Salon February 9, 2016 -
The critical benchmark was not average wages but the experience at the median, where outcomes had been depressed by an unequal distribution of pay and growth, he said. Real median hourly wages fell an annual 0.3 per cent from 2007-14, according to the Economic Policy Institute.
Financial Times February 9, 2016 -
Offering a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants – as well as tightening the border – could actually help push up wages modestly for working-class Americans, says Josh Bivens, a policy analyst at the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank in Washington. Currently, workers int the country illegally can be easily exploited. If they were given the standard protections of United States labor law, wages could increase across the board. “It’s bad to compete with workers that are really exploitable,” Mr. Bivens says.
Christian Science Monitor February 9, 2016 -
About 4.6 million people realized an increase in their first paycheck of the year because they made below their state’s new minimum or close to it, according to the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute.
Wall Street Journal February 8, 2016 -
“Wage growth of 2.5 percent is far from any reasonable target given the Federal Reserve’s target inflation and trend productivity,” wrote Elise Gould, senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute. “To keep moving us towards the goal of full employment — an economy where there is high demand for labor, and workers have more bargaining power to negotiate higher wages and get the hours they want — we need to keep our foot off the brakes and consider tapping on the gas. If the Federal Reserve hits the brakes by raising interest rates prematurely, the economy may never fully recover.” Gould also updated her helpful chart reminding readers of just how many millions of Americans left the labor force prematurely during the Great Recession and its aftermath, and showing where the unemployment rate would be if they had all remained in the workforce.
Fiscal Times February 8, 2016 -
Valerie Wilson, an economist with the Economic Policy Institute, says part of the reason the unemployment rate for blacks may have gone up is because more were looking for work. “Perhaps people who were previously unemployed were encouraged by last month’s numbers and are now looking for employment,” she says, adding that while there’s good news for everyone in this months’ report, “we still maintain that roughly 2-to-1 ratio between black and white unemployment.” “That disparity is very persistent,” Wilson says, “and it’s present whether we’re in a recession or in a recovery. It’s present at all levels of education.”
NPR February 8, 2016