“It’s typical if you’re going to build a coherent economic policy you need to have a wide group of economic advisers,” says Rob Scott of the Economic Policy Institute in Washington. “These people are generally economists who come out of the top 10 or 15 schools, or the leading think tanks. … He’s got a bunch of real estate guys and a poker player.”
Politico Magazine
August 11, 2016
Trump’s plan “would actually be pretty poorly targeted for middle-class and low-income families,” Hunter Blair, a tax and budget analyst at the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), told Rewire on Monday. That’s because his tax breaks would presumably not benefit those who don’t make enough money to owe the federal government income taxes—about 44 percent of households, according to Blair. “They won’t get any benefit from this.”… Such policies could make a major difference to child-care workers—the overwhelming majority of which are women and workers of color—who often make poverty-level wages. A 2015 study by the EPI found that the median wage for these workers is just $10.31 an hour, and few receive employer benefits. Those poor conditions make it difficult to attract and retain workers, and improve the quality of care for children around the country.
Rewire
August 11, 2016
What was once scarce is now abundant. Even though the cost of a degree has risen tenfold since 1978, its value is stagnant or declining. According to the Economic Policy Institute, workers with undergraduate degrees (but not graduate degrees) earned, on average, $30.05 an hour in 2001. In 2014, they earned $29.55 an hour. Other sources show even more dramatic falls.
New York Observer
August 11, 2016
Pay for teachers has stagnated nationally over the past two decades, and fallen behind earnings of other workers with college degrees, the Economic Policy Institute, a Washington-based nonpartisan think tank, concluded in a report released Tuesday. In 1994, teachers earned on average 1.8 percent less than other comparable workers; by 2015, they earned 17 percent less, adjusted for inflation. Factoring in total compensation, including health benefits and pensions, teachers earned the same as other workers with college degrees in 1994 but 11 percent less by 2015, the report found.
EdSource
August 10, 2016
TEACHER PAY GAP: Next to comparable workers in other industries, public-sector teachers are faced with a widening wage gap, even when benefits are accounted for. That’s according to a report [http://bit.ly/2aPT6aS] released today by the Economic Policy Institute that says teachers make 17 percent less than comparable workers in other industries, according to 2015 wage data. The report used a “wage model” in making the comparison, which controls for variables such as education, gender, marital status, age, and race/ethnicity.
Politico
August 10, 2016
The Economic Policy Institute report released Tuesday sounds an alarm for future staffing of schools, noting, “The supply of teachers is diminishing at every stage of the career ladder. On the front end, fewer students are entering the profession…Over the long run, employment opportunities for women have greatly expanded, and thus the teaching profession can no longer rely on what was a somewhat captive labor pool. At the same time, teachers are less satisfied and more stressed as standardized testing has been elevated as a tool for student, school, and teacher evaluations.”
The Atlanta Journal Constitution
August 10, 2016
The Daily Beast ran an interesting story this week about Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump and his predilection for the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), an economic think tank and policy shop in Washington, DC. “[Trump] cites them a lot,” writes the Beast’s Betsy Woodruff. “A perusal of his emailed press statements from the last two months shows he name-checked the group more than a dozen times.” The rub here is that EPI is no one’s idea of a Republican-friendly think tank – it’s a go-to source for progressive policy research, and it advocates for many things conservatives hate: increased government spending, a higher minimum wage, and a more progressive tax code. For a Republican presidential nominee to cite them so enthusiastically is… odd.
Salon
August 10, 2016
An analysis by the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute in Washington projected that the legislation would increase wages for 98,000 employees, or 27 percent of Baltimore workers. That projection was based on an earlier version of the bill that eventually guaranteed full minimum wage to bartenders, waiters and others who work for tips.
Carroll County Times
August 10, 2016
But tax deductions are worth a lot more to people who make a lot of money ― and worth absolutely nothing to people whose incomes are so low that they owe no federal income taxes at all. Naturally, these are the people who need help the most: A 2015 study by the Economic Policy Institute found that child care would soak up more than 10 percent of median income in a sample of communities across the country ― and would positively overwhelm families making minimum wage.
The Huffington Post
August 10, 2016
Real average hourly wages of often debt-laden college graduates fell between 2000 and 2014, according to the Economic Policy Institute, while the Case-Shiller U.S. National Home Price Index jumped more than 25 percent, adjusted for inflation, over the same period.
Reuters (via NY Times)
August 10, 2016
The Economic Policy Institute, or EPI, and its researchers are Organized Labor’s favorite wonks and no friend of the right. Mainstream, corporate-friendly conservatives regularly butt heads with them over questions about collective bargaining and free trade. In fact, they proudly consider themselves the premiere policy shop for progressive economics. And they are not happy to be a part of Trump’s rhetorical arsenal
The Daily Beast
August 9, 2016
In his speech, Trump cited research by Robert E. Scott, an economist at the liberal Economic Policy Institute in Washington. Scott rejected the forecasts in the commission’s report on the deal, saying he doubted U.S. automakers would gain meaningful access to markets in Japan. Scott — like many people in the automotive industry — is particularly frustrated that the deal does not contain enforceable restrictions on currency manipulation. By reducing the price of the yen, he said, the Japanese government can effectively increase the price of foreign cars, as he and other experts have accused Tokyo of doing in the past. “They maintain a currency that’s designed to keep Japanese goods — cars — competitive, but they also are one of the most closed markets in the world,” Scott said.
The Washington Post
August 9, 2016
But Trump’s speech didn’t contain only the normal Republican calls to lower taxes and cut government oversight of business. He also called for an end to the carried-interest loophole, which allows hedge-funders and others to pay a much lower tax rate on earnings, marking a rare policy agreement with Hillary Clinton. And as Trump launched an usual attack against free trade policies, he cited the liberal Economic Policy Institute to explain potential harms of the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Trump also proposed a tax deduction for families to offset the cost of child care—but since that benefit is a deduction rather than a credit, its benefits would skew toward the upper middle class rather than working-class families.
Mother Jones
August 9, 2016
Larry Mishel of the center-left Economic Policy Institute said Trump didn’t offer anything new in his speech, especially when it comes to issues like trade. “Donald Trump on trade treaties claims that he can renegotiate them and get different outcomes, but he has never said exactly what he is going to try to do,” said Mishel.
NPR Marketplace
August 9, 2016
The average annual cost of day care now surpasses the price of in-state college tuition in 31 states. It eats up at least 30 percent of a minimum-wage worker’s income in every state, according to a report last year from the Economic Policy Institute, a Washington think tank.
Washington Post
August 9, 2016
In May, Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton introduced a proposal to limit child-care costs to 10% of a family’s income. In 41 states, the cost of sending a 4-year-old to full-time preschool exceeds 10% of a median family income, according to the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute. She also proposed universal preschool for 4-year-olds. The candidate hasn’t provided specifics on how to pay for those plans… For many families, child-care costs well exceed $6,000 a year. The cost to send a 4-year-old to a full-time preschool program exceeds the cost of in-state college tuition in 23 states. The cost is above $7,000 a year in most states, according to EPI.
The Wall Street Journal
August 9, 2016
“Because it’s a deduction, it’s going to miss the 44 percent of workers that don’t pay federal income tax,” said Hunter Blair, a tax and budget analyst at the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), a liberal-leaning think tank. “And, with tax deductions, the benefits rise with income, so it’s a regressive plan.”… The EPI’s Blair called Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s plan to cap child care costs at 10 percent of a family’s income through federal subsidies and tax breaks “a vastly better policy than the tax deduction that Trump is proposing.”
CBS News
August 9, 2016
But adding a tax deduction for child care will have a cost. Child care is one of the largest expenses a family can incur – a study from the liberal Economic Policy Institute this year found day care costs more than college in 23 of 50 states.
The Associated Press
August 9, 2016
By contrast, some studies have shown that the vast majority of working Americans don’t get any paid family leave, while those who do are more likely to be high-wage workers. According to the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute, 23 percent of workers at the top of the income ladder have access to paid family leave, while only 4 percent of workers at the bottom get that benefit.
CBS News Moneywatch
August 9, 2016
However, there’s an enormous range of average costs, depending on where a family lives. According to the Economic Policy Institute, the monthly expense of child care for one child of preschool age can range from $344 in rural South Carolina to $1,472 a month—that’s more than $17,000 a year—in Washington, DC.
Slate
August 9, 2016
According to a new study, minimum wage workers should be making nearly $19 an hour. The report from the Economic Policy Institute found that tying the minimum wage to productivity would raise pay to $18.67 per hour. That’s an increase of over $11 an hour from Utah’s current hourly rate of $7.25. Until the 1960’s, the minimum wage generally rose with the levels of worker productivity. David Cooper, the author of the report, said that gradual increases in the minimum wage have almost no effect on employment.
Utah Public Radio
August 9, 2016
Slow productivity growth feeds directly into voter discontent by limiting wage increases. But as slow as productivity growth has been, wages have risen even less. In fact, real inflation-adjusted median wages have risen more slowly than productivity for most of the past 40 years. There are several reasons for this: Corporate profits have increased their share of the total pie at the expense of a lower share for employee compensation; the rising cost of medical care means that health insurance coverage is taking a bigger bite out of paychecks; and most important, rising inequality has siphoned off much of the extra income produced by productivity gains into the pockets of the top 1 percent.
The New York Times
August 8, 2016
While Clinton tries to sell the notion that the Obama recovery was robust, she does concede that wages haven’t risen nearly enough. The liberal Economic Policy Institute estimates that the median hourly wage has increased only 5.7% since 1973. Whether Clinton realizes it or not, the stagnation she deplores is another indictment of Obama’s growth policies: Wages tend to increase faster when the economy grows more vigorously.
Los Angeles Times
August 8, 2016
The Department of Labor and Economic Policy Institute disagree on how many workers who will be affected by the new regulation, but agree it’s in the millions. The DOL predicts the regulations will affect up to 4.5 million U.S. workers. Close to 2 million workers who do not have college degrees could now be considered eligible…The Economic Policy Institute suggests there are 12.5 million salaried workers making between $455 and $913 per week. The EPI takes into account employees they consider to have been misclassified. Workers who met the salary threshold established in 2004, or are payed above it, could have been excluded from overtime pay if their jobs were determined to fall within an executive, administrative or professional classification.
The Sun Herald
August 8, 2016
“It’s one thing to think about ways that workers can navigate the wearables to be more efficient. But what does this mean about the employee and employer relationship that they need to be so closely monitored?” asked Elise Gould, a labor economist at Economic Policy Institute. “What does it say about the sense of trust or respect?”… But given the legal risks, are wearables worth it, given the bump in worker output they provide? Elise Gould, a labor economist at the Economic Policy Institute, says that wearable use is likely to lead to higher profit margins for a company. But she’s concerned that those returns won’t be reflected in the employees’ paychecks. “What will employers do with that data? Do workers have any collective bargaining power to use this data to make sure they are getting compensated for their work?” she asked, adding that many companies that use these technologies, such as Amazon, do not have unionized work forces. (Amazon’s chief executive, Jeffrey P. Bezos, owns The Washington Post.)
The Washington Post
August 8, 2016
Small wonder. Corporate profits may be running strong and the stock market hovering near record highs. CEO pay at major companies runs close to 300 times the salaries of average workers, according to the Economic Policy Institute. But the household income of a typical American family, adjusted for inflation, is lower now than in 1999, and at $7.25 an hour, the federal minimum wage is poverty pay, 30 percent below the inflation-adjusted level in 1968.
Sacramento Bee
August 8, 2016
Mason and Larry Mishel, president of the Economic Policy Institute, both say those programs could focus on infrastructure — a field with an abundance of job opportunities that’s only going to expand in coming years. New hires will be needed to repair bridges and buildings, to wire fiber-optic networks throughout areas with low internet penetration, and for urban renewal works in cities throughout the country….That type of nuance — pairing unemployed populations and economic incentive in a way that’s mutually beneficial to both job seekers and industry — is why Mishel called these platforms “really important.” “Even if we have full employment nationwide, there are communities that are still going to be in recession,” he says. “That’s likely going to be the case for communities of color, which, if the country has 4 percent unemployment, might have something like 7 or 8 percent unemployment.” Mishel says he thinks it’s unlikely that cities will push out policies that filter out everyone else except for the black community, so what’s laid out in the initial agenda “will benefit the black community but it’ll also benefit some small cities and rural areas that are also white.”
Next City
August 8, 2016
It’s no secret that millions of Americans are underprepared for retirement. In fact, according to the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), almost half of American families have no retirement savings account at all, including almost 40% of those between the ages of 56 and 61.
Fox Business
August 8, 2016
“One of the most astonishing stories is the degree to which this is taking place in manufacturing, even automobile manufacturing,” says Larry Mishel, president of the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank.
CNNMoney
August 5, 2016
Courier-Post
August 5, 2016