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
Finally, companies can cut profit margins or top-level salaries to meet higher wage mandates. This last mechanism is one reason such policies get so much pushback from business, and it is particularly germane in an economy where income inequality stands at historically high levels. According to data from the Economic Policy Institute, the real earnings of low-wage workers in Alabama are down 6 percent compared with 1979, while those of the state’s highest-paid workers are up 17 percent.The forgotten recession that irrevocably damaged the American economy
The Week
April 18, 2016
Finally, companies can cut profit margins or top-level salaries to meet higher wage mandates. This last mechanism is one reason such policies get so much pushback from business, and it is particularly germane in an economy where income inequality stands at historically high levels. According to data from the Economic Policy Institute, the real earnings of low-wage workers in Alabama are down 6 percent compared with 1979, while those of the state’s highest-paid workers are up 17 percent.
Memphis Commercial Appeal
April 18, 2016
A report out this week shows the average annual cost for infant child care in Wisconsin is the 13th highest in the nation. The cost even outpaces tuition at the state’s four-year universities. The Economic Policy Institute report found the average cost for a year of child care for an infant in Wisconsin is$11,579, while average tuition at the state’s four-year universities is $8,406. That puts Wisconsin on a list of 33 states where infant care costs more than college.
Wisconsin Public Radio
April 18, 2016
In 2015, about 7.2 percent of young college graduates were unemployed, according to the Economic Policy Institute, a Washington D.C. nonprofit.
San Jose Mercury News
April 18, 2016
Similarly, the Economic Policy Institute, the leading pro-labor think tank in DC, repeatedly advocates for a $12 minimum, not $15. It’ll issue statements sympathetic to actually passed $15 an hour laws, but it’s not the focus of their prior research. Jared Bernstein, Joe Biden’s former chief economist and perhaps the left-most adviser in the Obama administration, has written sympathetically about $15 an hour, but emphasized, “as far as we can see, no one is proposing $15 tomorrow. All the proposals we know of phase in gradually over the course of numerous years.”
VOX
April 18, 2016
Despite companies adding jobs, in the United States there are still 14 jobseekers for every 10 openings, noted economist Elise Gould in a blog post last week for the Economic Policy Institute, a think tank affiliated with the labor movement.
The Christian Science Monitor
April 18, 2016
The Economic Policy Institute (www.epi.org) has a family budget calculator that lets you enter your household size (up to two adults and four children) along with your Zip code to see how much you would need to earn to have an “adequate but modest” standard of living in that geographic area.
Des Moines Register
April 18, 2016
According to a new report from the Economic Policy Institute, day care or preschool is often more expensive than a college education. The research compared the cost of tuition at a four-year in-state college with the cost of full-time day care for a 4-year-old and found that, in 23 out of 50 states, child care cost more.
New York Magazine
April 18, 2016
A new analysis from the Economic Policy Institute finds the high cost of child care to be a significant reason why families with small children nationwide are not feeling the bounties of the economic recovery. According to the report, two major economic issues—income inequality and a slowdown in the growth of productivity—would both benefit from investments in the early childhood field. “American productivity would improve with a better-educated and healthier future workforce,” the report states. “Inequality would be immediately reduced as resources to provide quality child care are progressively made available to families with children.”
Southern California Public Radio
April 14, 2016
So much for starting the college fund early on. According to the Economic Policy Institute, a nonprofit research facility, infant care in Massachusetts is more expensive than tuition at an in-state college or university. According to the EPI’s findings, infant care in Massachusetts is the second-highest in the country, topped only by the costs for the same services in Washington, D.C. Hiring someone in this state to take care of your infant (a baby aged 0-1 years) will cost you $6,360 more per year than in-state tuition. It will also be more expensive than your rent; according to the EPI, taking care of babies in Massachusetts costs, on average, 15.3% more than housing.
Boston.com
April 14, 2016
In nearly half the country(23 states), it’s now more expensive to educate a 4-year-old in preschool than an 18-year-old in college, according to the Wall Street Journal. The largest disparity between the cost to attend day care and the cost to attend college resides in Florida, my home state, according to Economic Policy Institute data. The average child care costs in Florida are $7,668 a year, making it 73 percent more expensive to care for a 4-year-old in Florida than for a student to attend college. “High-quality child care is out of reach for many families,” said Economic Policy Institute research assistant Tanyell Cooke. “This crisis is not limited to low-income families, nor is it unique to certain parts of the country. It affects everyone, in every state.”
Miami Herald
April 14, 2016
Putting a kid through school is a laborious, money-sucking endeavor… for which new parents should start planning much earlier than they might think. University tuition, an oft-bemoaned financial drain, isn’t necessarily where the costs start piling up. In 23 of the 50 US states, daycare or preschool can easily be more expensive than college, according to new research from the Economic Policy Institute. The think tank compared, for each state, the annual cost of full-time daycare for a four-year-old and the average tuition for a student attending an in-state, four-year institution.
Quartz
April 14, 2016
It’s a well-known fact that daycare is a financial drain on working parents; despite the often low pay of daycare workers, the cost of tuition and enrollment fees can easily run thousands of dollars a year. Now, new research from the Economic Policy Institute shows that in nearly half of the United States, full-time daycare is more expensive than tuition at in-state schools. The study, which we saw via Quartz, compared the state-by-state average cost of full-time daycare with the cost of tuition at a four-year public university. The results are eye-opening: In 23 states, daycare is more expensive than college. In Nevada, New York, and Florida, childcare costs double what in-state tuition does. According to EPI’s numbers, daycare in New York, the fourth most expensive in the United States, runs on average $14,144, roughly 107 percent more than in-state tuition; that amount is 21.2 percent of an average New York family’s income. In Florida, too, daycare takes a sizable portion of a family’s income, the average cost of $8,694 is 16.6 percent of a family’s income.
Jezebel
April 14, 2016
New research from the Economic Policy Institute supports what Maryland Family Network has known for a long time—making public investments in early childhood care and education not only helps families make ends meet but would also provide a major boost to the State’s economy.
WYPR
April 14, 2016