Some economists, however, see it differently. According to David Cooper, a senior economic analyst at the Economic Policy Institute, the notion that higher wages increase unemployment is oversold by opponents. “This is just pure scare tactics,” Cooper told ATTN:. “We’ve heard this for decades, and it’s never really materialized.” According to Cooper, even if higher wages do wind up cutting a small amount of jobs—which, studies show, is possible—better paid employees would pump money into the economy, creating more demand, and, therefore, jobs. “Even if there’s cost-savings to some restaurants, that should lead to job creation somewhere as long as those dollars are getting in the hands of of people that are going to go out and spend that money—and again, that’s part of the function of the minimum wage, to make sure that that cost savings being generated from that productivity improvement isn’t just going to a small subset of people,” Cooper said.
ATTN: | April 26, 2016
The latest piece of damning evidence on this subject comes from the Economic Policy Institute, a think tank funded by the Labor Movement. It’s “Retirement Inequality Chartbook” calls 401(k)s “ an accident of history,” that is obscure parts of the U.S. tax code that were never meant to be substitutes for pensions, which were largely abandoned by corporate employers. Those with high salaries do very well in 401(k)s, the report notes, although everyone else comes up short. That’s because the high earners get the lion’s share of tax benefits, causing a widespread inequality among savers. “Retirement insecurity has worsened for most Americans as retirement wealth has become more unequal,” the EPI report notes. “For many groups, the typical household has no savings in retirement accounts and balances are low even when focusing only on households with savings.”
Forbes | April 26, 2016
Elise Gould at the Economic Policy Institute is skeptical, though, that the Fed should be raising rates to fight inflation right now. “I’m not seeing any acceleration in inflation, no acceleration in wages,” Gould said. She pointed to the most recent Consumer Price Index report, for March, showing price inflation for all goods up 0.9 percent in the previous 12 months (energy prices were down 12.6 percent year-to-year, helping to account for the very weak overall inflation figure). Core inflation, excluding food and energy prices, rose 2.2 percent. Americans’ average hourly wages, meanwhile, rose 2.3 percent on an annual basis according to the latest Labor Department report, for March. “Having a very low-inflation economy causes problems,” Gould said. “People are still trying to get out from under a lot of their household debt. If people’s wages went up along with inflation, that might help.”
Marketplace | April 25, 2016
The Washington Post | April 25, 2016
The old rationale that minimum-wage jobs are for teenagers, or a stepping-stone for adults, and therefore should not be tampered with too severely, is misleading. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 80 percent of hourly wage workers are over age 25; and the Economic Policy Institute states that 26 percent of the workforce earns less that $10.55/hour.
Salon | April 25, 2016
Max Sawicky, a former economist at the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal think tank in the U.S., outlined a progressive case against basic income in 2013, calling it a “distraction” from raising the minimum wage, guaranteeing full employment, rolling back Clinton-era welfare reforms and supporting unions — all policies, he argues, “more in keeping with our current system and our political culture.”
FiveThirtyEight | April 25, 2016
Gabler laments that he might have avoided his fate if his “income had steadily grown the way incomes used to grow in America.” But, he says, “it didn’t, and they don’t.” He claims that inflation-adjusted hourly wages peaked in 1972. That is flat-out wrong. The liberal Economic Policy Institute says that the median hourly wage peaked in 2009. My re-analyses of its estimates—which use a better inflation adjustment—indicate that last year, the median hourly wage was 17 percent higher than in 1973.
National Review | April 25, 2016
According to a recent report by the Economic Policy Institute, the labor market for recent high school and college graduates has gotten better since the recession, but young people—especially minorities—still face elevated unemployment and weak wage growth. In the report “The Class of 2016,” researchers found the unemployment rate to be 5.6 percent for young college graduates and 9.4 percent for young black college graduates, which is higher than the 9 percent unemployment rate for young white college graduates at the peak of the recession. For young high school graduates, the unemployment rate jumps to 17.9 percent, which is also higher than before the recession. Meanwhile, the unemployment rate for young, black high school graduates is 28.4 percent.
The Boston Globe | April 22, 2016
The Economic Policy Institute released a report today that shows that for all those advantages, young women still earn far less than young men. According to the EPI’s annual report, male college graduates earned 8.1 percent more in 2016 than in 2000, while female college graduates earned 6.8 percent less than in 2000. Meaning, it’s not only that circumstances aren’t improving as quickly for women as they are for men—they’re getting worse.
Elle | April 22, 2016
There’s more bad news for women about the gender pay gap. Although more women are graduating from American colleges and universities than ever before, they are still being paid less than their male counterparts when they enter the workforce, the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) indicated in a new report Thursday.
The study published by the Washington-based think tank affiliated with the U.S. labor movement found that the gender wage gap has continued to grow among college graduates since 2000 and that black and Hispanic students have higher unemployment rates than their white peers.
International Business Times | April 22, 2016
That’s the depressing takeaway from a new report from the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal think tank. The report finds that recent high school graduates are still struggling to find jobs despite the dramatic improvement in the overall labor market. More than one in seven recent high school graduates, which the institute defines as those ages 17 to 20, are neither working nor enrolled in college; their unemployment rate is nearly 18 percent. (Both numbers are elevated compared with before the recession.) Those who do find jobs are experiencing sluggish wage growth.
FiveThirtyEight | April 22, 2016
Paychecks, meanwhile, just aren’t growing fast enough. A report last year from the Economic Policy Institute found that growth in worker productivity is outstripping wage growth. From 2000 to 2014, productivity increased by 21.6 percent, while median compensation in the U.S. rose by only 1.8 percent.
The Huffington Post | April 22, 2016
Just as many former renters briefly became homeowners during the housing boom, only to return to renter status, so too did many stock-market dabblers take what was left of their capital and go home. Sure, more than half of American households still own equities, but for most of those investors it’s a modest amount (and the other half owns precisely zero); about two-thirds of equity ownership is held in the top 5 percent of portfolios. The top 20 percent owns 85 percent of all financial assets, according to the Levy Institute; the Economic Policy Institute is even more specific at 87.2 percent. Income gains have been even more skewed toward the top.
Bloomberg | April 22, 2016
This year’s college grads have good reason to feel a notch better — the unemployment rate for recent college graduates is 5.6%, the lowest rate since June 2008, according to a new report published Thursday by the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning research group. New graduates have been taking it in the chin during the Great Recession and in the years after. They have been stereotyped as unemployed or underemployed — the college grad baristas — for being unable to find jobs that would use their four-year degrees. That situation is improving, but not enough. A lack of quality jobs that pay well continues to plague newbies in the job market. Add to that the burden of skyrocketing college costs, and it’s a tough situation to be in.
CNN Money | April 22, 2016
Even though the economy has improved since the recession, the class of 2016 is entering a job market that’s still hobbled by weak trends, such as higher levels of unemployment for young Americans and stagnant wages, according to a new study from the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute.
Young college grads, for instance, are suffering from an underemployment rate of 12.6 percent, compared with 9.6 percent in 2007, before the recession started. It’s even worse for recent high-school graduates, with about one-third currently underemployed, compared with roughly 27 percent in 2007, the study found. Underemployment means people who want a full-time job but are working in a part-time role, or who are working in a job that requires fewer skills than they have.
CBS Moneywatch | April 22, 2016
According to the Economic Policy Institute, in New York City, the number of low-wage jobs ($45,000 annually or lower) rose by 191,000 in 2014. Comparatively, the number of middle-class jobs—defined as paying between $49,971 and $71,692 per year—rose by only 3,745. Meanwhile, cost of living continues to soar, with the result that even some homeless people in New York work two low-wage jobs.
Quartz | April 22, 2016
But while the outlook may look good overall, some economists note that the growth doesn’t apply to every sector. There are still 14 job seekers for every 10 job openings available, according to an analysis from the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning Washington think tank. The biggest gaps fall in professional fields, healthcare and retail, food services, and construction.
Christian Science Monitor | April 22, 2016
Corporations should pay much more in taxes, mostly to fund the kind of social investments — such as free universal pre-K programs and free tuition at public colleges and universities — the nation badly needs, reckons Hunter Blair, a budget analyst at the Economic Policy Institute, a Washington think tank that focuses on low- and middle-income households. “There’s a lack of demand in the economy. If you’re really interested in growth, you’d be interested in more government spending,” Blair said.
The Huffington Post | April 21, 2016
But a 2013 look at the information technology labor market by the Economic Policy Institute found that for every two students who graduate from U.S. colleges with STEM degrees, only one is actually hired into a STEM job. In computer and information science and engineering, it found, U.S. colleges graduate 50% more students than are hired into those fields each year.
USA Today | April 21, 2016
According to the Economic Policy Institute, it would give 13.5 million more workers a new or stronger right to overtime pay — substantially increasing both middle-class incomes and employment. It’s not as high as the $69,000 threshold it would take to return to 1975 levels, after adjusting for inflation, but it’s a courageous step in the right direction. It’s like a minimum wage hike for the middle class.
The New York Times | April 21, 2016
The figures are from a new report from the Economic Policy Institute, on the outlook for the Class of 2016. The EPI is a left-leaning think tank that supports an expanded safety net for young workers; the numbers in their report come directly from analyzing Labor Department data.
The young and idle could be applying for jobs or for school and having a tough go of it; others could be falling back on parents or family. “It’s not clear exactly what they’re doing,” said Elise Gould, an author of the report along with Teresa Kroeger and Tanyell Cooke. What is clear is that high-school grads are doing much worse than college grads. “Young workers are hit harder in bad times and that’s just persisting,” Ms. Gould said. Overall, EPI finds that the class of 2016 has better prospects than those from 2009 to 2015. But for most of the 1.4 million high-school grads who aren’t building a resume, at school or on the job, those prospects must seem very remote.
Wall Street Journal | April 21, 2016
Male college graduates, ages 20 to 24, earned 8 percent more in 2016 than they did in 2000. Meanwhile, their female counterparts made nearly 7 percent less than they did in 2000, according to a different report released Thursday by the Economic Policy Institute. The average male college graduate was making $20.94 an hour; the average woman made $16.58, according to EPI’s research.
The Huffington Post | April 21, 2016
Oregon is one of 33 states and Washington D.C. where infant care costs more than college tuition, according to data from the Economic Policy Institute. The nonprofit think tank released a report earlier this month calling for greater national investment in early childhood care and education. The report’s authors suggested investments including in resources to help parents access high-quality early care and education and provide home visits with nurses for expecting parents. The Economic Policy Institute also broke down costs of child care by state. The think tank found that in Oregon the average annual costs of child care surpassed costs for in-state tuition at a public four-year college. Annual college tuition was at about $8,616, compared to $11,322 for infant care and $8,787 for care for a 4-year-old. In general, the report found that child care is one of the greatest expenses for a family, and can be unaffordable for typical Oregon families and low-wage workers. Oregon ranked 15th out of states and Washington D.C. for the most costly infant care.
The Oregonian | April 21, 2016
The United States lost 3.2 million jobs to China between 2001 and 2013, according to the Economic Policy Institute. Three-fourths of those jobs were in manufacturing. About 60 percent of the reshored jobs between 2000 and 2015 came from China.
Voice of America | April 21, 2016
Massachusetts trails only Washington, D.C., in child care expenses in the United States, according to an analysis by the progressive think tank Economic Policy Institute. The average annual cost of infant care for one child in Massachusetts is $17,062, or $1,422 per month, the study found. That’s $6,360 more expensive than in-state tuition for a four-year public college, the institute said. Massachusetts joins Washington, D.C., and 32 states as places where day care is more expensive than college.
The Boston Globe | April 20, 2016
Seattle’s economic prosperity has been great for a lot of people, but it has made things tough for others. The group that might feel the squeeze is the city’s middle class, though it’s not exactly easy to pin that down. With that in mind, I used the Economic Policy Institute’s budget calculator to measure the cost of living for families in 20 cities, including Seattle. We could surmise that these families (families of four, instead of our two-person household) would aspire to be a part of the middle class, but the cost of living doesn’t exactly spell that out for us.
Seattle Post-Intelligencer | April 19, 2016
Leading candidates for president have tried to channel that frustration when they talk about trade in communities around the country. “Not only have they lost millions of jobs due to growing trade deficits,” said economist Robert Scott of the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute. “But there has been downward pressure on the wages of a much, much larger number of Americans: nearly two-thirds of the labor force.”
NPR | April 18, 2016
Princeton University officials announced recently that they would not accede to student demands that they remove President Woodrow Wilson’s name on its school of public and international affairs and a residential college—calls made because of his support of racial segregation. The trustees did say, however, that the school would be more transparent “in recognizing Wilson’s failings and shortcomings as well as the visions and achievements that led to the naming of the school and the college in the first place.” Here, from scholar Richard Rothstein, is a response to the trustees and a look at the issue of how historical figures should be judged.
The Washington Post | April 18, 2016
But El Camino did not want its teachers to feel as though they were giving up something when the campus left district control five years ago. So teachers retained their union representation. L.A. Unified and the teachers union also agreed to give El Camino teachers up to five years to return to the district. “This is a charter school that did at least try to do right by teachers,” said Monique Morrissey, an economist at the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute, which is based in Washington. “It did put a premium from the get-go on retaining unionized, professional teachers rather than taking the low road—using low-paid, unprofessional, nonunionized teachers and churning through them.”
Los Angeles Times | April 18, 2016
Research, however, shows no significant connection between increasing the minimum wage and jobs. A 2009 analysis of 64 United States minimum-wage studies found “little or no evidence of a negative association between minimum wages and employment.” Likewise, a 2013 Economic Policy Institute (EPI) report found that “Research over the past two decades has shown that, despite skeptics’ claims, modest increases in the minimum wage have little to no negative impact on jobs. In fact, under current labor market conditions, where tepid consumer demand is a major factor holding businesses back from expanding their payrolls, raising the minimum wage can provide a catalyst for new hiring.”
Think Progress | April 18, 2016