This trend is not a new one, as the black unemployment rate has been roughly double that of whites since the government started tracking the figures in 1972. But Algernon Austin, director of the the Race, Ethnicity and the Economy program at the Economic Policy Institute, attributes the rise in the rate to more black Americans entering the workforce, not to job losses or more people out of work. The percentage of eligible African-Americans holding or seeking a job rose in June to 62% from 61.3% in May. It was the second straight month that the percentage has increased.
The Root
July 10, 2012
As I’ve emphasized many times in the past, austerity at the state and local level forced by balanced budget requirements, falling tax revenues, and increasing demand for public services due to the recession had a large, negative effect on the economy. The failure of the federal government to backfill state and local budgets and stop this from happening was a big policy mistake:
Three years into recovery, just how much has state and local austerity hurt job growth?, by Josh Bivens and Heidi Shierholz: …the public sector has seen massive job loss in the current recovery—largely due to budget cuts at the state and local level — which represents a serious drag that was not weighing on earlier recoveries. …
Economist's View
July 9, 2012
A must-read for jobs day: The new big-picture analysis from the Economic Policy Institute’s Josh Bivens and Heidi Shierholz that assesses just how much of the gap between where we are and full employment is attributable to cuts in government jobs.
The answer? Over 20%, or about 2.3 million jobs. Half of those jobs would be in the private sector.
The Washington Post
July 9, 2012
In 2008, President Obama campaigned on a promise to raise the minimum wage. He hasn’t. Mitt Romney has said he supports pegging minimum wage to inflation, but recently backtracked, and he now opposes an increase.
According to the Economic Policy Institute, if Harkin has his way and the minimum wage was actually raised to $9.88 an hour, it would increase wages for 30 million Americans — 10 percent of the country.
NPR
July 9, 2012
“This pace of job growth means two things,” writes Heidi Shierholz, an economist with the liberal Economic Policy Institute, who says the U.S. economy has a deficit of 10 million jobs: “We are not in — nor are we slipping into — another recession, but neither are we getting the kind of job growth that will bring down the unemployment rate. In other words, the labor market is treading water. This would be perfectly fine if we were at full employment, but with the unemployment rate now above 8 percent for 41 months straight, this is an ongoing, severe crisis for the American workforce.”
NPR
July 9, 2012
For a closer look at the new jobs report, which showed the black unemployment rate up to 14.4 percent, theGrio reached out to Algernon Austin, director of the Race, Ethnicity and the Economy program at the liberal-leaning Washington-based Economic Policy Institute.
Thegrio.com
July 9, 2012
The liberal Economic Policy Institute called the sustained high rates of unemployment an “ongoing, severe crisis for the American workforce.”
Associated Press
July 9, 2012
“The labor market is treading water,” said Heidi Shierholz, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute. She called it an “ongoing, severe crisis for the American work force.”
Associated Press
July 9, 2012
If you assume Romney intends to implement the Ryan budget—which he has said on multiple occasions—his plan would cost the economy 1.3 million jobs, according to the Economic Policy Institute.
The American Prospect
July 9, 2012
“We’ve been consistently adding jobs,” said Heidi Shierholz, a labor market economist at the Economic Policy Institute in Washington. “But we’ve been adding what we need to roughly tread water. It’s not what we need to dig out. It’s just what we need to hang on.”
Philadelphia Tribune
July 9, 2012