Meanwhile, observers like Robert Scott, an economist at the liberal-leaning Economic Policy Institute, say Obama hasn’t done enough to crack down on outsourcing.
“There’s no question that there’s concerns about candidate Romney, that he has outsourced in the past and indicated that he continues to favor tax policies that would subsidize companies that would outsource,” said Scott. “On the other hand, Obama has had four years to undertake major steps to reduce our trade deficit. He’s done the small things.”
CNN
July 12, 2012
Ethan Pollack, senior policy director at the Economic Policy Institute, said that despite the president’s call, it’s doubtful that congressional action will happen anytime soon. “Extending the tax cuts for the middle class and not for high-income people would basically be Congress acceding to President Obama’s proposal,” Pollack told The Root.
The Root
July 10, 2012
Government figures show the textile and apparel industries in particular lost more than a million manufacturing jobs in the last decade. More than a quarter-million positions went to China alone, according to the Economic Policy Institute.
Women's Wear Daily
July 10, 2012
In the Chicago area, 22.6 percent of African Americans were unemployed in 2011, according to data from the Economic Policy Institute, a bipartisan think tank.
Chicago Sun Times
July 10, 2012
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