The unions have seen the consequences quite recently when Republican-dominated state governments eliminated fair share fees. In 2012 union membership in Michigan declined by 7 percent, and “free-riding” more than doubled, after the state enacted a public-sector right-to-work law and prohibited school districts from collecting union dues by payroll deduction, according to the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank.
NPR
January 11, 2016
Larry Mishel, president of the Economic Policy Institute in Washington, D.C., pointed out that the decline in unions has been linked to wage stagnation, growing inequality, and the overall slippage of the American middle class.
The New Republic
January 11, 2016
From 2004 to 2014, the average CEO of a large American firm got a 15 percent raise, according to data compiled by the Economic Policy Institute. The stingiest raise for a Power Five commissioner during that time: 258 percent, for the ACC’s Swofford.
The Washington Post
January 11, 2016
Elise Gould, senior economist at the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute, said the Fed should hold off from further hikes to short term interest rates given the slow growth in wages.
Politico
January 11, 2016
The creation of more than 292,000 jobs in December was “an indication of a relatively strong labor market in 2015, especially compared with the Great Recession and the beginning of the recovery”, said Elise Gould, senior economist at the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute. She added that the US economy still had a “way to go before we reach full employment”.
The Guardian
January 11, 2016
“While the Fed has already nudged up short term interest rates, these weak wage data are an indication that they should hold off on further hikes. We need to see strong and sustained wage growth, above 3.5 percent, before it’s safe to say we are at full employment and the Fed could act to slow the economy.” –Elise Gould, Economic Policy Institute
Wall Street Journal
January 11, 2016
I spoke to economist Valerie Wilson, director of the Economic Policy Institute’s Program on Race, Ethnicity, and the Economy, about the decline in black unemployment. She cautioned that it’s hard to tell how much is real or sustainable employment growth in one month. As we always say here, never put too much stock into one month’s numbers. But, Wilson noted that we’ve seen bigger decreases in black unemployment in recent years thanks to “the economy getting better as a whole.” When the unemployment rate decreases 1 percentage point nationally, it usually translates to about a 2 percentage point drop in black unemployment, she explained. “You get bigger changes in African American unemployment rate when the labor market gets tighter, because they are the ones left who are still looking for work.” Yet, the disparity between unemployment rates remain: The black unemployment rate is still almost double the white unemployment rate of 4.5 percent.
PBS News Hour
January 11, 2016
Despite the progress, there was a lot of room for improvement. Blacks still have higher unemployment than every other demographic. White unemployment is 4.5%, Hispanic unemployment is 6.3% and Asian unemployment is 4%. While it’s “an important improvement,” the black unemployment rate “would be unacceptable if that were the national rate,” says Valerie Wilson, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute, a think tank.
CNN Money
January 11, 2016
Now, the bad news is how far below fully maxing out the economy’s employment capacity we still are, and how long it may still take to get there. Back at the start of 2015, the Economic Policy Institute estimated we’d need to average 246,000 jobs a month in order to return to the balance of forces we enjoyed at the peak just before the 2008 crash. And even then we wouldn’t get there until the summer of 2017.
The Week
January 11, 2016
More than 25 European industry associations, including a group representing steel producers, have banded together to argue in favor of the status quo. The alliance hailed a study released last September by the U.S.-based Economic Policy Institute alleging that unilateral recognition of China as a market economy by the EU would put as many as 3.5 million jobs in Europe at risk.
Bloomberg
January 11, 2016