“Most of the improvement that we’ve seen in the unemployment rate hasn’t been due to increased job opportunities. It’s been due to people dropping out of, or never entering, the labor market because of weak opportunities,” said Heidi Shierholz, a labor economist for the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal think tank. “Most of that decline is not coming from what would really be considered meaningful improvement in the unemployment rate.”
McClatchy
May 15, 2013
“In addition to the substantial share who are officially unemployed, a large swath of these young, highly educated workers have either a job but cannot attain the hours they need or want a job but have given up looking for work,” said Heidi Shierholz, a senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute in Washington.
Reuters
May 15, 2013
This is another misleading one. Economist Monique Morrissey of the Economic Policy Institute argues that standard cost-of-living formulas — the kind used by most “best of” lists — don’t accurately reflect senior citizens’ expenses since they spend more on medical goods and services that are increasing in price faster than the overall rate of inflation.
Time Magazine
May 15, 2013
“If you had majored in computer science instead of art history, you wouldn’t be waiting tables to pay back those student loans.”
It’s a common refrain, but a recent study from the Economic Policy Institute found, despite conventional wisdom, there is no labor market shortage for science, technology, engineering, and math (also known as “STEM”) graduates.
If there was, the authors argue, the STEM grads we do have would be seeing rising wages and falling unemployment as demand outpaces supply. But that’s not the case according to the study.
Campus Progress
May 15, 2013
Ostensibly, the increase in visas for high-skilled computer workers is a needed response to the critical shortage of such workers here—a notion that has been repeatedly dismissed, including in a recent report from the Obama-aligned Economic Policy Institute, which found that the country is producing 50 percent more IT professionals each year than are being employed in the field. The real appeal of the H1B visas for “guest workers”—who already take between a third and half of all new IT jobs in the States —is that they are usually paid less than their pricy American counterparts, and are less likely to jump ship since they need to remain employed to stay in the country.
Daily Beast
May 15, 2013
Daniel Costa, an analyst with the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal think tank, also criticized the proposed amendments, saying that the requirements on high-skilled visas “don’t seem to be very onerous.”
The sweeping immigration bill, written by the bipartisan “Gang of Eight” senators, would tighten border security, provide a 13-year path to citizenship for most of the 11 million illegal immigrants in the country and revamp visa programs.
Reuters
May 15, 2013
Critics point to a growing collection of research that suggests otherwise, including a recent study from the Economic Policy Institute, a think tank, which showed virtually no “skills gap” in the labor force.
The Washington Post
May 15, 2013
More damningly, a new study, by the Economic Policy Institute’s Broader, Bolder Approach to Education, quantifies the negative effects of this test-driven education reform in Washington, D.C., New York City, and Chicago. In these cities, schools whose achievement scores didn’t improve quickly enough to satisfy top officials were shuttered, teachers and principals were fired in droves, and charter schools proliferated. The result, since the much-touted reforms were implemented: Since the supposed reforms, students in those cities have fared worse than those in other urban districts.
Slate
May 9, 2013
On the other side of the aisle, a separate immigration debate is also brewing. Two weeks ago, the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute released a study concluding that we don’t need more temporary H-1B visas, which are mostly used to bring engineers and scientists to the United States. “Immigration policies that facilitate large flows of guest workers will supply labor at wages that are too low to induce significant increases in supply from the domestic workforce,” the report states.
Reuters
May 9, 2013
Daniel Costa, an immigration policy analyst at the Economic Policy Institute, says the immigration bill only requires non H-1B dependent employers to “recruit” by using the proposed Labor Dept.’s database. A good faith effort isn’t required.
“I think it’s crazy not to require that all employers do good faith recruiting,” said Costa. “If the tech companies are truly recruiting U.S. workers like crazy as they say they are — then why do they object to proving that they’re already doing what they say they’re doing?”
Computerworld
May 9, 2013