“In hindsight, the organizers of the march were correct: Achieving rights without fully obtaining the resources to actualize them is only a partial victory. In this 50th anniversary year of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, we can best pay tribute to the march and all that it stood for by recommitting to achieving its unfinished goals,” wrote Algernon Austin, director of the Economic Policy Institute’s Program on Race, Ethnicity and the Economy. The institute has issued a series of reports examining what it would take to achieve each of the goals of the 1963 March on Washington. Go to www.unfinishedmarch.com to read the essays.
The Washington Post
August 15, 2013
Writing for the New York Times Economix blog, economist Nancy Folbre cited work by EPI Director of Trade and Manufacturing Policy Research Robert Scott on international trade and the job losses attributable to trade with China. “A growing body of economic research points to the adverse effects of lowered tariff barriers on manufacturing workers and their communities,” writes Folbre. “Whether or not the losers are beginning to outnumber the winners, free trade is increasing the economic distance between the two.”
The New York Times
August 9, 2013
New York Times columnist Paul Krugman pointed readers to EPI President Lawrence Mishel’s paper Regulatory Uncertainty: A Phony Explanation for Our Jobs Problem, which Krugman writes is a “thorough debunking” of the idea that economic uncertainty is holding back the economy. Krugman points out that the “uncertainty index” has fallen recently, with “no visible boost to the economy.”
The New York Times
August 9, 2013
PBS NewsHour talked to Heidi Shierholz about last month’s job creation numbers and the challenges facing our economy. Shierholz told PBS that the economy needs to add 300,000 jobs a month to get to a healthy labor market in the next three years. At the current rate of job creation, it will take at least five years to fill the jobs gap created by the Great Recession.
PBS News Hour
August 9, 2013
The Wall Street Journal talked to EPI Economist Heidi Shierholz about the worrisome proliferation of low-wage jobs and the effect of high unemployment on incomes. “There’s nothing putting upward pressure on wage growth,” Shierholz told reporter Ben Casselman. “Your employer doesn’t have to pay you big wage increases when they know you don’t have outside options.”
Wall Street Journal
August 9, 2013
On WNYC’s “The Brian Lehrer Show,” EPI Economist Elise Gould talked about striking fast-food workers and EPI’s Family Budget Calculator. Gould pointed out that raising wages would not only help workers make ends meet, it would stimulate the economy, since workers would be able to spend more on basic needs.
WNYC
August 2, 2013
On Tuesday EPI and the AFL-CIO hosted Why Citizenship Matters, a forum on immigration policy featuring Rep. Xavier Becerra (D-Calif.) and Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.). ABC News’s Jim Avila wrote about Sen. McCain’s presence at the forum and support of the Senate’s comprehensive immigration reform bill.
ABC News
August 2, 2013
EPI President Lawrence Mishel was on public radio’s “The Diane Rehm Show” on Wednesday to discuss recent strikes by fast-food workers and their demands for a living wage. “This is one of the most hopeful and encouraging things that’s going on right now,” Mishel told listeners. “We have in this country a broken wage-setting mechanism. Over the last 10 years, workers with a college degree, a typical median worker, someone midway up the scale, as well as low-wage workers, have not seen their wages improve relative to inflation.”
Diane Rehm Show
August 2, 2013
In the New York Times, Steven Greenhouse examined the disconnect between workers’ wages, which have stagnated, and the stock market and executive pay, which have both soared. “The real reason businesses aren’t hiring is they’re not seeing consumer demand for their goods and services increase,” EPI Economist Heidi Shierholz told the Times. “We need greater demand for goods and services. It is clearly true that if people receive higher incomes, that will help the economy.”
The New York Times
August 2, 2013
Recent analysis by the Economic Policy Institute shows that after four years of recovery, we’re only one-fifth of the way out of the hole left by the recession. At this rate, we won’t close the jobs gap until 2020. That’s too long for out-of-work Americans who continue to suffer.
The Washington Post
July 26, 2013