Media clips
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The Labor Department announced Tuesday that the unemployment rate took a dip last month, falling slightly to 7.2 percent from 7.3 percent in August.
Not accounted for in that calculation were the more than 5 million people who have given up looking for work. Known as “missing workers,” these Americans have vanished from the job market and subsequently the official calculation of the country’s unemployment rate. As you can see, their ranks continue to swell:
As noted by the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute (who produced the two graphics in this post), if these missing persons were counted in our nation’s jobless rate, the situation would look a lot worse — like above-10-percent bad:
The Huffington Post October 24, 2013 -
Let’s start with the basics: 148,000 jobs were added in September. “If we were to put the 148,000 in context, it’s lower than the previous 12 month average, which was 185,000 jobs per month,” says Elise Gould from the Economic Policy Institute. “We also see that the unemployment rate was little changed. It went from 7.3 percent in August to 7.2 percent in September.”
Gould says that overall, this report tells us that the U.S. is far from a full recovery. But, looking at the jobs numbers from month-to-month doesn’t always give the most accurate assessment of the economy. The yearly data often paints the clearest picture.
Marketplace October 24, 2013 -
An increase will add vitality to the D.C. economy by putting money in the pockets of people who are most likely to spend it. A $10.10 wage — the rate proposed for the entire country by Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) and Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.) — would help 36,000 D.C. workers, according to the Economic Policy Institute. The estimated $58 million in increased wages would be spent at markets, clothing shops and hardware stores, aiding D.C. businesses large and small. The direct and indirect effects would help thousands of children. And arguments that minimum-wage earners are dominated by teenagers don’t hold up to scrutiny. Almost all affected workers — 95 percent — would be age 20 or older. Economists have studied the impact of minimum wage increases for decades. And the vast weight of the research finds that they raise workers’ take home pay without leading to notable job cuts.
The Washington Post October 18, 2013 -
The sequester is merely one manifestation of Congress’s love for austerity in the post-recession era. From the inception, recovery programs have never been as large or robust as they needed to be, despite evidence that even harsher austerity regimes kept much of Europe mired in slumps.
The Economic Policy Institute displays the harvest graphically (see above). The chart shows that the recovery has barely progressed, falling well below the growth of every recovery period since before the 1980s. Josh Bivens and Heidi Shierholz of EPI have more here. If post-2008 government spending had matched that of earlier recoveries, 5 million more people would be employed today.
Los Angeles Times October 18, 2013 -
Everything will be backed up: Mortgage applications, work permits, backpay for furloughed workers. Stier says after the government re-opens, people will have to wait weeks or even months to get the services they need.
Meanwhile, the backlog will keep getting bigger.
“There’s real damage being done here,” says Josh Bivens, head of policy at the Economic Policy Institute. “There’s really a loss of productivity both going into the shutdown and then another period of low productivity as you sort of ramp it all back up.”
As far as long term effects go, Bivens says this could permanently lower confidence in the US economy, both for foreign investors and people just trying to get a mortgage application in.
Marketplace October 18, 2013 -
Indeed, some experts fear that any remedies lawmakers might devise as part of future budget talks, such as a proposed plan to slow the growth of Social Security payments, could prove worse than the cure. Josh Bivens, research and policy director with the liberal Economic Policy Institute, warns that a renewed focus in Washington on deficit-reduction could hurt the recovery by diminishing people’s income. Consumer spending accounts for roughly 70 percent of economic activity in the U.S.
CBS Moneywatch October 18, 2013 -
That huge gap between the top and the middle is the result of a boom in executive compensation, which rose eight hundred and seventy-six per cent between 1978 and 2011, according to a study by the liberal Economic Policy Institute. In response, we’ve had a host of regulatory reforms designed to curb executive pay. The latest of these is a rule, unveiled by the S.E.C. last month, requiring companies to disclose the ratio of the C.E.O.’s pay to that of the median worker. The idea is that, once the disparity is made public, companies will be less likely to award outsized pay packages.
The New Yorker October 18, 2013 -
The US has seen a net loss of 5.7 million manufacturing jobs since 1998, according to the Economic Policy Institute (EPI). The gaping trade deficit with China alone “displaced” 2.7 million US workers between 2001 and 2011, the EPI’s Robert Scott says.
New York state lost some 100,000 manufacturing jobs in the last five years. And the recovery of all the local jobs lost during the Great Recession is masked by thousands of new, lower-paid jobs with reduced benefits.
Lee Conrad, national coordinator in New York for a small group of union-affiliated IBM workers, said his group uncovered the latest local IBM cuts. IBM has stopped reporting head count by location in recent years.
New York Post October 11, 2013 -
Last year, the federal poverty line was set at $23,283 for a family of four, which, according to the Economic Policy Institute, is one-quarter of the cost of living in New York City and one-third the cost of living in St. Louis. EPI found that in 615 cities across the country, a family with three children requires a total income of at least twice the federal poverty line to afford basic expenses such as housing, childcare, healthcare and food. The number jumps considerably if the family owns a car or wishes to send its children to college. Car insurance is a significant expenditure and college tuition continues to skyrocket.
US News and World Report October 11, 2013 -
Given that small businesses are both created and destroyed at a pace that differs from larger establishments, the lack of real-time data remains a problem.
“Once you account for the age of a business, then small business does not contribute disproportionately to overall job growth,” said Heidi Shierholz, a labor economist for the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal economic think tank, who supports efforts to find better measures. “It helps us know whether we really should give preferential treatment in support of them as disproportionately strong job creators.”
McClatchy October 11, 2013