“We got just enough job growth to keep up with population growth, but not enough to start digging us out of the hole left by the Great Recession,” said Heidi Shierholz, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal research center.
McClatchy
September 13, 2012
The recent unemployment rate among 20-to-24-year-olds with bachelor’s degrees was 9 percent. And the Economic Policy Institute found that 19.1 percent of recent college graduates are underemployed — meaning they’ve settled for part-time work or jobs far below those they expected to get with a bachelor’s degrees.
Chicago Tribune
September 13, 2012
Middle-income workers have endured a “lost decade” of stagnant wages and are teetering on the brink of another, the consequence of both the recent recession and a long series of policy choices that have eroded their leverage in the job market, according to a report.
In its 12th edition of the “State of Working America,” the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal research organization, points out that inflation-adjusted pay has slipped for most workers — including college graduates — over the past decade.
With the nation’s unemployment rate at 8.1 percent and projected to remain unusually high for several years, there will be little pressure for employers to increase pay for many workers, the report added.
The Washington Post
September 12, 2012
The rich are getting even richer as most other Americans fall behind.
Households in the wealthiest one percent were 288 times richer than the median American household in 2010, possessing an average net worth of $16.4 million. In contrast, the median American household had a net worth of $57,000 in 2010. That’s according to “The State of Working America,” a report released Tuesday by the Economic Policy Institute.
The Huffington Post
September 12, 2012
A new report from the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank, reprises all the familiar findings about how the working class can’t keep up these days. But it also contains some important findings related to economic mobility—the ability to improve your own socioeconomic standing—which is something that anybody worried about the fragile state of the middle class ought to be paying attention to. The availability of opportunity and the belief in self-improvement are core tenets of the American Dream, and Americans have long found ways to get ahead, no matter what the aggregate data say.
Except, perhaps, for now. The EPI report includes data showing that more Americans are staying stuck in the socioeconomic stratum they’re born into, which means fewer people are moving up and those at the top are staying put. This might not be much of a problem if incomes were rising substantially at every level, and overall living standards were improving. But that’s not what’s happening.
US News and World Report
September 12, 2012
A new report shows that the One Percenters have grown even further removed from the rest of America.
The report, from the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute, shows that the average wealth of the top one percent is now 288 times the median wealth for Americans.
That number is up more than 50 percent since 2007, up 85 percent since 1989 and nearly double the levels of 1962. The chart uses Federal Reserve data and analysis from Edward Wolff, the wealth expert and economics professor at NYU.
CNBC
September 12, 2012
The Economic Policy Institute today releases online the 12th edition of its invaluable survey text, The State of Working America, by Lawrence Mishel, Josh Bivens, Elise Gould, and Heidi Shierholz. EPI is a liberal nonprofit, but its economic analysis is respected by mainstream academic economists who follow trends in employment, income, and income inequality, and the new volume, like previous editions, is full of interesting information and persuasive analysis. (My only quibble would be that it ought to include educational failure among the government-caused—or at least government-unsolved—problems contributing to income inequality. Like EPI, I consider the U.S.’s elevated income inequality relative to other nations to be largely the result of government policy.)
The New Republic
September 12, 2012
The wealth gap between the richest Americans and the typical family more than doubled over the past 50 years, according to the Economic Policy Institute.
It found that the top 1% had 125 times the net worth of the median household as of 1962. But by 2010, the disparity reached 288 times.
The institute cited two trends: More wealth finding its way to the high end of the demographic spectrum, while people in the middle class were seeing their cash grow more scarce.
Los Angeles Times
September 12, 2012
According to a new report by the Economic Policy Institute, the wealthiest 1 percent of American households had a net worth 288 times as large as the median household wealth of $57,000 in 2010. This constitutes a huge increase from 1962, when the ratio was 125-1:
Think Progress
September 12, 2012
Between 1921 and 2008, the top 10% and the bottom 90% shared income gains equally. The split was 50-50 exactly, according to a new fun interactive graphic built by the Economic Policy Institute with data from economist Emmanuel Saez.
But between 1971 and 2008, real income declined for the bottom 90%. All the growth went to the top 10%, and more than half went to the top percentile.
The Atlantic
September 12, 2012
