Unemployment among blacks stood at 17.7 percent in 2011, which was 3.1 times the jobless rate of whites in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area. That disparity rate is unchanged from a similar report issued two years ago by the same organization, the Economic Policy Institute. Then the metro area also ranked the worst in the country among selected cities.
Minneapolis Star Tribune
July 3, 2012
Metro Orlando had the second-highest rate of Hispanic unemployment in the nation last year, according to a report issued Monday by the Economic Policy Institute.
The jobless rate was 16.6 percent among Hispanics, researchers found, more than twice the unemployment rate of white residents. The Orlando area was second only to Providence, R.I., where the Hispanic unemployment rate was 23.3 percent.
Orlando Sentinel
July 3, 2012
Lawrence Mishel at the Economic Policy Institute notes that that’s just a dollar above the federal poverty level. This for a company that paid nine of its top executives a total of $441 million in 2011.
“The discrepancy between Apple’s profits/executive pay and its compensation to its workers is a particularly glaring example of what is occurring in the wider economy,” Mishel writes.
AlterNet
July 2, 2012
If we got rid of standardized tests to rate public schools, what would we have instead? The most likely alternative is the inspectorate used in England. Scholars like Richard Rothstein of the Economic Policy Institute say school visits by well-trained inspectors would reveal more about what needs fixing than test score averages.
The Washington Post
July 2, 2012
If premiums go up, so does the cost to taxpayers of insuring each individual. That’s why overturning the mandate might not mean the law spends less money: Even though we’re insuring fewer people, each one is costing us much more. Moreover, the people we’re insuring are, on average, quite a bit sicker, as healthier folks are hanging back from the market. The Economic Policy Institute estimates that “the cost per newly insured person under health reform without the mandate is 93.3 percent higher than under health reform with the mandate.”
July 2, 2012
Manufacturers have added 495,000 jobs since January 2010, when factory employment bottomed at almost 6 million below the 2000 level, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Of that 6 million, almost 40 percent were lost to other countries, either directly or because imports replaced domestic production, says Robert Scott of the Economic Policy Institute in Washington.
Bloomberg BusinessWeek
July 2, 2012
On average, CEOs made 231 times what workers made in 2011, according to an analysis from the Economic Policy Institute cited by the Los Angeles Times. An average worker would have to work 3,489 years to make the salary of a top-paid CEO.
The Huffington Post
July 2, 2012
Elise Gould, liberal think tank Economic Policy Institute
This mattered for people’s lives. The mandate provides a necessary safety net for millions of Americans who could not afford healthcare.
I don’t think people understand how it can affect them or their neighbours’ lives, how hard it is for people trying to get by these days. To have the government step in and bolster an important safety net is really important.
Healthcare cost is one of the leading factors behind bankruptcy. Making sure people have affordable healthcare is going to help families make ends meet.
BBC News
July 2, 2012
The concept developed in the column is of “complentary” factors of production. Increasing the supply of dishwashers and busboys increases employment opportunities for chefs, waiters, kitchen equipment manufacturers, and so forth all up and down the skill spectrum.
The research that really changed my thinking on this is ably covered in this great Heidi Shierholz did for EPI back in February 2010. Note that EPI is the premiere labor-liberal think tank in Washington and hardly a hotbed of apologism for the top one percent. The basic point here is that the old CW on low-skill immigration is that it raised real wages for high-skill workers but lowered them for low-skill workers. The key methodological advance comes from realizing that a very large share of low-skill workers in the United States are themselves immigrants. Since restricting low-skill immigration for the sake of low-skill immigrants is a little perverse, it’s helpful to distinguish between the impact on immigrant workers and native-born workers.
Slate
June 28, 2012
In 2011, young college grads earned an average of $16.81 per hour – about $35,000 annually, according to the Economic Policy Institute.
National Journal
June 28, 2012