Friday’s jobs data offers “a tale of two surveys,” said Elise Gould, senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute.
Employment fell in the household survey, but the payroll survey showed strong growth, she explained in a post on X Friday morning.
“Payroll survey is the gold standard (larger sample/benchmarked), but the increase in unemployment in the household survey is something to watch,” she wrote.
However, since nominal wage growth continues to ease, she said: “Fed take note: this is not an overheating labor market.”
CNN Business
March 8, 2024
Valerie Wilson, director at the Economic Policy Institute’s program on race, ethnicity and the economy, said that the labor market is showing positive signs for Black women. She pointed to the decrease in unemployment rate, while the employment-population ratio edged higher to 60.6% from 59.9%.
“That seems unambiguously that things are moving in a positive direction,” she told CNBC.
As for why the cohort was able buck the trend, Wilson said that it could be due to the specific industries that added jobs last month.
“We saw increases in healthcare and government services, which are sectors where we see a significant number of black women being employed,” she said. “The fact that those were two sectors that added jobs and had the highest job growth in the last month is probably a factor in that increased participation rate and reduced unemployment rate.”
CNBC
March 8, 2024
The White House pointed to a study from the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank, showing that CEO pay averaged more than 300 times that of the typical worker in 2022.
The Washington Post
March 8, 2024
The Economic Policy Institute said in 2014 that wage theft costs American workers as much as $50 billion a year.
LA Times
March 8, 2024
Meanwhile, the Labor Department reported there were 8.9 million positions open at the end of January, roughly the same number as a month earlier.
“The labor market remains strong but is decidedly not hot,” said Elise Gould, senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute. “Job growth continues to be more than enough to keep up with working age population growth and layoffs remain historically low, but the hires rate has softened over the last year and is lower than it was pre-pandemic.”
U.S. News & World Report
March 8, 2024
“I just don’t see a big fiscal stimulus coming out of a Biden second term,” said Josh Bivens, chief economist at the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute.
…
A big question mark relates to the fate of the Inflation Reduction Act, which is funding investments in clean energy. Republicans are attacking the law, which they argue reduces efficiency and increases costs by picking winners and losers, but undoing it may create a new set of economic problems.
“Right now the sector is proceeding under the impression that a build-out of clean energy will be subsidized and will be producing lots of our energy by the end of 2030,” Bivens said. “Clawing back subsidies and making energy producers scramble to figure out how they’ll be satisfying future energy demand in totally different ways could definitely lead to price spikes and volatility.”
Politico Morning Money
March 8, 2024
According to the Economic Policy Institute, as of 2022 there are roughly 2.4 million farmworkers in the U.S.
Scripps news
March 8, 2024
Meanwhile, the Labor Department reported there were 8.9 million positions open at the end of January, roughly the same number as a month earlier.
“The labor market remains strong but is decidedly not hot,” said Elise Gould, senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute. “Job growth continues to be more than enough to keep up with working age population growth and layoffs remain historically low, but the hires rate has softened over the last year and is lower than it was pre-pandemic.”
U.S. News & World Report
March 8, 2024
Estimates from the Economic Policy Institute show unemployment among Black workers in Nebraska…[Paywall].
Lincoln Journal Star
March 8, 2024