Elise Gould, senior economist at the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute, said that while March’s jobs numbers showed signs of improvement, “wage growth continues to be below target levels, a sign that there continues to be substantial slack in the labor market.” She suggested the Federal Reserve continue to refrain from further interest rate hikes.
Politico | April 4, 2016
What’s more, extra people looking for work raises the national labor force participation rate – which measures the share of Americans at least 16 years old who are either employed or actively looking for work. That rate ticked up for the second consecutive month to 63 percent—its highest level in two years. “The unemployment rate ticked up slightly, while the labor force participation rate continued to show signs of improvement—an indication that workers are feeling optimistic and are beginning to come off the bench and take some practice swings,” Elise Gould, a senior economist and director of health policy research at the Economic Policy Institute, wrote in a research note Friday.
U.S. News & World Report | April 4, 2016
Meanwhile, the Economic Policy Institute’s “missing worker” metric—which tracks potential workers who by all rights would be either employed or looking for work, but aren’t due to a lack of job opportunities—finally started falling in mid-2015, and dropped again from February to March.
The Week | April 4, 2016
Daniel Costa, Director of Immigration Law and Policy Research at the Economic Policy Institute, pointed out that India was also upset last time Congress imposed fees on the guest worker program in 2010, but nothing came of the country’s complaint. “I don’t think they have much of a case, and they probably know they don’t have much of a case, but it’s sort of more symbolic to try to threaten and keep American legislators from passing any reforms on the program,” Costa said.
Vice News | April 4, 2016
Yet critics of the H-1B visa effort counter that the program has undermined and eroded opportunities for workers born or living in the United States to land well-paying technology jobs. “Technology companies have gotten used to cheap labor on demand, and by bringing in cheap labor, high-tech employers are able to suppress wages,” said Ron Hira, a research associate with the Economic Policy Institute. “Tech employers hold the work permits through this program, and that gives the company extraordinary leverage over the foreign worker and limits their mobility.”
During 2014, 36.8 percent of Silicon Valley’s population was foreign born, a number that rose to 37.4 percent in 2015, according to a report released this year by Joint Venture Silicon Valley. California has a foreign-born population of 27.1 percent, while the U.S. is at 13.1 percent. “If you are a tech company and you know that you can pay much less for a worker through an H-1B visa, why wouldn’t you?” said Daniel Costa, director of immigration law and policy research with the Economic Policy Institute. “Companies can pay $30,000 a year less to a worker in an H-1B visa program. Multiply that over the six years of the visa, that’s real money.”
San Jose Mercury News | April 4, 2016
Paul Krugman is correct that much of the negative impact of foreign trade for Americans results from our inadequate domestic policies, including the undercutting of the bargaining power of workers. But for the last 25 years this argument has been used to rationalize a perverse politics in which Democratic presidents ally with big business and Republicans to make trade deals that expose American workers to brutal competition, and then complain that they are helpless to stop these same “allies” from dismantling social safety nets and destroying labor unions. Like it or not, only the threat of protectionism will change this cynical behavior. Those who profess to care about the future of American workers should be demanding an immediate freeze, and where possible a rollback, of any new trade agreements until we have first established domestic policies, like those in Europe and Canada, that allow workers to prosper from trade. —Jeff Faux, Distinguished Fellow, Economic Policy Institute, Washington
The New York Times | April 4, 2016
According to the Economic Policy Institute’s Family Budget Calculator, the basic-needs budget for a single person in Bakersfield, California, is $14.64. With a single child, it rises to $23.59. In Baltimore, it is $17 for a single person and $29.58 for a worker with a dependent child. The full-time wage necessary to pay fair market rent for a modest two-bedroom apartment in a non-metropolitan area is $14 in both Arizona and Montana, and $18 in California. This compares to the current value of a 2021 $15 wage of $13.34.
The American Prospect | April 4, 2016
According to numbers from the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute, the average worker who will see a raise under the new budget is a woman over 25 years old who works full-time and typically provides half her household’s income.
Buzzfeed | April 1, 2016
A slightly higher unemployment rate is not exactly bad news. Some economists would like to see the unemployment rate to go up slightly, if it signalled that Americans who had previously given up looking for jobs were now becoming more optimistic and attempting to re-enter the labor market. “While the unemployment rate has been holding steady, a slight rise in coming months could actually be a positive move—if driven by rising labor force participation, which would mean that potential workers see hope for themselves in the labor market and have started to look for jobs,” explained Elise Gould, senior economist at the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute.
The Guardian | April 1, 2016
When California and New York last approved minimum-wage increases in 2013, 14 states followed suit a year later and most at least matched New York’s current rate of $9 an hour. California’s current minimum is $10 an hour. The federal rate still prevails in 21 states. “It’s going to add fuel to the fire for other states looking to raise the minimum wage and potentially encourage them to go higher than they were initially thinking,” said David Cooper, an economist at the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute.
Wall Street Journal | April 1, 2016
If true, it would mean that the US women soccer players are just like many other women in the United States, earning less than their male counterparts. On average, working women earn about 83 cents for every dollar men make, according to calculations from the Economic Policy Institute.
Boston Globe | April 1, 2016
Boston Globe | April 1, 2016
Among young and old, men and women, high school and college grads, part-time work is more common in Massachusetts than in the bulk of the United States. Overall, roughly one of every three workers in the Bay State clocks less than 35 hours a week, according to data from the Economic Policy Institute. While this may seem like a dubious distinction, it’s actually a sign of rare flexibility in the state job market.
Boston Globe | April 1, 2016
Richard Rothstein joined the program.
Diane Rehm Show | April 1, 2016
One expert, Robert Scott at the Economic Policy Institute, estimates that the U.S. lost roughly 800,000 jobs to Mexico between 1997 and 2013. He cites NAFTA—the North American Free Trade Agreement signed in 1993—as the key driver for job losses.
CNN Money | April 1, 2016
In 2013 an updated estimate of his model showed that trade with poor countries depressed unskilled workers’ wages by 10% in 2011, up from 2.7% in 1979, according to Josh Bivens of the Economic Policy Institute, a think-tank. In that time, trade accounted for one-third of the rise in the college premium.
The Economist | April 1, 2016
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump offers a lot of policy ideas that progressive economists hate. He wants to close up the country’s borders and crack down on immigration, something that could seriously hurt the economy. His tax plan would cost trillions and offer most of the relief to the wealthiest, with very little for the middle class and poor. But when it comes to his positions on trade, the same economists say he’s identified the right problems, even if some of his solutions might get him into trouble. “Trump has stumbled on, and I think it’s the right word, stumbled on to a very important issue,” said Robert Scott, senior economist and director of trade and manufacturing at the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute.
Think Progress | March 31, 2016
A report by the Economic Policy Institute concludes that unilateral MES status for China would endanger 3.5m jobs in EU industry by limiting anti-dumping tariffs. Almost all the EU’s 350,000 steel jobs would be a risk. If this is correct, and if allowed to run its course, Europe would be finished as an industrial and military region. It would be civilisational suicide.
Telegraph UK | March 31, 2016
That’s why PolitiFact called into question a Bernie Sanders ad that refers to 850,000 jobs lost under NAFTA. Sanders cites that number from a report from the Economic Policy Institute, which gets about a quarter of its funding from unions.
Chicago Tribune | March 31, 2016
He was one of the five founders of the Economic Policy Institute, which distinguished itself for both setting and anticipating the American economic agenda.
The Washington Post | March 31, 2016
I got to know Les Thurow because we were part of a fairly small cohort of non-Marxian, left-of-center thinkers on economics. Thurow joined Robert Reich, Ray Marshall, Jeff Faux, Barry Bluestone, and myself in 1986, to found the Economic Policy Institute. We acted because virtually the entire mainstream economics profession had become something of a commercial for the proposition that markets are almost invariably efficient. Marxian economists, of course, had an entirely different view. But among non-Marxists, Thurow was perhaps the most eminent and well credentialed of those who challenged market verdicts as neither necessarily efficient nor just. We founded EPI in part because there was a huge hole in the world of think tanks. Before EPI, there were outfits like the American Enterprise Institute on the right and the Brookings Institution in the center but no real left-liberal institution committed to high quality research.
The American Prospect | March 31, 2016
The battle has political ramifications. If conservatives can chip away at the funding of public-employee unions, they can weaken them and, in turn, hurt labor’s ally, the Democrats. “It’s totally political,” says Ross Eisenbrey, vice president at the Economic Policy Institute, a foundation- and union-supported think tank in Washington. “The business community doesn’t like unions by and large, and whenever they get an opportunity to undermine collective bargaining, they take it.”
Christian Science Monitor | March 31, 2016
Nationwide, 9.3% of U.S. workers make at or near their state’s minimum wage, according to estimates from the Economic Policy Institute.
CNN Money | March 31, 2016
A recent report by the Economic Policy Institute found that 51 percent of the Massachusetts workforce does not have a college degree, but that almost two-thirds of the U.S. workforce overall has not completed college.
Boston.com | March 31, 2016
Many of the people who explain economics to the general public, such as the bloggers at Marginal Revolution or the creators of the EconTalk podcast, have libertarian leanings. A number of conservative think tanks, such as the Cato Institute, Heritage Foundation and American Enterprise Institute, employ university-trained economists to promote free-market policies to the public. In recent years, this libertarian influence has been balanced out by more left-leaning voices—the New York Times’ Paul Krugman, the University of California-Berkeley’s Brad DeLong, and think tanks like the Washington Center for Equitable Growth, Center for Economic and Policy Research and Economic Policy Institute. But libertarians’ head start in marketing—which goes back all the way to Milton Friedman and Friedrich Hayek in the mid-20th century—will take a while to overcome.
Bloomberg | March 31, 2016
He was the dean of the M.I.T. Sloan School of Management from 1987 to 1993 and a founder of the Economic Policy Institute, an influential progressive research group. In his heyday, he charged speaking fees of $30,000 and was one of the most sought-after economists on the lecture circuit.
The New York Times | March 30, 2016
While that gap between male earners in the 95th and 50th percentiles saw its biggest rise, last year’s increase only extended a long-running trend. “It is the most, but to say that inequality hasn’t been growing for the last 35 years would be wrong,” said Elise Gould, an economist with the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute who conducted the analysis earlier this month, as part of a larger report on wage inequality.
The Washington Post | March 30, 2016
While the federal minimum wage is $7.25 an hour, U.S. law allows employees who receive tips to be paid just $2.13. Tipped workers are more than twice as likely as normal workers to fall under the poverty line, according to a 2011 study from the Economic Policy Institute, a nonprofit organization affiliated with the labor movement.
The Huffington Post | March 30, 2016
A somewhat open question is whether bridge jobs are truly bridges to retirement or just another job change, perhaps one of many, in a seemingly unending working career. “I don’t want to be too Pollyannaish about bridge jobs because part of this is likely a reaction to the erosion of retirement security in the U.S.,” says Monique Morrissey, an economist with Economic Policy Institute, a Washington-based think tank with ties to organized labor. Morrissey says older Americans are facing a gradual erosion of retirement benefits. Specifically, she points to the transition to 401(k)s over defined-benefit pensions, as well as the eventual increase in the retirement age up to 67, a move she says amounts to an “across-the-board cut in benefits.”
Associated Press | March 30, 2016
Mileage tracking isn’t the only piece of infrastructure that is needed to make drivers’ lives easier and more profitable. More suitable insurance plans need to be developed, for example. And a key piece of the puzzle is the evolution of our legal standards for employment: Do we need to invent a new legal status which is neither employee nor contractor but has some characteristics of both? (The case for a new legal status is strongly challenged in a recent analysis by Economic Policy Institute.)
U.S. News & World Report | March 30, 2016