A recent report from the Economic Policy Institute estimates that the inflation-adjusted wages of young college graduates declined 8.5 percent from 2000 to 2012. Graduating in a poor job market has long-lasting negative consequences.
The New York Times
May 31, 2013
A recent report from the Economic Policy Institute said unemployment and underemployment for recent college graduates remained high and the millennial generation will face lower earnings for 10 to 20 years.
Los Angeles Times
May 31, 2013
According to the CBO, the economy is operating 6 percent below its potential, a difference of about $1 trillion this year. For every dollar the economy runs below its optimal level, the deficit rises by 37¢ due to cyclical factors such as lower tax receipts, says Andrew Fieldhouse, a budget policy analyst at the Economic Policy Institute. That’s what’s happened in Europe, where austerity has boosted debt-to-GDP ratios by about 5 percent. “Fiscal stimulus right now would decrease debt to GDP,” Fieldhouse says.
Bloomberg Businesweek
May 30, 2013
Second, there is now a lot of hard empirical work on the incentive effects of high top tax rates. None of it shows the kind of huge negative effects that figure so prominently in right-wing rhetoric. In particular, none of it suggests that we are anywhere close to the point where raising taxes on the rich would reduce revenue as opposed to increasing it.
The New York Times
May 30, 2013
The American employment picture may finally be brightening a bit, but for the tens of thousands of young people being handed diplomas in the next few weeks at colleges and universities across the land, more gloom is in the forecast.
A recent report from the Economic Policy Institute said unemployment and underemployment for recent college graduates remained high and the millennial generation will face lower earnings for 10 to 20 years.
Los Angeles Times
May 30, 2013
Michigan has the highest rate of unemployment among black Americans in the country. Nearly 1 in 5 blacks there — 18.7 percent — is out of work.
That’s about more than twice the rate for whites in the state, according to the Economic Policy Institute.
NPR
May 30, 2013
Between 2000 and 2012, inflation-adjusted wages for college graduates fell 8.5 percent, according to the Economic Policy Institute. That trend is likely to continue. The left-leaning think-tank expects college grads in the class of 2013 to earn less than previous grads for at least the next decade. And when young people start their career at a lower wage, it can take years to catch up.
CBS News
May 30, 2013
For the first time, the city of Minneapolis has created diversity goals for goods and services contracts under $50,000.
The Supplier Diversity Program set goals for the city to have 25 percent of its contracts with minority- and women-owned small business enterprises.
The program’s March report found all City departments spent about 1.5 percent of their total contracts on women-owned businesses and about 2.7 percent on minority male-owned businesses for goods and services under $50,000.
The city first started tracking diversity in its departments’ contracts under $50,000 after last August’s approval of the Supporting Equity in Employment in Minneapolis and the Region resolution.
After the Economic Policy Institute named Minneapolis as having the worst unemployment disparity between white and black citizens in 2010, the city began taking steps to remedy the problem.
Minnesota Daily
May 30, 2013
According to a report released on Wednesday by the liberal-leaning think tank the Economic Policy Institute, states will lose out on $5.1 billion in grants this federal fiscal year, which ends in September, under sequestration. In recent years, they have received more than $600 billion in federal grants, according to EPI.
Medicaid, the health insurance program for the poor that states run with partial reimbursements from the U.S. government, has grown into a budget buster for many states. In fiscal 2012, it consumed 24 percent of total state spending.
Reuters
May 30, 2013
This year, Washington’s political class hasn’t merely given up on trying to fix U.S. unemployment; it’s given up on even discussing the subject. This is shameful, and not simply because the jobless rate is still two or so percentage points higher nationwide than it should be, or because the long-term unemployed have been left out to dry. No, it’s shameful because many communities across the country are still simply being ravaged by the lack of work.
Particularly the black community. Even in good times, the unemployment rate tends to be roughly twice as high for blacks as whites, if not worse. Nationwide, black workers today are facing 13.2 percent joblessness. In some large states, the rate is far worse, as shown in the graph below, which was recently posted by the Economic Policy Institute. In Michigan, it was 18.7 percent by the end of 2012. In New Jersey, Illinois, North Carolina, California, and Ohio, the rate was above 15 percent.
The Atlantic
May 23, 2013