But Trump Labor Secretary Alex Acosta plans to revise and lower the salary level substantially – with the result that workers struggling on as little as $31,000 a year could be forced to work long hours with no extra pay, and leaving 9.1 million fewer workers protected according to the Economic Policy Institute.
The Huffington Post | November 21, 2017
“That scarring, of not being able to get that experience after graduation, is very harmful,” says Elise Gould, senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute. By contrast, many younger Millennials have pursued their first jobs in a healthy labor market the past few years. For employers, a 24-year-old just starting out may be a more attractive and cheaper hire than a 32-year-old with a spotty resume, McLaughlin says. As a result, some members of the older group may continue to struggle with underemployment and lower wages and move out on their own at a slower-than-normal pace, Gould says. (Elise quoted throughout)
USA Today | November 21, 2017
Despite the cost, a college degree has its benefits: Analysis by the Economic Policy Institute shows US college graduates in 2015 earned 56% more than high-school graduates, the biggest gap between the two groups since 1973. But, in the US at least, the return on higher education is high in part because of stagnant and falling wages for low-skilled earners. Millennials may be rushing to get college degrees in part because the alternatives are getting worse.
Quartz | November 20, 2017
The Economic Policy Institute has compiled a national look at state laws that prevent local governments from mandating better working conditions in cities and counties than state law provides. (whole story/map included)
Arkansas Times | November 20, 2017
“What you’re seeing in Seattle is consistent with what we have seen in this country for virtually the entire period since the 1970s,” said Heidi Shierholz, policy director for the Washington, D.C.-based Economic Policy Institute, a pro-labor think tank. In the post-World War II period, income inequality was declining. But at some point in the 1970s, wage stagnation set in for lower- and middle-income workers, while the top tier of earners began pulling away from everyone else. Economists point to a variety of reasons for this. Shierholz believes none is more significant than the decline of unions, and not just because union jobs have higher pay and better benefits. (Heidi quoted throughout)
The Seattle Times | November 17, 2017
“The tax plan passed today by the House of Representatives is a flat giveaway to America’s richest households and corporations,” argued Josh Bivens of the Economic Policy Institute in a statement. “Most of the same people who cast this vote to deprive the government of tax revenue will now cynically pivot and start wringing their hands about the federal budget deficit, arguing that vital programs like Medicare and Medicaid must be slashed.”
Common Dreams | November 17, 2017
EPI: OVERTIME AT $31K ISN’T ENOUGH: The left-leaning Economic Policy Institute calculates that nine million fewer workers would be eligible for overtime if the Trump administration, rather than raise the salary threshold to $47,476, as the blocked Obama rule did, instead raised it to $31,000. Why $31,000? Apparently that number is being bruited about at DOL because it represents the 2004 threshold adjusted for inflation. (Note that it’s a bit lower than the $33,000 threshold that Acosta mentioned at his confirmation hearing.)
EPI estimates that the Obama rule would have “provided new or strengthened overtime protections to 12.5 million workers.” If the Trump administration went with a $31,000 threshold instead, that would extend overtime protection to only 3.4 million additional workers, EPI said. Read the analysis here.
Politico Pro | November 16, 2017
Economists tend to be much more skeptical. Heidi Shierholz of the Economic Policy Institute dismisses fears of technological unemployment, pointing to data that suggests this particular scenario is nowhere in sight. (Heidi speaks throughout)
VOX | November 16, 2017
Hunter speaks at 1:00 mark.
“This money can be used to pay for Medicaid, to strengthen Medicare, pay for roads, bridges, infrastructure,” said Hunter Blair, a budget analyst at the Economic Policy Institute. He says the GOP tax plan is designed to help the wealthy. He says the current estate tax exemption level is already too high. “Raising the exemption level, more of a give away to the richest estates, it doesn’t seem like a good idea,” said Blair.
Gray TV | November 16, 2017
Employment arbitration agreements are increasingly popular, as employers try to keep cases out of court. The liberal-leaning Economic Policy Institute estimates as many as 60 million American workers have signed one, even if they didn’t read the fine print.
NPR | November 16, 2017
Rising incomes for lower- and middle-earners may help reduce inequality, especially if wage growth for higher-earners remains subdued. A recent analysis by the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think-tank, found that real wages for the top 1% of earners fell by 3.1% in 2016, and were lower that year than they were in 2007. As workers’ wages grow, firms’ profit margins may also come under pressure, reducing, somewhat, the capital income of the rich. Texas Roadhouse, a chain of steak restaurants, recently warned investors that it expects its wage bill to grow by 7-8% in 2017.
The Economist | November 15, 2017
The Washington Post | November 15, 2017
That point is broadly true. Wage growth has been relatively flat for decades, but after the recession hovered around 2 percent, as data from the Economic Policy Institute shows. Had wages grown at 3.5 percent after the recession — the pace wage growth saw before the recession — hourly earnings would be about 12 percent higher. (chart included)
The Washington Post | November 13, 2017
“Boosting productivity growth…will not lead to broad-based wage gains unless we pursue policies that reconnect productivity growth and the pay of the vast majority,” Larry Mishel and Josh Bivens of the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute wrote in 2015. Mr. Mishel is co-creator of a chart illustrating the post-1973 divergence between productivity and pay that has achieved iconic status on the left. (Larry quoted throughout)
The Wall Street Journal | November 13, 2017
The dark side of public–private partnerships entails bailouts and bad deals. Infrastructure is in part defined by natural monopolistic tendencies, and without an effective public regulatory monitoring mechanism, private actors who take on public services might raise prices to an inefficient level or degrade service quality to an inefficient degree, says Hunter Blair, budget analyst for the Economic Policy Institute. Governments run the risk of mistaking the financing that public–private partnerships can leverage for the funding of projects themselves—of missing the forest for the trees. “A lot of people in the government, when they talk about [public–private partnerships], they see it as this free lunch,” Blair says. “We’re going to bring in private money, so that means, somehow, it’s going to cost us less to pay for the infrastructure. Funding at the end of the day still has to come from taxes or user fees. There is no free lunch here.”
CityLab | November 13, 2017
In fact, most corporations have access to pretty much all the money they need right now, says Josh Bivens, director of research at the liberal-leaning Economic Policy Institute. But they’re not investing all that much or increasing wages. “So we have exactly what the corporate tax cut is trying to engineer—really high post-tax profit rates. And yet it has not resulted in more investment. So the idea that we just want to do more of the same thing that has not spurred investment strikes me as not correct,” Bivens says.
Marketplace | November 13, 2017
According to the Economic Policy Institute, one in five veterans — or 1.8 million veterans — are currently paid less than $15 an hour. Who are these low-paid veterans? Two-thirds (66 percent) are 40 years old or older, 61 percent have college experience and 69 percent work full time.
Marketplace | November 13, 2017
October brought more improvement, with 369,000 more Americans exiting unwanted part-time status, shrinking the percentage of involuntary part-timers to 3.4 percent. Still, the country has not returned to pre-crisis levels on this measure, which worries some economists. “We are continuing to see this steady improvement, but there is still this slack in the labor market,” said Heidi Shierholz, senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank.
The Washington Post | November 8, 2017
Nearly 2 million US veterans would benefit from raising the federal minimum wage to $15 per hour. Approximately 1.8 million of the 9 million veterans in payroll jobs across the US would get a raise if Congress raised the federal minimum wage to $15 per hour by 2024, the liberal-leaning Economic Policy Institute determined in an analysis on the Raise the Wage Act of 2017 in honor of Veterans Day. Nearly two-thirds of the veterans who would get the raise are age 40 or older, over 60% have some college experience, and nearly 70% work full time, the EPI found. (whole story)
Business Insider | November 8, 2017
In a statement, Celine McNicholas, labor counsel for the Economic Policy Institute, claimed it “robs workers of their rights, making it impossible for them to effectively collectively bargain or litigate workplace disputes.” She also said it “leaves small businesses holding the bag when the large corporations that control their business practices and set their employees’ schedules violate labor law and refuse to come to the bargaining table.”
The Hill | November 8, 2017
When education economist Emma García started researching the academic gaps that show up in kindergarten between low-income students and their high-income peers, she had reason to suspect the gaps had widened in recent years. Income inequality in the U.S., for example, has been on the rise: Since 1980, incomes have stagnated for the bottom 50 percent of American adults. Meanwhile, the top 1 percent, who in 1980 earned 27 times more than the bottom 50, now earn 81 times more. But despite that growing economic inequality, reading and math performance gaps between low-income students and their more well-off peers haven’t grown, according to a recent study from the Economic Policy Institute. (whole story)
The Seattle Times | November 7, 2017
An analysis in September of Census Bureau data by the Economic Policy Institute, a think tank, found that between 2000 and 2016 — years when many millennials first entered the job market — there was “little to no gain” in median annual earnings. This isn’t some limited fallout from the 2008 financial crisis; it’s a different type of phenomenon and part of a longer trend of wage stagnation that reaches back to the 1970s.
The New York Times | November 7, 2017
In the agreement’s first year, 1994, one million Mexicans lost their jobs, by the government’s own count. According to Jeff Faux, founding director of the Economic Policy Institute, “the peso crash of December, 1994, was directly connected to NAFTA.” And as the border maquiladora factories were tied to the U.S. market, Mexican workers lost jobs when the U.S. market shrank during recessions. In 2000-2001, at the time of the dot-com crash, 400,000 jobs were lost on the U.S./Mexico border, and in the Great Recession of 2008 thousands more were eliminated. With the border so close, many crossed it to survive. (EPI cited throughout)
The American Prospect | November 7, 2017
“This is asking a lot of Janet Yellen,” wrote Josh Bivens of the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute in a commentary. “She is likely to lose a job she has done extraordinarily well for no good reason at all.…But her continued presence as a key decision maker at the Fed would be a huge win for smart economic policy-making.”
The Wall Street Journal | November 6, 2017
“This is certainly welcome news after last month’s disappointing weather-driven top line figure,” Elise Gould, an economist at the left wing Economic Policy Institute, wrote. On average, 169,000 new jobs have been added per month this year, compared to 187,000 per month in 2016. The last time there was a net decrease in jobs was September, 2010.
Buzzfeed | November 6, 2017
“Its important to note that this [the drop in the unemployment rate] happened for all the wrong reasons—the result of workers leaving the labor force, not finding jobs,” warns Elise Gould, of the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute.
Quartz | November 6, 2017
It would take a lot of changes for a proposal like this to please progressives. Most groups who had called for reform, like the National Low-Income Housing Coalition, had proposed that the savings from reforming the mortgage interest deduction be invested back into housing for low and moderate-income people. That’s not where the savings from the cap would go in this proposal. “If this were just a plan that capped the mortgage interest deduction, I think we’d support that,” Hunter Blair, a budget analyst with the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute, told me. “But it’s a small piece of an otherwise huge tax cut for the rich and corporations.”
The Atlantic | November 3, 2017
Economists say there’s little relationship between post-tax profit rates and business investment that boosts productivity, while productivity and wages have grown faster in periods of higher taxes, according to the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute.
CBS Moneywatch | November 3, 2017
The Economic Policy Institute, meanwhile, says the CEA is basing its argument on faulty data. A chart showing wage growth in the countries with the 10 highest and 10 lowest corporate tax rates rankles the EPI, in particular. “It is deeply puzzling just what a graph that shows correlation is supposed to prove about causation. … There is no claim that corporate tax policy changed in those years and hence drove the higher wage growth in low-tax countries,” the EPI writes. (EPI cited throughout)
The Cheat Sheet | November 3, 2017
To many critics, his nomination is a purely partisan move. “Today’s decision to not reappoint Janet Yellen as Chair of the Federal Reserve is the wrong one, and was seemingly rooted in simple-minded partisanship,” said Josh Bivens of the liberal-leaning think tank, the Economic Policy Institute. “That demanded a Republican president replace a Democratic appointee as Fed chair.”
Quartz | November 3, 2017