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
Many economists agree that slashing government spending too quickly hurts economic growth. State and local austerity has deprived the economy of 2.3 million jobs over the past three years, according to a recent analysis by the Economic Policy Institute.
The Huffington Post
November 1, 2012
“Growth rates this low will not reliably lower joblessness in the years to come,” said Josh Bivens, research and policy director for the Economic Policy Institute.
CNNMoney
November 1, 2012
Josh Bivens, research and policy director a the Economic Policy Institute, called the 2 percent, “too slow to support solid job growth.”
The Hill
November 1, 2012
While almost everyone in politics, from presidential candidates to local elected leaders, takes the opportunity to praise teachers, it’s obvious they are rich on words but stop short when it comes to providing fair compensation. A 2011 Economic Policy Institute study revealed that teachers make 14 percent less, on average, than people in other professions requiring similar levels of education. This disparity would stand even wider if the study were to somehow quantify the exceptional level of dedication that teaching requires. This unfair dynamic is largely responsible for high turnover among quality teachers, and a devastating recruitment challenge when it comes to filling the big shoes left empty at the front of our classrooms.
New Jersey Star-Ledger
November 1, 2012
Democrats are fighting for a tax “cut,” while Republicans are pushing for a tax increase. CNBC’s Hampton Pearson explains. Andrew Fieldhouse, Economic Policy Institute policy analyst; and Alex Brill, American Enterprise Institute, weigh in.
CNBC
October 26, 2012
First, has China really stolen U.S. jobs? The numbers say yes. Since China entered the World Trade Organization in 2001, the U.S. trade deficit with China “eliminated or displaced more than 2.7 million U.S. jobs,” according to a report published in August by the Economic Policy Institute, a left-of-center think tank.
CNN
October 26, 2012
In a recent study, Josh Bivens and Heidi Shierholz of the Economic Policy Institute in Washington, D.C., pointed out that in the three years following the recessions of 1990 and 2000, the government sector added jobs. In the three years following the Great Recession, 627,000 government jobs were cut.
“These public-sector losses are dominated by austerity at the state and local level, with federal employment contributing only about 6 percent of this entire gap,” the researchers wrote. Jobs being cut as budgets tighten include those of police officers, firefighters or even the 293 teaching positions eliminated this school year in the Pittsburgh Public Schools.
Pittsburgh Post Gazette
October 26, 2012