A pair of pro-labor interest groups, Jobs for Justice and the Economic Policy Institute, have set up a web site and Twitter hashtag devoted to Puzder’s nomination called, “#antilaborsecretary.”
The Associated Press | January 24, 2017
While we heard a lot during the election season about how the loss of high-paying manufacturing jobs with good retirement benefits has hurt the White working class, Black workers have suffered even more. In fact, according to Monique Morrissey of the Economic Policy Institute, the retirement gap between White and Black workers really started to grow in the 401(K) era. And among those with retirement savings today, the median balance is $22,000 for Black families, compared with $73,000 for White families.
Ebony | January 24, 2017
The left-leaning Economic Policy Institute contends that right to work is, in fact, expensive for workers. One of its studies shows that the anti-union laws reduce wages by about 3 percent. Ross Eisenbrey, an institute vice president, says claims of job gains amount to “smoke and mirrors. Really what it is about is weakening unions.”st.
St. Louis Post Dispatch | January 22, 2017
Think tanks—from the Center for American Progress and Economic Policy Institute on the liberal side, to the Heritage Foundation and American Enterprise Institute on the conservative side—have played an important role in policymaking in recent decades.
Marketplace | January 20, 2017
But Lawrence Mishel, president of the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute, says such payments, along with extended unemployment insurance, provided laid-off Americans a lifeline and propped up consumer spending and the economy. And Zandi says most of the decline in labor force participation can be traced to retiring Baby Boomers…That criticism amounts to nonsense, Mishel says. If cuts in taxes and regulations “were so successful – given that we’ve been pursuing them since Reagan – why do we have stagnation seemingly for four decades?” he asked. “We don’t remember the Bush years as prosperity years.” They’re also quibbles, Mishell says, in the context of a dramatic labor market turnaround fueled by the stimulus. “To say that these efforts weren’t very positive is ignore a wealth of evidence.”
USA Today | January 20, 2017
Josh Bivens discuss Obama’s legacy on the economy with CATO’s Daniel Grisworld
C-SPAN | January 19, 2017
In the long fight to close achievement gaps in America’s public schools, some troubling trends are holding strong. The gap between higher- and lower-income students persists, and race, income, and segregation remain deeply connected when it comes to academic performance. But new research shows that the racial gap, though stubborn, appears to be slowly closing. That’s a finding from a study released Thursday by the Economic Policy Institute that lends hard data to the progress and continued struggles to put students of different demographic groups on equal footing.
The Atlantic | January 19, 2017
First off, there’s the question of whether widespread harmony in an intellectual field is a good sign or a bad one. “If economists are more in agreement it doesn’t mean they’ve got truth,” Lawrence Michel, the president of the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute, told The Week. “When economists agree, sometimes we should be suspicious.”
The Week | January 19, 2017
According to a recent Economic Policy Institute report on wage inequality, it was during the period when “Living Single” was on the air that African Americans’ financial prospects were at their sharpest. It’s been downhill ever since. According to the latest State of Working America report, the median black household income fell 10.1 percent between 2007 and 2010, compared to just 5.4 percent for the median white households. Meanwhile, in 2015, black men made 22 percent less than white men with the same education, work experience, and metro status, according to EPI. Black women earned 11.7 percent less than similarly situated white women. If rent continues to outpace income, the share of severely cost burdened renters will increase by 2025, hitting black, Latino, and Asian renters the hardest, according to a recent report from Enterprise Community Partners and the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies.
The Atlantic | January 19, 2017
The gender wage gap, while widely recognized, can feel somewhat intangible. The Economic Policy Institute has created a calculator that crunches the numbers for you. The calculator was released in October with the EPI report titled “What is the gender pay gap and is it real?” (Spoiler: it is.) If you’re a woman, after you input your age, gender, yearly salary and whether or not you have a bachelors’ degree, the calculator produces a message revealing how much more you would likely make if you were male. If you are male, it tells you how much more you likely make than “a comparable woman.” The gap is present even among new college graduates, the EPI reports. (If you’re curious about their methodology, the EPI breaks it down in the endnotes of the report.)
ATTN: | January 19, 2017
As a veteran fast food leader opposed to wage hikes, Puzder’s beef with Henry and the SEIU seems clear. But he’s handing out the blocks more liberally than that. The cabinet nominee has also blocked the National Employment Law Project, the Economic Policy Institute, MoveOn.org, the Fight for $15, and the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights — all organizations that advocate on behalf of workers, especially low-wage workers and workers of color. These groups have been critical of his nomination, tweeting at him and about him, and perhaps earning their block along the way. The Economic Policy Institute told BuzzFeed News it was blocked after this tweet
Buzzfeed | January 19, 2017
“Him being an employer can only lead to complications,” said Lawrence Mishel, the president of the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal research organization that studies labor issues. “It is inherent in owning a business.”
The New York Times | January 19, 2017
The number of incarcerated people in the U.S. has risen drastically over the past four decades. But this has not occurred equally across the population. African-American men are incarcerated at six times the rate of white men, and 2.5 times the rate of Hispanic men. And because an overwhelming percentage of these men are fathers, mass incarceration is also a chief contributor to the racial achievement gap between black and white students, according to researchers at the Economic Policy Institute. In a recent study, “Mass incarceration and children’s outcomes,” researchers found disproportionate imprisonment rates contribute to race-based inequalities in educational attainment.
Michigan Public Radio | January 19, 2017
Obama also signed a number of executive orders affecting federal contractors, including setting a $10.10 minimum wage, a guarantee of paid sick leave and protections against discrimination based on sexual orientation. Another order requires new contractors to disclose any labor law violations. Trump has not indicated his plans for those policies specifically, but he is certain to come under pressure to quickly revoke them — which he may do unilaterally. “Republicans in Congress and the corporate lobbyists have been complaining about these rules for some time,” said Ross Eisenbrey, vice president of the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute.
Baltimore Sun | January 18, 2017
Average hourly wages increased 2.9% in 2016. That’s better than 2015 (2.3%) and 2014 (2.1%). But wage growth of 2% is essentially no wage growth at all once inflation is factored in. Wages generally grow 3% to 4% during normal (non-recession) years. According to the Economic Policy Institute, if wages had grown at a consistent 3.5% annually since the Great Recession, the average worker would be making $29.07 per hour, versus the actual average of $26 an hour today.
Money | January 18, 2017
The question becomes whether the Trump factor will continue to be enough to compel companies to keep up the “Made in the USA” patter. Some are already lining up to say they’ve seen enough. “I do not believe it will be feasible or represent good policy for the president to strong-arm individual companies into making business decisions that are not in their best economic interests,” says Michael Farr, CEO of Farr, Miller & Washington, a money-management firm. No matter what side you’re on, what we’ve seen so far is likely just the beginning. “This is the opening salvo,” says Josh Bivens, research director for the Economic Policy Institute, a Washington-based think tank. “We will be seeing much more coming out of the Trump administration.”
USA Today | January 18, 2017
Chinese imports entering the country through Walmart totaled nearly $50 billion in 2013, according to the Economic Policy Institute, although the company has since pledged to purchase more from U.S. producers.
Mic | January 18, 2017
Elaine Weiss, national coordinator, Broader Bolder Approach to Education campaign, Economic Policy Institute “Decades of rigorous evidence make clear that the majority of factors driving achievement gaps are based outside of schools and are associated with family and community poverty and segregation. The 1966 Coleman Report suggested that roughly two thirds of race-based gaps were attributable to these factors, and no serious research since has indicated otherwise. Given that reality, what should top priorities be for education policy and changes to it? In particular, how should we broaden education policy to address the larger set of factors impeding academic success for many of our children, especially in a time of such high poverty rates among them?” Weiss would also like DeVos to discuss whether and how she’ll follow Obama administration efforts to end racially disproportionate discipline practices and expand early-childhood education. She’s also interested in DeVos’s views on how to remedy teacher shortages and how states can use ESSA to improve equity in schools.
The 74 | January 16, 2017
In a new report, researchers from the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute (EPI) argue that mass incarceration is a chief contributor to the racial gaps in academic performance between black and white students. The study outlines a wide array of adverse effects for children of incarcerated parents and underscores how criminal-justice policy and education policy are linked. “Education policymakers and many educators continue to insist that in order to narrow the achievement gap, we must tinker with what is happening in the classroom … improve the way schools are functioning,” said the EPI research associate Leila Morsy, the report’s co-author and a lecturer at the University of New South Wales. “[Yet] making changes to criminal-justice policy can make as much, if not more, of a difference [for children].”
The Atlantic | January 16, 2017
In all, 19 states raised their minimum wage on Jan. 1, the most states ever in a single year. That boosted the earnings of nearly 4.3 million workers by $4.2 billion total, according to a new analysis by the Economic Policy Institute. While the minimum wage rose in seven states because it’s automatically adjusted for inflation each year, in the other 12 it came thanks to ballot measures or legislative votes. Voters approved the two largest – a $1.95 hike in Arizona and $1.53 in Washington state, according to the study.
Sacramento Bee | January 13, 2017
By raising the minimum wage to $15 per hour, the Massachusetts Legislature has the opportunity to not only provide low-wage workers with a living wage, but also give a boost to the state’s economy. Studies by the Economic Policy Institute, a think tank focused on the needs of low- and middle-income workers, show that a minimum-wage increase directly benefits local economies because, unlike millionaires and billionaires, low-wage workers are far more likely to spend their wages.
The Boston Globe | January 13, 2017
“Trump might dispute that his plan would require raising more in taxes,” said Hunter Blair, federal budget analyst with the liberal Economic Policy Institute, “but it will certainly cost money through tolls and other user fees.”
The New York Times | January 13, 2017
Jobs data released last week put the white unemployment rate in December at 4.3 percent, compared with 7.8 percent for African Americans and 5.9 percent for Hispanics. “Even just looking at one month, we can say that the economy disproportionately has worse outcomes for workers of color,” said Elise Gould, senior economist at the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute… And while the gap between the black-white unemployment rate has narrowed in past decades, the gap between wages earned by black and white workers has not. Another report on the wage gap authored by Valerie Wilson and William M. Rodgers III of EPI in December showed that the black-white wage gap has actually grown in the United States compared with what it was in 1979.
The Washington Post | January 13, 2017
College graduates, on average, earned 56 percent more than high school grads in 2015, according to data compiled by the Economic Policy Institute. That was up from 51 percent in 1999 and is the largest such gap in EPI’s figures dating to 1973. Since the Great Recession ended in 2009, college-educated workers have captured most of the new jobs and enjoyed pay gains. Non-college grads, by contrast, have faced dwindling job opportunities and an overall 3 percent decline in income, EPI’s data shows.
The Associated Press | January 13, 2017
Seattle’s neighborhoods and suburbs have long been segregated by race. That was no accident – it was carefully engineered by the government, says Richard Rothstein, a research associate at the Economic Policy Institute, and the author of a new book, “The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America.”
KUOQ | January 13, 2017
The workplace gender gap is real: In a report published last fall, the Economic Policy Institute found that after controlling for education and occupation, women are paid less than men, even among recent college graduates. In another study, researchers gave science faculty identical resumes of a candidate applying for a lab manager position, but with different names. Male and female faculty were equally likely to rate “John” higher and offer “Jennifer” a lower starting salary.
The Atlantic | January 12, 2017
But the clerical workers have also been in the midst of their own contract negotiations since April, and they accuse the UC of delaying the process. Teamsters Local 2010, their union, says that their wages have gone down by about 25% over the past two decades when you adjust for cost of living. And they point to a study by the Economic Policy Institute that found over 80% of UC union employees can’t afford an “adequate but modest standard of living.”
KALW | January 12, 2017
The border adjustment tax can’t be applied to specific companies either. “It is not company-specific in any way, it would be imposed across the board,” says Robert Scott, a trade expert at the Economic Policy Institute. In theory, here’s how a border adjustment tax works: It gives tax breaks to U.S. businesses that ship goods to other countries, and it takes away tax breaks from companies that bring in products from abroad.
CNN Money | January 12, 2017
While the new CAP report spelled out what would happen if all DACA recipients were pushed out of the workforce, Daniel Costa, the director for Immigration Law and Policy Research for the Economic Policy Institute, pointed out that this would only happen if Trump enforced his early campaign promise to deport all 11 million undocumented immigrants. More recently, Trump has backtracked and stated that he will instead focus deportations on individuals with criminal records. “If people are able to get DACA, they have to have relatively clean criminal records and have lived in the country for years, so they’re the lowest priorities for deportation even under a Trump administration,” Costa told me. “This means they’ll probably stay around for a while and will have to work, so they’ll have to go to the black market to find work that doesn’t require documentation. A lot have gotten college degrees, and they’ll be underutilized in labor markets and more susceptible to exploitation.”
Vice News | January 11, 2017
“The FSLA is the most basic wage and hourly law ever passed,” Economic Policy Institute vice president Ross Eisenbrey told The Record of the nearly 80-year-old enactment. “The idea behind it was to spread work so people wouldn’t have to work such long hours. Back then, the typical work week was about 60 hours. The law doesn’t prohibit more than a 40-hour work week, but it requires that the worker be compensated at a rate of time one-half their regular wage.”… “Almost every hourly worker is covered by the law and in some cases so are salary workers,” Eisenbrey added. “Many tweaks have been made to it since its original enactment, most of them aimed at expanding its jurisdiction to include even more workers like those in the public sector.”
Florida Record | January 11, 2017