The Week
February 22, 2016
“It’s surely true that the economy ‘feels’ less healthy to lots of people than a 4.9% unemployment rate suggests,” said Josh Bivens, research and policy director at left-leaning Economic Policy Institute. He pointed out that the Department of Labor has six different measures to figure out how the US labor market is doing. It’s usually the media and the policymakers that focus on that one particular figure, he said. “There is no perfect way to measure the labor market slack and the headline unemployment rate is looking rosier than some other indicators now, but this doesn’t mean it’s a flawed measure or that something else is the ‘real’ rate,” Bivens said.
The Guardian
February 22, 2016
A new analysis points out that the lowest black jobless rate of any state during the fourth quarter of 2015 – 6.7 percent in Virginia – was equal to the highest white unemployment rate, in West Virginia. In many states, the jobless rate for African Americans is still at or near double digits, and in 20 states, including California, the rate is at least double that for whites, according to the Economic Policy Institute.
Sacramento Bee
February 22, 2016
White U.S. workers have almost five times the wealth in retirement accounts as black workers, the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute said in a post on Thursday. EPI argues that the country’s move to 401(k) retirement accounts is exacerbating that wealth gap because they provide tax shelters for existing savings and don’t necessarily encourage retirement savings. More from EPI’s Monique Morrissey.
Politico
February 22, 2016
Claims by both Trump and Sanders that free trade has cost millions of American jobs are also misleading. Jobs are lost and jobs are created. The Economic Policy Institute says that our free trade agreement with South Korea has eliminated 75,000 jobs over three years. NAFTA, our agreement with Canada and Mexico, has cost 682,900 American jobs over 20 years, according to the institute.
Albuquerque Journal
February 22, 2016
Note to conservatives: Want to know the best way to find savings in government assistance programs? Here’s a hint—it’s not by cutting nutrition assistance to working people who are struggling. It’s by paying them fairly for their labor. A new report from the Economic Policy Institute indicates that raising the federal minimum wage to $12 by 2020 would lift wages for more than 35 million workers nationwide and generate about $17 billion annually in savings to government assistance programs. This report shouldn’t come as a surprise. In contrast to the stereotypes and lies about people with low incomes, the reality is that a majority of public-assistance recipients either have a job or have an immediate family member who is working. In fact, 41.2 million working Americans—or 30 percent of the workforce—receive means-tested public assistance. Nearly half of them work full-time.
The Nation
February 19, 2016
From 1992 to 2014, compensation per executive in the limited-deductibility categories rose more rapidly—by about 650 percent, to $8.2 million from $1.1 million—than compensation in categories such as stock options and incentive pay that aren’t subject to deductibility limits. The latter rose by about 350 percent, to $4.4 million from $970,000. “That’s powerful,” Steven Balsam, a leading academic expert on executive compensation practices, said when told what our study showed. Balsam is a professor at Temple University’s Fox School of Business who published a 2012 study on the deduction cap for the Economic Policy Institute. “At best, 162(m) has had a marginal effect,” he said. “It hasn’t had a major impact.”
Pacific Standard
February 19, 2016
Those minimums would dethrone Massachusetts – where the statewide rate will climb to $11 an hour next year – from the top spot, according to D.C.-based Economic Policy Institute, which has been tracking wage increases across the nation.
David Cooper, an economic analyst the Economic Policy Institute, said he applauds the Oregon Legislature for its creative tiered approach, but did express hesitation. “I think any time you create these sorts of somewhat arbitrary geographic districts, that’s when you can create opportunities for some sort of economic disruption,” he said. “I would prefer the whole state got to the same wage level but at a slower pace by region so that everyone is held to the same standard.”
Associated Press
February 18, 2016
He said repeatedly that he decided to run only after lobbying Florida’s congressional delegation to vote against fast-tracking the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a corporate-friendly free trade agreement that the Economic Policy Institute argues will depress wages and accelerate the decline in U.S. manufacturing.
Al Jazeera America
February 17, 2016
That gap grew significantly as the economy recovered in the four years after the Great Recession, according to a report from the Economic Policy Institute, which said the highest earning taxpayers captured an “alarming share of the economic growth” over that time. Between 2009 and 2012 in New Jersey, the top 1 percent had a 26.4 percent boost in pay while the remaining 99 percent saw their income increase 1.4 percent. Although the percentages varied from state to state, the report shows a “rapid growth” of the 1 percent in those years.
NJ.com
February 17, 2016