Media clips
-
New research from the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute finds that the majority of working-age poor people without disabilities do work. “When you look at that group, you see that nearly two-thirds of them are working and more than 40 percent of them are working full-time,” said Elise Gould, a senior economist with the group. “So there are full-time workers out there who can’t lift their families out of poverty.” Gould said more than 50 percent of people living in the Los Angeles metro area earn less than what the group estimates living on a paycheck-to-paycheck lifestyle would take. “Raising the minimum wage to $15 would put a substantial dent in that number,” she said.
NBC News May 26, 2015 -
That question prompted Fortune to examine which U.S. city residents would benefit the most from a $15 per hour minimum wage. We asked David Cooper, an economic analyst at the Economic Policy Institute, for help.
But when you examine how much it costs to live in that region—which Cooper measured using regional price parity, the price of goods and services in that area versus the national average—you get a different picture. The RPP there is 85, on a scale where the overall national RPP is equal to 100, which means goods and services in that area are cheaper than the national average. To take that factor into account, we looked at the most expensive places to live, as measured by RPP, and used the U.S.’s average share of sub-$15 per hour earners—42.4%—as a cutoff for the share of low-wage workers.
Fortune May 26, 2015 -
Between 2009 and 2012, the pre-tax income of Florida’s richest 1 percent — those who made at least $378,342 in 2012 — grew by an average of nearly 40 percent, according to a report by the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute.
Miami Herald May 26, 2015 -
The figures come from Elise Gould of the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), a left-leaning research and advocacy group. At my request, she examined whether the recession has shifted the economy’s job distribution. To do this, she divided businesses into three groups by their pay. Today’s average hourly pay is $25. Low-paying employment is dominated by restaurant and hotel jobs (2015 average hourly rate: $14.12) and retail jobs ($17.21). Midlevel jobs include manufacturing ($23.90), health care and education ($24.97) and construction ($26.91). Finally, high-paying jobs included professional and business services ($29.59), finance ($31.10) and utilities ($36.02). The table below highlights her results. It shows how jobs were distributed in 2000, 2007 — again, the economy’s pre-financial crisis peak — and in 2015.
It’s striking how little has changed. There’s been a small and gradual increase in low-paying jobs and a parallel loss of midlevel jobs. Both trends preceded the recession and have continued. Gould characterizes these shifts as “very slight.” Some economists contend that weak overall wage growth (about 2 percent annually) reflects a large influx of poorly paid workers whose low wages drag down the average. To Gould, the stable low-wage share contradicts that. “The weakness in wage growth is not driven by the mix of jobs being created but rather by labor market slack,” she notes. This justifies, she argues, continued expansionary policies to add jobs and intensify pressure for higher wages.
The Washington Post May 21, 2015 -
It is true that after long being flat at around 17 million, the number of factory jobs in America started a steady decline around 2001, the same time China entered the World Trade Organization. This is the alleged “turning point” cited by commentators such as Robert Scott of the Economic Policy Institute. But this is like saying the sun rose after the rooster crowed. U.S. factory jobs plunged even when the yuan soared vis-à-vis the dollar. There is simply no correlation between the long-term trend in factory jobs and movements in China’s currency.
Wall Street Journal May 21, 2015 -
EPI chart cited.
The Atlantic May 21, 2015 -
The Economic Policy Institute, a liberal research group influential with Democrats in Congress, said the United States-Japan trade deficit reached $78.3 billion in 2013, with currency manipulation being “the most important cause.” That gap, it estimates, displaced 896,600 jobs in the United States.
The New York Times May 20, 2015 -
That said, just about every measure finds they are struggling mightily. The Economic Policy Institute has reported that inflation-adjusted wages for recent college graduates have fallen by 7.7 percent since 2000. Last year, the San Francisco Fed produced this graph showing wages for recent college grads essentially hitting a flight ceiling around 2008 while overall wages continued to climb, however slowly.
The Atlantic May 20, 2015 -
Such narrow portrayals of Baltimore and its residents are only possible if we exclude decades of state and federal policy from our frame of analysis. Richard Rothstein of the Economic Policy Institute wrote something I suggest reading in its entirety. But to quote: In Baltimore and elsewhere, the distressed condition of African American working- and lower-middle-class families is almost entirely attributable to federal policy that prohibited black families from accumulating housing equity during the suburban boom that moved white families into single-family homes from the mid-1930s to the mid-1960s—and thus from bequeathing that wealth to their children and grandchildren, as white suburbanites have done.
American Prospect May 20, 2015 -
Recently, the president claimed that critics who say that the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) “is bad for working families … don’t know what they are talking about.” Skeptics would respond, “Show me the money. Show me the jobs and wages you’re going to generate for working Americans. Explain how the TPP is going to be different from the lousy trade deals we’ve had since the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) was signed into law in 1993.” The White House Council of Economic Advisors released a report touting the benefits of the TPP in pulling down barriers to U.S. exports abroad, but the report fails to mention the most important barrier to U.S. export success: several major trade partners (including TPP partners) managing the value of their own currencies for competitive gain vis-à-vis the U.S. Yet the Obama administration has refused to even discuss the currency issue in the TPP negotiations.
Newsweek May 19, 2015