The U.S. unemployment rate ticked up from 3.9% to 4%, marking 30 straight months of near-record low unemployment, noted the center-left Economic Policy Institute.
“This labor market just keeps cranking out huge numbers of jobs. We’ve added almost a million jobs in the last 4 months alone, and the unemployment rate has been at 4% or less for TWO AND A HALF YEARS,” Heidi Shierholz, president of the center-left Economic Policy Institute, posted on X. “It really is incredible.”
Salon.com
June 10, 2024
For those who care about inequality and fairness, wage trends of the last several years have been strong for lower-wage workers. The Economic Policy Institute (EPI) has documented that “real wages” (adjusted for inflation) “of low-wage workers grew 12.1% between 2019 and 2023.”
Forbes
June 10, 2024
I’m building this newsletter on the following two charts, which appear to contradict each another. The first, from the center-left Economic Policy Institute, shows a huge gap opening between pay growth and productivity growth. The second, from the center-right American Enterprise Institute, shows no such gap.
…
Bivens responded by email when I asked him for his reaction. He wrote, “We’d readily concede” that the gap between pay and productivity is “much, much smaller” when looking at averages, which by definition include the people at the top. He added: “But that’s kind of our whole point — rising inequality within wage income means that the average of this wage income will rise far faster than wage incomes for the vast majority.”
He claimed that Winship has not proved that the higher pay going to people at the top is closely connected to their higher productivity.
He wrote that he stands by including housing services in his measure of output because “housing services matter a lot for how well the economy is or isn’t delivering rising living standards to families.” In any case, he said, they don’t have a big impact on the results.
The New York Times
June 10, 2024
The investments needed for the green transition are “rife with market failures,” says Adam Hersh, senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute in Washington. “So if we want to see that change, then we have to have some kind of public intervention.”
Christian Science Monitor
June 10, 2024
The wage gap between top CEOs and typical workers is widening. And Dan Toomey is the LONE MAN capable of informing the public about it. Our guests for this episode are Josh Bivens, Chief Economist at the Economic Policy Institute, and Theo Francis, Special Writer at The Wall Street Journal covering executive compensation
Good Work with Dan Toomey
June 10, 2024
As economists assess the latest jobs report, they’re highlighting how its survey of households wasn’t so great.
Elise Gould, a senior economist at the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute, has offered some thoughts about what’s going on.
“The weakness in the household survey appears to be driven by the more volatile young adult series, likely a blip and could be due to an odd seasonal factor at the start of summer. I’ll be surprised if that doesn’t rebound next month,” she said in social-media posts, which are shown below
MarketWatch
June 10, 2024
…CEO pay and that of the typical employee. According to the Economic Policy Institute, CEO pay has increased by 1,460% in the last 50…[paywall].
Forbes
June 10, 2024
The Middleton-Cross Plains Area School District is getting ready to host a public “drive a bus event” in June.
The event is an effort to bring in new school bus drivers. According to a recent report by the Economic Policy Institute, the national number of school bus drivers has gone down 15% since 2019.
WMTV (Wisconsin)
June 10, 2024
By analyzing data from 1953 to 2020, William Chittenden, a finance professor from Texas State University, found that inflation rose 3.35% per year under Democratic presidents and 3.5% under Republican presidents.
A similar study by the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute found much the same. Looking at inflation rates from 1949 to 2024, prices rose 2.91% under Democratic presidents and 3.29% under Republican ones.
Money
June 10, 2024
“In addition, analysis by the Economic Policy Institute shows Virginia has the third least competitive teacher pay in the country when compared to other fields that require a similar level of education,” the VEA report read.
dogwood
June 10, 2024