Ross Eisenbrey, vice president of the Economic Policy Institute in Washington, said that while there are legitimate uses for the H-1B, the visas are mainly used to drive down labor costs and boost profits. “It’s about replacing US workers who are already doing the job with someone who’ll do it more cheaply,” said Eisenbrey. “Their only purpose is cutting wages. it’s not about bringing new skills.” Eisenbrey called for legislation that would make it illegal to lay off US citizens and replace them with H-1B workers. He also proposed requiring H-1B workers be paid more than the local prevailing wage for the work they do. Eisenbrey said that if the foreign workers possess skills that are impossible to find in the US labor market, companies should be happy to pay the extra money.
The Boston Globe
April 6, 2015
But Elise Gould, a senior economist at the liberal Economic Policy Institute, said in a statement that the new report “should give us pause. … While it’s important not to put too much stock in a couple months of data — especially given the unusual amount of snow that blanketed the country in the past two months — policymakers should be wary of any signs of any slowdown from the solid job growth over the previous year.”
“There is still ample slack in the labor market,” Gould wrote. “Private sector hourly wages are up only 2.1 percent over the year. Wages need to grow faster, and for a longer time, before we can say the economy is truly working for working people.”
Politico
April 6, 2015
The weak March report is a reminder that although the economy is improving, it’s still struggling to climb back from the Great Recession. “While it’s important not to put too much stock in a couple months of data . . . policymakers should be wary of any signs of any slowdown from the solid job growth over the previous year,” Elise Gould, an economist with the liberal Economic Policy Institute, wrote in an analysis. “Other indicators make it clear that there is still ample slack in the labor market.”
McClatchy
April 6, 2015
The left-leaning Economic Policy Institute pointed out that the public sector workforce has not recovered since the recession. “The economy is short 1.3 million public sector jobs,” EPI senior economist Elise Gould wrote in a blog post Friday.
NBC News
April 6, 2015
When people cheat to escape a corrupt accountability system, who is to blame? This was written by scholar Richard Rothstein, a research associate at the Economic Policy Institute, a non-profit created in 1986 to broaden the discussion about economic policy to include the interests of low- and middle-income workers. This appeared on the EPI website and I am republishing it with permission.
The Washington Post
April 6, 2015
Over the last year, employers added an average of 266,000 workers to their payrolls each month, pushing the unemployment rate to a level not seen since 2008. The falling overall rate, however, obscures persistent difficulties facing particular groups of workers. “The unemployment rate for black communities is at a crisis level, even as the economy gets closer and closer to a full recovery,” said Valerie Wilson, an economist at the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute.
The New York Times
April 3, 2015
According to the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), a Washington-based liberal think tank, nominal wage rises of 3.5-4 percent per year will be needed before workers begin to recover losses from the last severe recession.
Elise Gould, an economist at the EPI, said state-government mandated minimum wage hikes, rather than a scarcity of workers in retail, leisure and hospitality probably contributed to the improved fortunes of the bottom 10 percent. “I would be surprised if those were the sectors where we saw the tightness first,” she said.
Reuters
April 3, 2015
Perhaps because of the effect on prices, the mortgage-interest deduction doesn’t even seem to encourage homeownership. Thomas L. Hungerford, an economist with the liberal Economic Policy Institute, notes that Canada and the United Kingdom have homeownership rates similar to that of the U.S., even though they don’t let borrowers write off the interest on their mortgages. “Having the mortgage-interest deduction does almost nothing for increasing homeownership rates,” Hungerford said.
FiveThirtyEight
April 3, 2015
This report was produced by the Economic Policy Institute as part of the Full Employment Project of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.
The American Prospect
April 3, 2015
International Franchise Association CEO Steve Caldera and Economic Policy Institute Senior Economist Elise Gould weigh in on the income inequality and minimum wage debate. They speak on “In The Loop.”
Bloomberg TV
April 2, 2015