Some argue that raising the minimum wage offers benefits to those who may not need them. This argument is also flawed. The Economic Policy Institute’s latest analysis shows that most low-wage workers live in low-wage households, and 84% of the workers in low-wage jobs are at least 20 years old. But, regardless of age or need, anyone who shows up to work and puts in hard hours deserves a wage that keeps him or her out of poverty.
Los Angeles Times
March 13, 2013
“The strong showing in February is welcome,” said Heidi Shierholz, an economist with the Economic Policy Institute. “But given the jobs deficit of 8.9 million jobs (from the 2007 recession), even at February’s growth rate we wouldn’t get back to the pre-recession unemployment rate until 2017.”
NBC News
March 13, 2013
“There is no evidence of a ‘skills’ mismatch in the labor market,” said economist Heidi Shierholz of the Economic Policy Institute in Washington, D.C. “What we have is a broad-based lack of demand for workers, not a skills problem.”
In her view, businesses aren’t hiring because demand for their goods and services hasn’t risen enough to require new workers.
Detroit Free Press
March 13, 2013
BOBKOFF: It’s simple math. We are still way below employment levels from before the financial meltdown. Heidi Shierholz is a labor market economist at the Economic Policy Institute. She says we still need 9 million more jobs to get back to healthy levels.
HEIDI SHIERHOLZ: It’s a little sobering ’cause you start to think, okay, but even if we got a report this strong every single month from here on out, given how large the job deficit is in our labor market, it would still take until the middle of 2017 to get back to the pre-recession unemployment rate.
BOBKOFF: And Shierholz says much of the drop in the unemployment rate can be attributed to job seekers dropping out of the labor force. But enough with the naysayers, says Brian Jones of Societe Generale.
NPR
March 13, 2013
Monique Morrissey, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute, told the Post that life expectancy “has increased mainly among the privileged class.” For many, she says, raising the retirement age would amount to a significant benefit cut.
AARP Blog
March 13, 2013
“Life expectancy has increased mainly among the privileged class,” said Monique Morrissey, an economist who focuses on retirement issues at the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal-leaning research organization. “For many people, raising the retirement age would amount to a significant benefit cut.”
The Washington Post
March 13, 2013
Andrew Fieldhouse, an analyst at the Economic Policy Institute, a progressive think tank, estimates that the plan would cost the country 2 million jobs in 2014 alone.
The Huffington Post
March 13, 2013
The budget plan that Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) unveiled on Tuesday would eliminate 2 million jobs in 2014, according to a new analysis by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI).
If implemented, Ryan’s “Path to Prosperity” plan would shrink the U.S. economy by 1.7 percent and increase the unemployment rate by 0.6 to 0.8 percentage points, EPI found.
The Huffington Post
March 13, 2013
About 17 percent of the women who would be affected by a minimum-wage increase have children and almost a quarter of them are their family’s sole breadwinner, according to David Cooper of the Economic Policy Institute. Female minimum-wage earners also overwhelmingly live in the South, where every state except Florida has a state wage at or below the federal minimum.
The American Prospect
March 8, 2013
The JOLTS data are also useful for diagnosing what’s behind our persistently high unemployment. In today’s economy, unemployed workers far outnumber job openings in every sector. This demonstrates that the main problem is a broad-based lack of demand for workers—and not, as is often claimed, available workers lacking the skills needed for the sectors with job openings.
—Heidi Shierholz, “Job Openings and Hiring Dropped in December, and Have Not Increased since Early 2012,” Economic Policy Institute, Feb. 12, 2013
Bloomberg BusinessWeek
March 8, 2013