HEIDI SHIERHOLZ, ECONOMIST, ECONOMIC POLICY INST.: I think the key message there is that employment growth has been taken up a notch. Over
the last three months we’ve added 170,000 jobs on average. That’s a little bit better than what we’ve been seeing. That is enough over the long haul
to bring the unemployment rate down, but slowly.
Nightly Business Report
November 5, 2012
And for many Americans, that difference can be crucial. Some 60 percent of Americans 65 and older depend on Social Security for the majority of income, according to an Economic Policy Institute study published last year.
CNBC
November 5, 2012
EPI Vice President Ross Eisenbrey underscored to Huffington Post’s Nate Hindman the devastating financial impact natural disasters, which often lead to closed businesses and lost wages, can have on non-salaried employees who depend on hourly wages to make ends meet. “If the business closes because of the storm, employers don’t have to pay non-salaried workers for lost wages. And if the business is open, but the worker can’t make it into work, employers are also not required to pay for lost wages. And in most cases, they won’t.”
The Huffington Post
November 5, 2012
This point of contention is not to pit one hard-working American against another. The shift towards a clean, green economy would create more healthy, safe, family-supporting jobs. A recent report from the Economic Policy Institute found that greener industries grow faster than the overall economy, so further investment in the clean economy will continue to generate a greater number of sustainable jobs that cannot be outsourced.
The Christian Science Monitor
November 5, 2012
“If the unemployment rate is going to rise, this is the way we want it to happen,” said Heidi Shierholz, labor economist at the Economic Policy Institute, a Washington think tank.
CNNMoney
November 5, 2012
Obama’s plan doesn’t propose cuts of the magnitude that Romney’s plan contains. Romney’s measures, Economic Policy Institute policy and research director Josh Bivens said, would make the economy hemorrhage even more jobs.
“If you take them at their word, the Obama plan would actually provide some upfront spending to support job creation and that would be good for jobs in the short-run,” Bivens said. “The Romney plan pledges a pretty draconian cap on total federal spending that would suck a lot of spending power out of the economy in the near-term, and I think that would cost quite a few jobs.”
The Diamondback
November 5, 2012
“The stimulus did what it was expected to do,” said Heidi Shierholz, an economist at the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute, referring to the $787 billion package of spending and tax cuts pushed through by the president in early 2009. “We are on a path to recovery.”
CNNMoney
November 5, 2012
Both Dean Baker and Josh Bivens weigh in Robert Samuelson’s outburst at the New York Times for saying that the government can too create jobs. (He went so far as to call it “flat-earth” thinking). Sadly, Samuelson’s attitude is widely shared — even, at least rhetorically, by Barack Obama.
The New York Times
November 1, 2012
“I don’t think people are going to come flooding back anytime soon,” says Heidi Shierholz, an economist for the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank. “We’re just not going to quickly generate the job growth that would draw people in.”
That means the trickle of people re-entering the workforce is likely to be overwhelmed by the wave of retirees leaving it. If job growth picks up, the participation rate could tick up slightly, but only for a year or two, until demographic factors catch up.
Wall Street Journal
November 1, 2012
The economic policy institute said that green jobs are growing faster than the overall economy and they are accessible to those without a college education.
MSNBC
November 1, 2012