We already have tremendous inequality in our country: The richest 1 percent of Americans own more wealth than the bottom 90 percent, according to the Economic Policy Institute. But we do still have a measure of equality before the law — equality in our basic dignity — and that should be priceless.
The New York Times
May 31, 2012
The college commencement speeches are mostly over. The diplomas are handed out. The parties are winding down. The deadline for repaying student loans looms. Newly minted college graduates are looking for employment, pounding their keyboards and working their mobile phones. Although the job market is slowly mending, it remains grim for young college graduates. The unemployment rate for graduates aged 21 to 24 averaged 9.4 percent over the past year (ending in March 2012), while the underemployment rate was a steep 19.1 percent, according to calculations by the Economic Policy Institute.
Bloomberg BusinessWeek
May 31, 2012
Those particular jobs, most of them blue-collar jobs, are good ones by today’s standards. But they aren’t the only ones that generate line-ups out the door and down the block.
The reason for that can be seen in the chart from the Economic Policy Institute at the top of this post. When the series began in December 2000, the ratio was what now feels like a miraculous 1.1 to 1. But that was the Clinton boom. At one point in the summer of 2009, the figure was 6.9 to 1. Clearly, there has been a lot of improvement in the ratio of job openings to job seekers. It’s now only 3.4 to 1. So the lines are shorter, but for the two-plus people standing in them who don’t get the nod, the search for employment is no less painful.
Daily Kos
May 31, 2012
During their prime years, Americans are supposed to be building careers and wealth to prepare for their retirement. Instead, as the indicator reveals, huge numbers are on the sidelines.
“What it shows is that we are still near the bottom of a very big hole that opened in the recession,” said Heidi Shierholz, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank.
The Washington Post
May 31, 2012
Asian American’s are the best educated ethnic group in the United States, by a long shot.* Logically, that means they should have the least severe unemployment, given that more educated workers tend to have an easier time in the job market. Instead, according to a recent study by the Economic Policy Institute, the Asian community suffered from the most severe long-term joblessness of any racial demographic in 2010, during the slow, early period of the economic recovery.
As shown in the graph below, 48.7 percent of unemployed Asian Americans had been out of a job for 27 weeks or more. Blacks were next, at 48.5 percent, followed by Whites, at 42.7 percent.
The Atlantic
May 31, 2012
As the academic year ends, the number of teens looking for summer jobs increases, however, job opportunities are few and far between for underprivileged African American teens, according to the Economic Policy Institute.
Poor African American teens trail Hispanic and White teens when it comes to securing a summer job by over 10%. In fact, 36% of white and 31% of Hispanic underserved teens—between the ages of 16 and 19—were able to find employment, while only 20% of Black teens in that same age bracket were as lucky. Middle-class African American teens were only slightly more likely to find work in comparison to their white counterparts.
Black Enterprise
May 30, 2012
“Profits recovered their pre-recession peak very quickly,” said Josh Bivens, research director for the Economic Policy Institute, which closely follows worker income trends in the U.S. “Unit profits in the corporate sector are now at a 45-year high.”
The Fiscal Times
May 30, 2012
Rebecca Thiess of the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute lobbed a harsher critique, saying Pelosi’s high-profile endorsement of the $1 million figure is indication that “the Democratic leadership is now comfortable perpetuating the notion that taxpayers earning hundreds of thousands of dollars in annual income deserve a tax cut.
“Policy-wise this is definitely not something we want to see at all,” Thiess said. “The middle class has become completely lost in this debate; the conversation has now shifted to which strata of the very wealthy deserve a hefty tax cut.”
The Hill
May 30, 2012
In the Republican weekly address, Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wisc.) blamed the president for American “dependence on government.”
“Instead of concentrating on job creation, President Obama has concentrated on growing government and increasing its control over our lives,” Johnson said. “Because of his policies, dependence on government has increased, and individual opportunity has declined.”
At least one analysis takes issue with Senator Johnson’s statement. According to the liberal-leaning Economic Policy Institute, government jobs have decreased by 584,000 at the federal, state and local level since June of 2009.
CBS News
May 24, 2012
The economy is missing between 5 million and 6 million workers. That’s how much bigger our labor force would be if there had been no Great Recession, per the Congressional Budget Office.
So, who are the missing five million? That’s the question
Greg Ip of
The Economist recently asked. The above chart from the
Economic Policy Institute (EPI) gives us a hint of at least part of the answer: the young.
The Atlantic
May 24, 2012