George Bernard Shaw famously quipped that the U.S. and the U.K. are two nations divided by a common language. While the two countries are indeed worlds apart in many ways, the issue of high unemployment among recent college graduates looms large on both sides of the Atlantic.
Both countries present increasingly tough labor markets for recent graduates: in the U.S., data analyzed by the Economic Policy Institute, a think tank, show that the unemployment rate for young college graduates was 9.4% in 2012. In the U.K., that figure was 9% between 2010 and 2011, the latest data show, according to the Higher Education Statistics Agency.
Wall Street Journal
August 23, 2012
What does that mean in the real world? I think it’s mostly a longwinded way of emphasizing that incomes and prices are two sides of the same coin. The political discussion normally talks about income and wages in one box, and then college affordability or health care or housing in some other boxes.
Slate
August 22, 2012
The improvement is visible in a number of statistics. The July labor force participation rate for these workers—that is, the share either with a job or looking for a job—was 60.5 percent, up from last summer’s record-low 59.5 percent. And the summer youth unemployment rate is also on the decline, from 19.1 percent (not seasonally adjusted) in July 2010 to 18.1 percent last year to 17.1 percent this year.
“It’s all good news. It’s headed in the right direction,” says Heidi Shierholz, an economist at the Economic Prosperity Institute, a left-leaning think tank based in Washington. However, she adds that figures on labor force participation and employment for young workers “are still really low.”
US News and World Report
August 22, 2012
The Tax Policy Center, the Congressional Budget Office, the Economic Policy Institute, Annenberg, Brookings, the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, your own brain and common sense logic – they all fact checked Romney’s plan and agree that his jobs numbers don’t bear out and his plan results in a tax increase for the middle class on a revenue neutral budget.
Politico
August 22, 2012
If the legislation becomes law, it will give more than a half-million low-wage workers a pay increase and could generate 4,500 new jobs because of increased economic activity, according to a study from the Economic Policy Institute:
Increasing Massachusetts’s minimum wage to $10.00 on January 1, 2013, would give a raise to more than 581,000 of the state’s lowest-paid workers.
Think Progress
August 22, 2012
“People who have been knocking on doors for two years will turn to something else when there are no payroll jobs in their field,” said Heidi Shierholz, a labor economist with the Economic Policy Institute. “The growth we’re seeing is in fields where you can create those opportunities.”
The Fiscal Times
August 21, 2012
According to the Economic Policy Institute, Ryan’s plan would mean 1.3 million fewer jobs next year than otherwise, and 2.8 million fewer the year after.
Robert Reich's blog
August 21, 2012
Setting a higher federal minimum wage, according to the Economic Policy Institute, a think tank that supports the needs of low and middle-income workers, would boost the income of 651,000 New Yorkers and generate $618 million more in consumer spending at NYC-based businesses.
Epoch Times
August 21, 2012
Luckily, data from the forthcoming Economic Policy Institute book “The State of Working America, 12th Edition,” which EPI generously provided to Wonkblog, does separate the groups, and the results are informative. While those with only a BA did much, much better than people with a high school degree or only some college, they still saw job stagnation during the recession. The only group that continued to gain jobs were those with advanced degrees:
The Washington Post
August 20, 2012
A new report from the Economic Policy Institute finds that, while raising the minimum wage to the proposed $9.80 level would have a significant impact on about 28 million low-income workers, it would especially benefit women. As the report puts it, the fact that “women comprise 54.5 percent of workers who would be affected by a potential minimum-wage increase makes it a women’s issue”:
Think Progress
August 20, 2012