Media clips
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According to a new report published by the Economic Policy Institute titled The Class of 2015, the labor market has improved for college graduates but still has a long way to go before it reaches pre-recession levels. And once the data are broken down into race and gender, it’s obvious that unemployment is more of a reality for some groups than others.
The American Prospect June 5, 2015 -
Arguments about why the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal would be good for middle-class Americans boil down to claims that it will boost U.S. exports. From an economic perspective, this is not a good case: The textbook argument for why efforts to liberalize trade are good for national income is that such efforts make imports cheaper, and increased exports are mostly a side-show.
But proponents of TPP are not stressing that the deal would cheapen imports, for a couple of reasons. First, barriers to imports to the U.S. are already low, so the proposed Pacific trade deal would have little traction in boosting imports to the U.S. Second, cheaper imports have ripple effects that make the case for liberalized trade problematic because they result in a contraction of domestic producers competing with importers and an expansion of export sectors that leads to lower wages for most Americans and increased inequality.
Wall Street Journal June 4, 2015 -
In one paper, economist Josh Bivens of the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning research and advocacy group, made three points in defense of the Fed. First, the bond-buying strengthened the economic recovery by lowering interest rates and creating jobs in interest-sensitive sectors such as housing and manufacturing. “Stimulus that reduces unemployment disproportionately benefits low- and moderate-wage workers,” Bivens wrote. Overall, Fed policies cut the unemployment rate by 1 percentage point, he estimated. That’s about 1.5 million jobs today.
Second, back-of-the-envelope estimates exaggerate the Fed’s effects on stock prices. Bivens reviewed studies and found estimates ranging from 3 percent to 8.5 percent — far smaller than Wien’s recent estimate. Bivens settled on 5 percent as a plausible gain. Third, lower interest rates also boosted the wealth of the middle class, with the largest effects on home prices. Bivens estimated that interest rates on mortgage bonds fell 1.5 percentage points, raising average home prices about 7 percent. That’s significant, because for middle-income Americans, housing represents nearly two-thirds of their wealth.
The Washington Post June 4, 2015 -
With all of that, today’s teachers — prospective, new and veteran — also face growing ethical challenges, which was the subject of a recent commencement speech given to graduates of Bank Street Graduate School of Education in New York by scholar Richard Rothstein, who received an honor doctorate for his contribution to the field of education. Rothstein is 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. His recent work has documented the history of state-sponsored residential segregation, as in his report, “The Making of Ferguson.”
The Washington Post June 4, 2015 -
O’Malley’s staff pointed to June 2014 research from the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute and 1947-2013 historical Census data as sources of his figures. The Economic Policy Institute (EPI) found slow and unequal wage growth in recent decades, and a “near stagnation” of hourly wage growth over the past generation for the majority of American workers. Hourly wage data compiled by the group, from the Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey, show a breakdown by percentile from 1973 to 2013, adjusted to 2013 dollars. Hourly wages for the 10th through 60th percentiles in 2013 were lower, or relatively flat compared to their hourly wages in 2001.
The Washington Post June 4, 2015 -
Wages for university grads are 2.5 percent lower than what they were 15 years ago, according to the latest edition of the Economic Policy Institute’s annual report on the labor market prospects of new workers. The research found that young college grads’ hourly wages currently sit at an average of $17.94, or just over $37,000 annually. In 2000, the average hourly rate was $18.41.
Huffington Post June 3, 2015 -
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