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
Unlike earlier recessions, however, there has not been a sharp drop in the share of part-time workers during the recovery. The Fed report says that “reflects a slow recovery of the jobs lost during the recession rather than permanent changes in the proportion of part-time jobs.”
Heidi Shierholz, a labor economist at the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute, said what’s happening with part-time workers is emblematic of the slow recovery.
Once businesses start seeing new demand for their goods and services they will start hiring workers again and converting some of their part-timers to full-time employees. That change will come as a result of economic fundamentals that will hold sway despite the insurance mandate.
“I don’t think part-time work is taking over,” she said. “When we do generate a robust job recovery, all of the data point to that we will return to the pre-recession share of part-time work as a share of overall employment.”
Roll Call
October 11, 2013
Washington Post reporter Dylan Matthews featured EPI’s new missing workers economic indicator on Wonkblog’s new “Know More” resource, writing, “You probably think the unemployment situation is bad. This chart shows it’s much, much worse.”
The Washington Post
October 11, 2013
Soon after the Crain and Crain report was released in 2010, CPR published a white paper that demonstrated the unreliability and implausibility of the Crain and Crain report’s methodologies and findings. A few months later, the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service (CRS) released its own analysis of the Crain and Crain report, and its findings were equally damning. Then the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) separately analyzed the Crain and Crain report, and concluded the Crain and Crain report was based on a “flawed economic model and faulty data.”
The Huffington Post
October 4, 2013
Payscale’s findings are just the latest in a slew of research that indicates the sluggish economic recovery has not been beneficial for most of us. Income inequality in the U.S. is at a new high as skyrocketing income gains for the top one percent are met by stagnating wages for practically everyone else. In 2012, an average CEO of one of the nation’s largest companies was paid 273 times more than his or her workers, according to a study by the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank.
The Huffington Post
October 3, 2013
More broadly, the lockdown is a distraction for the government, and will harm its efficiency even once the present crisis is sorted out, wrote Josh Bivens, research and policy director with the liberal Economic Policy Institute.
CBS Moneywatch
October 3, 2013
“More than 177,000 Blacks [lost] jobs in the public sector” from 2007 to 2012, according to a May 2012 report by the Economic Policy Institute. The report found the continuing high rate of black unemployment is partly a result of a “sizable and continuing drop in the number of African-Americans employed by state and local governments,” reported TheGrio.com. The August 2013 unemployment rate among Blacks is estimated at 13 percent. The national unemployment rate is almost half that—at about 7 percent.
Ebony
October 1, 2013
The Economic Policy Institute (EPI) has released a new study, “Trading Away the Manufacturing Advantage,” that puts the blame for the loss of U.S. manufacturing jobs squarely on an increase in the U.S. trade deficit. And the main culprit is China:
Most traded goods are manufactured products. In 2011, about 97.8 percent of U.S. imports from and 66.7 percent of U.S. exports to China were manufactured goods. Trade deficits displace or eliminate jobs, especially in manufacturing.
Yahoo Finance
October 1, 2013