Media clips
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A report last year by the Economic Policy Institute found that the retirement system largely benefits higher income workers the most because they can actually contribute enough to make 401(k) plans work for retirement.
“Retirement-income inequality has grown in part because most 401(k) participants are required to contribute to these plans in order to participate, whereas workers are automatically enrolled in defined-benefit pensions and, in the private sector, are not required to contribute to these plans,” the liberal-leaning think-tank found. “Thus, higher-income workers are much more likely to participate in defined-contribution plans. In addition, higher-income workers have more disposable income and a higher investment-risk tolerance, receive larger tax breaks, and are more likely to work for employers that provide generous matches.”
CBS Moneywatch May 23, 2014 -
Talk of progress on inequality “sounds a bit hollow” right now, said Heidi Shierholz, an economist at the Washington-based Economic Policy Institute, which conducts research on the economic condition of low- and middle-income families. She said she’d like to wait for further evidence confirming gains for lower-income workers.
Bloomberg May 23, 2014 -
The legislation, SB 1372, has passed one Senate committee by a 5-2 vote and will come before the Appropriations Committee this week. To the best of my knowledge, it is the first bill in the nation that seeks to diminish economic inequality through corporate tax reform. Odds are it won’t be the last.
The gap between the compensation packages of CEOs and their employees’ pay is a relatively new phenomenon. In 1965, according to a study from the Economic Policy Institute, CEOs made 20 times what their median employee made. By 2012, the ratio had risen to 273 to 1.
That could mean that today’s CEOs are 14 times better than their mid-20th century predecessors, or that today’s workers are 14 times worse.
Los Angeles Times May 23, 2014 -
They are your neighbors, your fellow congregants, some of the men and women crammed beside you on the subway or bus. Day in and day out, they are coping with upended lives, struggling to squeeze back into a work force that has squeezed them out.
Nationally, more than three million unemployed people have been searching for work for longer than six months, nearly three times more than there were in 2007, before the Great Recession began, according to the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning research group based in Washington.
The numbers tell part of the story. The rest often remains unspoken: the emotional and financial burdens of joblessness; the mounting sense of self-doubt, the awkward silences among friends who grasp for words of comfort and the job offers that vaporize after seeming so tantalizingly within reach.
The New York Times May 23, 2014 -
(Also in Port Clinton News Heralds, htrnews, The Des Moines Register, Courier-Post, Cincinnati.com
The latest jobs report for April gave grads a puzzling picture. Employers added the most jobs in more than two years, 288,000. Unemployment dropped from 6.7% to 6.3%, the first time it was that low since September 2008. Young adults still face higher unemployment, but the rate for 25-29 year-olds fell from 7.5% in March to 6.9%. The unemployment rate for those 20-24 dropped from 12.2% to 10.6%.Still, the portion of Americans 25-34 who were working in April fell to a five-month low of 75.5%, down from 75.9% in March.
“The entire drop (in unemployment) was due to people dropping out of the labor force, in particular young people,” says Heidi Shierholz, a labor market economist who writes an annual report on the state of employment for young adults for Economic Policy Institute.
And despite the number of jobs added last month, Shierholz calls the gradual improvement “agonizingly slow.”
USA Today May 23, 2014 -
(Also in Star Tribune, NBC News, News Times, Reading Eagle)
Labor leaders and many economists worry. Contract workers have less job security and don’t contribute to the economy through spending as much as permanent, full-time workers. Nor do they have the same job protections. Few are union members.“It is not hugely clear that we’re coming into a temp-worker, contract-worker, contingent-worker nation. But it’s something to keep an eye on,” said Heidi Shierholz, an economist with the labor-oriented Economic Policy Institute. “There’s definitely been an increase in the share of those working part time.”
Associated Press May 23, 2014 -
“After all these years, it’s no wonder people are still feeling the weight of the Great Recession,” said Heidi Shierholz, an economist at the liberal Economic Policy Institute, which tracks the well-being of the poor and the working class, “because the weight is still there.”
The New York Times May 23, 2014 -
Retirement saving aside, many young potential first-time homebuyers largely just can’t afford to purchase a home. They point to insufficient credit history or score and a lack of funds to cover a down payment and closing costs as the biggest obstacles to purchasing a home, according to a May report from Fannie Mae.
Further compromising their financial stability, the unemployment of Americans under 25 is likely higher given the scarcity of job opportunities, a recent report from the Economic Policy Institute showed. There are about 1 million “missing” young workers, which means they’re not employed, in school or actively seeking work. They’re not counted in the jobless rate, which was 10.6 percent in April for Americans 20-24. Almost five years after the recession ended, there should be 7.1 million more jobs to match the growth of the labor force.
US News and World Report May 23, 2014 -
“Whenever it comes to the issue of the day, whether it’s labor or energy, you can’t ignore what they are doing because they have a measurable effect on the economy,” said Josh Bivens, research and policy director at the liberal Economic Policy Institute.
Wall Street Journal May 16, 2014 -
I asked the Economic Policy Institute to annotate the graph to show how much of the premium is from real wage gains for college grads, and how much is from wage declines for high school grads. In the 1980s and 1990s, college grads strongly outpaced high school grads. But since then, the better pay performance of college grads is due to high school students losing ground, not to college grads pulling ahead.
The New York Times May 16, 2014