Media clips
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There has also been a massive exodus from the labor force. Since late 2007, the number of people 16 and over “not in the labor force” has increased by almost 13 million. Studies suggest that at least half of the loss reflects natural causes: older workers retiring; spouses — men and women — staying at home with children. Adding the remaining labor-force dropouts to the officially unemployed would boost the jobless rate to 9.7 percent, estimates the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning research and advocacy group.
So the job market straddles good news and bad. The open question is whether the economy is approaching “full employment” — often estimated between 5 percent and 6 percent unemployed — or whether stronger job creation will pull many recent dropouts back into the labor market. If full employment approaches, that could put upward pressure on wages and inflation. But if dropouts re-enter the labor market, the numbers of both the employed and the unemployed might rise.
The Washington Post June 12, 2014 -
Businesses have stepped up their hiring a bit in recent months, a hopeful sign. But the overall pace of hiring is still far below where it was before the recession, the Economic Policy Institute, a think tank focused on labor issues, noted on Tuesday.
There were 4.5 million job openings in March, but 9.8 million people trying to fill them, the EPI pointed out. In other words, there were more than two workers for every job opening. In a normal economy, those numbers would be closer to even. It’s hard to imagine wages surging while there’s still this much slack in the job market. But maybe we’re at least seeing the early hints of such a surge.
The Huffington Post June 12, 2014 -
This graph was produced by the Economic Policy Institute. It shows the rising growth in productivity (it’s the bold line going up by almost 250% since 1950) and actual wages (it’s the duller line growing just to a bit over 100% than what it was in 1950).
You see the problem, Dr. Brat. The problem is you’re wrong.
The correct answer is that productivity has grown twice as fast as wages. Or, if you’d like to put it this way, wages have grown at only half the rate of worker productivity.
So I need you to take a re-test on what you told Chuck Todd this morning. Don’t you agree?
Again, I congratulate you on your victory. Now…about that re-test…
MSNBC June 12, 2014 -
The research was conducted by the economist David Cooper, an analyst who also works for the progressive Economic Policy Institute. The methodology is laid out in great detail here, but basically he crunched the numbers in a few steps:
- Cooper started with very local granular data collected by the Census Bureau.
- Then, he used an academic matchmaking program to map that local area data to congressional districts.
- Finally, he calculated hourly wages using the annual incomes, weeks worked per year and hours worked per week.
Anyone earning between $7 and $11.50 was determined to be affected by the minimum wage hike. Why $11.50 and not $10.10? As the Congressional Budget Office noted in its estimates earlier this year, there’s a ripple effect. If a worker makes $9 and his boss makes $11.25, a new federal minimum wage of $10.10 could force both of them to get a raise to maintain a company’s pay ladder.
The Washington Post June 12, 2014 -
Getting back to square one isn’t much to celebrate, however. There are more than 6 million more working-age Americans2 today than when the recession began. Adjusting for population growth, we’re still millions of jobs short of where we were 6½ years ago — and have seen hardly any jobs recovery.3
FiveThirtyEight June 11, 2014 -
(Also in Htrnews)
The “labor force participation rate” — the share of the population that is working or looking for work — has dropped dramatically in the weak labor market of the Great Recession and its aftermath.Some of the drop has nothing to do with weak job opportunities; for example, during this period the Baby Boomers started hitting retirement age. But most of it does. In November 2007, one month before the recession officially began, the Bureau of Labor Statistics published labor force participation projections. The analysts did not know the recession was about to hit, but they could see coming demographic trends, so their projections capture what labor force participation would likely be today if the recession hadn’t happened.
USA Today June 11, 2014 -
The nation’s employers created a solid number of jobs last month that pushed the economy to a milestone: It finally recovered all 8.7 million jobs lost during the Great Recession.
But economists warned that it’s not time yet to break out the champagne for a labor market that has failed to keep up with population growth over the last 61/2 years and continues to struggle to create higher-wage jobs.
“Things are improving, but it’s happening agonizingly slowly,” said Heidi Shierholz, a labor market economist at the Economic Policy Institute.
The milestone also marks the recession, which officially ran from December 2007 to June 2009, as the deepest and the slowest to recover since the Great Depression.
McClatchy June 11, 2014 -
It’s hard to miss the stories celebrating the good news of the monthly jobs report from the Labor Department, like how in May the U.S. economy added more than 200,000 jobs for a fourth straight month and how the number of employed Americans reached an all-time high.
That the economy has recovered all jobs lost during the recession is “an economically meaningless benchmark,” though, since a continued recovery needs job growth to keep pace with population growth, according to Heidi Shierholz, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute in Washington.
“We certainly have to pass that benchmark to get back to full employment, but passing that benchmark does not even come close to getting us there,” she said.
US News and World Report June 11, 2014 -
As Matt Yglesias reported just a few minutes ago, the US in May hit the number of jobs it had prior to the recession. That’s great news, but it only means we’ve climbed out of a massive hole. Had job growth continued unabated instead of being tanked by the recession, there would be millions more jobs, the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute reports today:
VOX June 11, 2014 -
Yet, this isn’t the moment to break out the champagne. Given population growth over the last four years, the economy still needs more jobs to truly return to a healthy place. How many more? A whopping 7 million, calculates Heidi Shierholz, an economist with the Economic Policy Institute.
President Obama’s administration was quick to point out that the recovery is still incomplete by their standards.
“We’re moving in the right direction, but we have a lot more work to do,” said Secretary of Labor Tom Perez. “There are way too many people who are still on the sidelines.”
As of May, about 3.4 million Americans had been unemployed for six months or more, and 7.3 million were stuck in part-time jobs although they wanted to work full-time. Both these numbers are still elevated compared to historic norms, and are of concern to Federal Reserve officials, who will meet in two weeks to re-evaluate their stimulus policies.
CNN Money June 11, 2014