African-Americans make up nearly half of the District of Columbia’s population of more than 650,000. But the unemployment rate among the city’s African-Americans is 15.8 percent, according to the progressive Economic Policy Institute’s analysis of official data. That’s more than twice the city’s overall jobless rate of 7.7 percent and more than five times white Washingtonians’ unemployment rate of 2.9 percent.
The Huffington Post
October 19, 2015
After a surprisingly weak series of employment reports and a good, but not great, Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey released Friday, many analysts are beginning to question the state of the domestic labor market. Long hailed as one of the healthiest aspects of the domestic economy, it seems the state of employment in the U.S. is beginning to sag. “There is still a significant gap between the number of people looking for jobs and the number of job openings,” Elise Gould, senior economist and director of health policy research at the Economic Policy Institute, wrote in a research note Friday. She cited a “broad-based lack of demand for workers” and “meager wage growth and employment growth” as “more evidence of a slow-moving economy.”
U.S. News and World Report
October 19, 2015
In February, Florida’s auditor general issued its findings that during a four-month period in 2014, 44 percent of the more than 408,000 claims processed were simply sent off into the web equivalent of the Twilight Zone. Applicants were instructed to submit their Social Security numbers, even though that was not a requirement. Moreover, the audit found weak security protections. In March, the Economic Policy Institute reported that 81.3 percent of the state’s short-term unemployed had received no benefits last year.
Miami Herald
October 19, 2015
The nine Supreme Court judges will soon hear arguments in Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association, and their ruling could transform all of the American public sector into a “right-to-work” zone. The result could be lower wages for public employees around the country, according to the author of a recent study from the pro-union Economic Policy Institute (EPI).
Al Jazeera America
October 19, 2015
Any increase would have major consequences in Texas, because we have so many low-wage workers and a high poverty rate. If the pay floor rose to $12 an hour by 2020, almost 3.5 million Texans would get a bump, according to the Economic Policy Institute in Washington.
Dallas Morning News
October 19, 2015
No one has to tell working parents how ridiculously expensive child care has become in this country. Still, a recent study by the Economic Policy Institute in Washington, D.C., certainly puts an eye-opening exclamation point on that fact. That study showed that a year of child care for a 4-year-old costs about 16 percent more than a year’s tuition at UNC Chapel Hill.
Charlotte Observer
October 19, 2015
Lawrence wrote that while the image concerns that pushed her to take the deal could be chalked up to being young – or part of her personality – there was maybe something deeper in play. “Are we socially conditioned to behave this way? We’ve only been able to vote for what, 90 years? I’m seriously asking – my phone is on the counter and I’m on the couch, so a calculator is obviously out of the question. Could there still be a lingering habit of trying to express our opinions in a certain way that doesn’t ‘offend’ or ‘scare’ men?” she wrote. (A study by the Economic Policy Institute in April found that “at the median, women’s hourly wages are only 83 percent of men’s hourly wages.”)
Entertainment Weekly
October 16, 2015
But the real concern is that this new rule will draw attention to an unflattering comparison. The left-leaning Economic Policy Institute estimates that among the largest publicly owned U.S. firms, CEOs make over 300 times the salary of a median worker. In 2014, chief executives at these top 350 companies earned 16.3 million on average.
The Washington Post
October 16, 2015
Perhaps the most data-driven work on the program is Ms. Harting’s, drawn from a graph created by the Economic Policy Institute, using data generated by Messrs. Pinketty and Saez. The data, which come from the period 1979 to 2007, show income growth for the bottom 90% staying relatively stagnant, sometimes even dropping into negative territory, before hitting 5% in the final year. The line representing the top 1% of households, meanwhile, ends up 224%.
Wall Street Journal
October 16, 2015
Twenty-six states have increased their minimum wage since January 2014, according to the Economic Policy Institute, a Washington think tank.
CNN Money
October 16, 2015