Media clips
-
Economists are somewhat divided over the broader impact of raising the overtime floor, a proposal that the Labor Department is still hammering out. Once they come up with their recommendations on how to make overtime pay available to more workers, the business community will have an opportunity to weigh in during a 90-day public-comment period.
Ross Eisenbrey, vice president of the Economic Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank in Washington, D.C., recommended in November that the floor be raised to $984 a week, or nearly $25 an hour—a change that he says could help as many as five million salaried employees.
Yet Dean Baker, an economist with the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington says that even if the threshold were raised as high as $20 per hour, just a few hundred thousand workers would be newly eligible for overtime. “This has been hugely overblown, the impact is likely to be relatively limited,” Mr. Baker adds.
Wall Street Journal June 11, 2014 -
Back in 1979, notes a new Economic Policy Institute report released last week, households in America’s statistical middle — the 20 percent of households making more than the nation’s poorest 40 percent and less than the nation’s most affluent 40 percent — averaged $16.72, after inflation, per hour worked. In 2012, households in this same statistical middle averaged $16.26 per hour.
Over roughly that same period, EPI analysts add, America’s top one percent of income-earners doubled their share of the nation’s income from paychecks, dividends, rent and business earnings, from 7.2 to 14.2 percent.
Moyers & Company June 11, 2014 -
To Dave in his piece, and also used some of Larry’s data:
Note: Most of the statistics come from David Cooper of the Economic Policy Institute. His calculations include so-called spillover effects: Minimum wage researchers have found that employers often increase the pay of those earning slightly above the new minimum to roughly maintain their relative wage structure. A Congressional Budget Office report gets similar results to Mr. Cooper’s. For example, the budget office finds that 53 percent of affected workers work at least 35 hours per week, compared with 54 percent in the Cooper study.
…
As with the population as a whole, low-wage workers are more educated than in the past. In the late 1960s, less than half had finished high school and only 17 percent had attended any college at all.
The New York Times June 11, 2014 -
First, the new data: Americans with four-year college degrees made 98% more an hour, on average, in 2013 than people without a degree. That’s up from 89% five years earlier, 85% a decade earlier and 64% in the early 1980s. These figures are based on an analysis of Labor Department statistics by the Economic Policy Institute and first reported in The New York Times.
Researchers conclude that over the long run not going to college will cost you about $500,000. That’s double the penalty for not getting a degree three decades ago. “The decision not to attend college for fear that it’s a bad deal is among the most economically irrational decisions anybody could make in 2014,” says The Times.
Time June 11, 2014 -
It pays to go to college. Literally. A new analysis by the Economic Policy Institute in Washington found that the wage difference between college graduates and non-degree holders is at a record. People with college degrees make 98 percent more an hour than people without, up from 89 percent just five years ago. In fact, MIT economist David Autor found that not getting a college degree costs someone about half a million dollars. College debt may still be a real fear and hardship, but it’s a relatively small cost in the long term. The average $25,000 in student debt doesn’t hold a candle to the $500,000 to be made over a lifetime.
The Daily Beast June 11, 2014 -
College-educated workers still earn much more than less-educated ones, but landing a good job at rising pay is made even more difficult as each new group of graduates joins a backlog of unemployed and underemployed college and high school graduates, dating back to the class of 2008.
Over the last six years, one of the economy’s biggest problems has been faulty fiscal policy, with the federal government underestimating the need for economic aid or withholding and reducing help prematurely. Another drag has been lack of business investment, even as financial markets have prospered with the help of loose monetary policy.
The New York Times June 11, 2014 -
There’s little debate that wages for the average American household have stalled and wealth is flowing to the top of the income ladder.
There’s less consensus about why—and what should be done about it.
A new study analyzing more than three decades of wage data argues that government polices (such as the failure to have the minimum wage track inflation) go further toward explaining the expanding wealth gap in America than globalization, new technologies or gaps in education or training.
“There’s a lot of uncertainty about the rise in inequality, but we’ve changed a lot of government policies over the last generation that have pretty predictable effects on wages,” said co-author Josh Bivens, policy director at the Economic Policy Institute, a Washington think tank devoted to helping low and middle income households.
NBC News June 5, 2014 -
The Economic Policy Institute’s Family Budget Calculator shows that even in low-cost cities like St. Louis, a single full-time worker supporting a child needs to earn more than $24 an hour to cover basic living costs. The wages needed are as much as 40 percent higher in more expensive regions. And while many low-wage workers do not have children, the lion’s share are in working-class households and providing a major share – on average half – of their family’s incomes.
So a $15 minimum wage would be a very significant step towards reducing hardship and meeting family needs. It would also bring the minimum wage more in line with productivity gains over past decades, since the minimum wage would be over $16 per hour if it had kept up with even conservative measures of productivity growth since 1979.
U.S. News & World Report June 5, 2014 -
The vote underscores efforts nationwide by cities and states to increase pay on the local level as the federal minimum wage debate in the nation’s capital divides policymakers. And the effort could gain momentum as the national conversation on income inequality and its economic consequences intensifies.
“It sends a big signal that people are fed up with the stagnant wages that we’ve seen,” says Heidi Shierholz, an economist at the Washington, District of Columbia-based Economic Policy Institute. “In this country, we used to see overall economic growth at the high end, at the middle and at the bottom. Since the 70’s, it’s really changed. We’ve continued to have overall economic growth, but it’s been captured by this thin slice at the top and you’ve seen real stagnation for the vast majority.”
U.S. News & World Report June 5, 2014 -
What can be done to reverse rising economic inequality in America—not just for future generations, but right now?
Raise wages. That’s the conclusion of a new policy report from the Economic Policy Institute and the starting point for a multi-year research and education initiative that was launched on Wednesday with a keynote address by Secretary of Labor Thomas Perez. The paper’s central argument is that the root of America’s most pressing economic challenges lies in the disconnect between wages and productivity—and that government policy and business practices are in large part to blame.
“The clear connections between wages, income and living standards mean that progress in reversing inequality, boosting living standards and alleviating poverty will be extraordinarily difficult without addressing wage growth,” reads the introduction to the report, which was written by EPI President Lawrence Mishel and economists Josh Bivens, Elise Gould and Heidi Shierholz. “Indeed, converting the slow and unequal wage growth of the last three-and-a-half decades into broad-based wage growth is the core economic challenge of our time.”
The Nation June 5, 2014