Media clips
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Josh Bivens, director of research and policy at the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute, delivered that defense at Brookings. Mr. Bivens has sounded the alarms about inequality in recent years, but he said the Fed’s stimulus campaign was not to blame. Compared with an alternate reality in which the Fed would have done nothing, he said it was clear that the stimulus campaign reduced inequality by increasing employment. “Successful macroeconomic stabilization is strongly progressive,” Mr. Bivens said.
Even the Fed’s impact on asset prices was arguably progressive, he said. While the Fed drove up stock prices, most of which are owned by the wealthy, it also increased the value of housing, which is mostly owned by the middle class. Indeed, Mr. Bivens said he had compared the impact of the Fed’s campaign with the Obama administration’s 2010 fiscal stimulus and found no evidence of a larger impact on inequality. The means were different, but the impact was more or less the same.
The New York Times June 2, 2015 -
Critics including Daniel Costa, an immigration expert at the Economic Policy Institute, say that of particular concern are Indian outsourcing companies that provide workers for entry-level positions in the U.S., such as tech support at retailers and banks. Such companies are among the top procurers of H-1B visas, according to U.S. government data.
Wall Street Journal June 2, 2015 -
The Economic Policy Institute estimates that since 2007, there are 1.8 million missing jobs in the public sector. Moreover, across the country, conservative Republican governors have assaulted unions and sought to curb collective bargaining, erase teacher tenure, and dramatically cut pensions and other benefits.
Chicago Sun Times June 2, 2015 -
Yet despite recent high-profile racial discrimination settlements with major retailers like Walgreen, Walmart and Wet Seal, economic results for people of color remain weak. Median black family income is actually less than it was relative to white families 50 years ago, according to the Economic Policy Institute.
Salon June 2, 2015 -
There has been a lot of justifiable high-fiving about the steady fall in the unemployment rate, to 5.4 percent recently. But joblessness is still higher than it was before the last recession began at the end of 2007. Unemployment is still above the pre-recession levels in Washington, D.C. and 36 states, including California, Illinois, Indiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey and New York. Despite steady if lackluster economic growth, job prospects are still rocky even for recent college graduates. The average unemployment rate in the past year for college grads ages 21 to 24 was 7.2 percent, compared to 5.5 percent in the pre-recession year of 2007. Their underemployment rate, which includes those who do not have full-time hours, is 14.9 percent, compared to 9.6 percent in 2007.
The New York Times June 1, 2015 -
In fact, the central bank has purchased $1.7 trillion worth of mortgage-backed securities in the aftermath of the Great Recession with the express purpose of propping up the real estate market. Josh Bivens, research and policy director at the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute, found that program helped push up housing prices by 7 percent, while raising stock prices 5 percent — essentially cancelling each other out. More important, Bivens proposes, the Fed has sought to lower unemployment through its stimulus efforts. By pumping money into the economy, Bivens estimates, the central bank lowered unemployment by a percentage point, making it more powerful than the fiscal stimulus enacted in 2010. Stabilizing the economy and ensuring people have jobs help reduce inequality by ensuring the bottom doesn’t fall out, Bivens says. “Recent concerns that the Fed’s expansionary stance since the onset of the Great Recession may have exacerbated long-running trends towards greater income inequality seem quite misplaced,” he wrote.
The Washington Post June 1, 2015 -
Though this year the sentiment has been that things are looking up for recent college graduates, there is still room for improvement, according to the Economic Policy Institute, a nonprofit, nonpartisan think tank whose goal is to discuss the needs of low- and middle-income workers. In a new report, “The Class of 2015,” researchers at the EPI found that members of this year’s graduating class have better job prospects than classes that graduated from 2009 to 2014. But according to the EPI: “The Class of 2015 still faces real economic challenges, as evidenced by elevated levels of unemployment and underemployment, and a large share of graduates who still remain “idled” by the economy. In addition, wages of young high school and college graduates have failed to reach their prerecession levels, and have in fact stagnated or declined for almost every group since 2000.”
Boston Globe June 1, 2015 -
A recent report by the Economic Policy Institute found that foreign workers employed by Infosys and Tata in the United States are paid considerably less than their American counterparts, suggesting that these offshoring firms are using the H-1B program not to ameliorate a lack of skilled workers into the American labor market, but to cut labor costs.
Buzzfeed June 1, 2015 -
University of Oregon economist Gordon Lafer said that “proven statistical fact” is anything but. “There is no evidence whatsoever that right-to-work is a significant draw,” he said.
Lafer, who is also a research associate at the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute, said while right-to-work states do tend to offer lower wages than states without the laws—around 3 percent lower, on average—the difference is not nearly enough to prevent employers from chasing even lower wage costs overseas.
CNBC June 1, 2015 -
Wage-earners also benefited, according to a paper by Josh Bivens, research and policy director at the Economic Policy Institute. He writes that criticism that quantitative easing exacerbated inequality is “misplaced,” especially considering what the economy might have looked like if the Fed hadn’t stepped in. “As weak as wage growth has been since the onset of the Great Recession, it would have been much weaker if monetary policy had been less expansionary,” he wrote in the paper distributed by Brookings. “Wage gains that are realized when expansionary monetary policy keeps unemployment lower than it otherwise would have been are not reversed if monetary policy does not contract before the economy is stabilized near full employment.”
Bloomberg June 1, 2015