Media clips
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A state’s economic health is directly related to its workforce’s level of education, according to the Economic Policy Institute, so it’s fair to say that when college students fail to clear these hurdles and ultimately drop out, it’s bad for Chicago – and for Illinois as a whole.
Chicago Tribune February 11, 2016 -
Some council members have expressed support for higher wages, but few have backed a specific dollar figure. In September, the council voted to set aside $150,000 for a study on the potential impact of a higher minimum wage in the city or the metro area. The council voted Wednesday to authorize a team of researchers from the University of Minnesota, Howard University, Rutgers University and the Economic Policy Institute to complete the study this spring, but some council members said they remain uncertain about the city’s ability to make any changes.
Minneapolis Star Tribune February 11, 2016 -
Live-in domestic servants are uniquely vulnerable to abuse because their work takes place out of sight, experts say – which also makes it difficult to estimate how many are in the United States. Roughly 2 million people work in “in-home” professions, from housecleaning to elder care, according to a 2013 report from the Economic Policy Institute. Those who are live-in workers, or immigrants, are especially difficult to tally, and especially vulnerable.
Christian Science Monitor February 10, 2016 -
The Economic Policy Institute says the biggest decline in wages from 2013 to 2014 occurred among those with undergraduate and advanced degrees. Just think what it would mean to Walmart if those Americans were paid better salaries: more customers in stores and online.
Philadelphia Inquirer February 10, 2016 -
While collectors for other types of loans also pursue debtors behind bars, federal student loans are different because the government is the collector, which means taxpayer money is spent trying to reach borrowers who cannot easily communicate with the outside world and have few opportunities to earn money to repay the debt. McMillan, for example, said she was making less than a dollar per hour at her job as a suicide-prevention aid worker at Rikers. The average federal prison worker makes about 92 cents per hour, according to the Economic Policy Institute.
Bloomberg February 10, 2016 -
Government assistance helps millions of Americans afford health care, housing, food, and child care. Such programs have become the right wing’s go-to scapegoat for budgetary bloat and government dependency. But a new report from the Economic Policy Institute shows that a large chunk of government-assistance spending is due to the prevalence of low-wage work in this country.
The American Prospect February 10, 2016 -
But the reality is that tens of millions of Americans with full-time jobs are working for low hourly wages and cannot afford to cover the monthly basics, according to David Cooper, a poverty and minimum wage analyst at the Economic Policy Institute in Washington. In a government data analysis released Tuesday by the liberal-leaning think tank, Cooper said there are 41.2 million working people, or nearly 30 percent of the workforce, receiving public assistance such as food stamps, housing subsidies and cash assistance to make ends meet. Nearly half of those workers, 19.3 million people, had full-time jobs and most were earning less than $12.16 per hour in wages, Cooper wrote in his analysis. “When corporations pay wages so low that working people must rely on public assistance, taxpayers are effectively subsidizing these companies to make up the difference between what workers make and what they need to support themselves and their families,” he wrote.
International Business Times February 10, 2016 -
See excerpt: The results of the Program for International Student Assessment, or PISA, the test that is used to do an international ranking of students’ academic performance, will be trumpeted later this year, and the responses will undoubtedly repeat those of previous years: U.S. officials will wring their hands and lament that American student achievement is stagnant, that it is lagging woefully behind our economic competitors’, and that we therefore need to import features of schooling from higher-scoring countries. This edu-masochism—a distinctly American way of focusing on our educational shortcomings—can be traced at least back to the late 1950s and the Soviet Union’s launch of Sputnik. Perhaps the nation’s early trailblazing successes in establishing mass schooling and developing a uniquely excellent system of higher education have left U.S. educators particularly vulnerable to charges that other nations are surpassing us.gar
Education Week February 10, 2016 -
In a study a few years ago, Robert E. Scott, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute, found that New Hampshire had suffered more on a percentage basis than any other state from the loss of jobs to China. His analysis can be read here. He calculated that jobs lost to China in the ten years to 2011 totaled 20,400. That’s a big number for a small state and it represented 2.94 percent of the state’s total workforce.
Forbes February 10, 2016 -
See excerpt: On Tuesday, the White House will unveil its annual federal budget. In recent years, the traditional hand-wringing over budget deficits sensibly took a back seat to ensuring that spending cuts did not drag on the still-incomplete economic recovery. Now, however, pressure is building again to reduce deficits. There’s still little economic evidence, however, that we should start cutting spending to reduce the deficit. In the near term, with interest rates and inflation both ultra-low, it’s clear that the primary problem in the economy remains insufficient demand, which keeps labor markets weak and wage growth slow. Rapid deficit reduction through spending cuts would exacerbate this and further stall a full economic recovery.
USA Today February 9, 2016 -
Now there is a report, released by the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute earlier this month, that adds further credence to this line of analysis. Titled “Balancing paychecks and public assistance: How higher wages would strengthen what government can do,” EPI’s new report shows that policy designed to give American workers a raise wouldn’t just be the right thing to do in terms of economic and social justice. It’d help create a more efficient and effective government, too. Recently, Salon spoke over the phone with David Cooper, the study’s author, about his findings as well as their larger implications. An edited version of our conversation can be found below.
So what was the overarching public policy question you wanted to address with this study?
The motivation behind the study is the recognition that it takes a lot of income for folks to have a decent quality of life. We have a tool called the Family Budget Calculator that calculates throughout the country what we would consider a modest, but adequate, standard of living. It tells you exactly what we expect one would need to cover everything from housing, rent, a car payment, childcare, healthcare, and when you add up all those numbers, it comes up with a budget. In most parts of the country, those numbers are a lot higher than you would get if you were, say, earning the minimum wage in most places.
Salon February 9, 2016 -
The critical benchmark was not average wages but the experience at the median, where outcomes had been depressed by an unequal distribution of pay and growth, he said. Real median hourly wages fell an annual 0.3 per cent from 2007-14, according to the Economic Policy Institute.
Financial Times February 9, 2016 -
Offering a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants – as well as tightening the border – could actually help push up wages modestly for working-class Americans, says Josh Bivens, a policy analyst at the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank in Washington. Currently, workers int the country illegally can be easily exploited. If they were given the standard protections of United States labor law, wages could increase across the board. “It’s bad to compete with workers that are really exploitable,” Mr. Bivens says.
Christian Science Monitor February 9, 2016 -
About 4.6 million people realized an increase in their first paycheck of the year because they made below their state’s new minimum or close to it, according to the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute.
Wall Street Journal February 8, 2016 -
“Wage growth of 2.5 percent is far from any reasonable target given the Federal Reserve’s target inflation and trend productivity,” wrote Elise Gould, senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute. “To keep moving us towards the goal of full employment — an economy where there is high demand for labor, and workers have more bargaining power to negotiate higher wages and get the hours they want — we need to keep our foot off the brakes and consider tapping on the gas. If the Federal Reserve hits the brakes by raising interest rates prematurely, the economy may never fully recover.” Gould also updated her helpful chart reminding readers of just how many millions of Americans left the labor force prematurely during the Great Recession and its aftermath, and showing where the unemployment rate would be if they had all remained in the workforce.
Fiscal Times February 8, 2016 -
Valerie Wilson, an economist with the Economic Policy Institute, says part of the reason the unemployment rate for blacks may have gone up is because more were looking for work. “Perhaps people who were previously unemployed were encouraged by last month’s numbers and are now looking for employment,” she says, adding that while there’s good news for everyone in this months’ report, “we still maintain that roughly 2-to-1 ratio between black and white unemployment.” “That disparity is very persistent,” Wilson says, “and it’s present whether we’re in a recession or in a recovery. It’s present at all levels of education.”
NPR February 8, 2016 -
Elise Gould, senior economist at the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute, said that despite January’s low number the jobs report “is a sign that the economy continues to recover.” But she warned that if the Federal Reserve hiked interest rates too early, “the economy may never fully recover.”
Politico February 8, 2016 -
Economists say the job market is still depressed, though. “Job creation and wage growth need to be far stronger, and they need to remain strong for a longer period of time, before the economy is close to full employment,” the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) said in a statement. EPI senior economist Elise Gould said wages and labor participation are not yet where they need to be. The labor force participation rate was up slightly from December to 62.7% in January. Gould pointed to a slight uptick in prime age employment-to-population, the share of workers ages 25 to 54 who have jobs, from 77.4 to 77.7 as one key measure of the health of the job market. “That has a lot of recovering to do,” she said. Unlike the overall labor force participation, which includes retired baby boomers and other structural shifts in the economy, this is a demographic where people would be expected to be working if jobs were available.
WJLA February 8, 2016 -
And although the underlying fundamentals of Friday’s labor report were relatively solid, this is not the kind of overwhelmingly positive report the Fed would need to lift interest rates next month. Most analysts now expect the Fed to change policy much later in the year, if at all. “To keep moving us towards the goal of full employment – an economy where there is high demand for labor, and workers have more bargaining power to negotiate higher wages and get the hours they want – we need to keep our foot off the brakes and consider tapping on the gas,” Elise Gould, a senior economist and director of health policy research at the Economic Policy Institute, wrote in a research note Friday. “If the Federal Reserve hits the brakes by raising interest rates prematurely, the economy may never fully recovery.”
U.S. News & World Report February 8, 2016 -
One key measure did show some improvement: The size of the work force increased slightly, nudging the participation rate up to 62.7 percent after falling to the lowest level in a generation last year. “Job creation and wage growth need to be far stronger, and they need to remain strong for a longer period of time, before the economy is close to full employment,” said Elise Gould, senior economist at the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute.
The Washington Post February 5, 2016 -
Productivity is closely tied to wages. Employers pay workers more with increased profits they can get from workers being more efficient and productive. Right now, productivity and wages are both stuck, and one reason is lack of business investment in new plant and equipment and technology, said analyst Josh Bivens at the Economic Policy Institute. Businesses “are not very convinced they should open new factories and open new hotels,” said Bivens, “because the ones they have are not running at full capacity, so they need to see more customers and more demand growth before they’ll do that investment.” Bivens pointed out that U.S. businesses have a lot of cash on hand, and it’s cheap to borrow for productivity-enhancing workplace improvements, with interest rates still historically low. But he said they aren’t likely to make that investment unless the economy heats up a lot more.
Marketplace February 5, 2016 -
A student with an empty stomach or a toothache won’t learn as well as one who is healthy. “All kids can learn, and they can learn at high levels, but it’s very conditional on kids having the right opportunities,” said Elaine Weiss, an education expert at the liberal Economic Policy Institute in Washington. “Those opportunities to learn tend to be extremely disparate, based in particular on social class and also, to a large extent, on race.”
The Atlantic February 5, 2016 -
EPI Family Budget Calculator.
The Huffington Post February 5, 2016 -
A report issued last year by the Economic Policy Institute argues the negative side-effects of on-call shifts take an even broader toll on the economy. The non-partisan group said at least 10 percent of the workforce is assigned to irregular or on-call hours, and these employees are more likely to have work-family conflicts. This has the potential to hinder their children’s education and future, said Leila Morsy, who co-authored the report.
CNBC February 5, 2016 -
Some members of the European parliament have cited calculations by the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute in Washington that up to 3.5m jobs could be lost in the EU. The commission sharply rejects such claims and estimates that some 211,000 jobs would be at risk if there were no mitigating measures.
Financial Times February 5, 2016 -
Democrats Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut and Bill Nelson of Florida, senators from states with some of the most high-profile accusations of H-1B abuse, have cosponsored the legislation. “Fixes are so easy,” says Daniel Costa, the director of immigration law and policy research at the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute in Washington. “Require that the market wage be paid and require employers to prove they recruited US workers first.” “Have a Labor Department database that requires you post the job for 30 days [in the US],” he continues. “If you really can’t find anybody, you get your worker. If that is going to destroy the program, that means it really is just a tool for exploitable labor.”
Christian Science Monitor February 4, 2016 -
According to a new report by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), the guestworker labor force provides US employers jobs on the cheap, offering less in wages and virtually nothing in terms of labor rights or benefits. EPI’s analysis of a decade of data on guestworkers under the H-2B visa program, which pipes immigrants into temporary low-wage service-industry jobs, shows that the visa allows bosses to employ guestworkers at “hourly wage rates that are far lower than state and national averages in the overwhelming majority of cases.” For example, in the most popular H-2B industry, landscaping and groundskeeping, “employers saved on average between $2.59 and $3.37 per hour by hiring an H-2B worker instead of a worker earning the national average wage.”
The Nation February 4, 2016 -
Demographically, tipped workers are nearly twice as likely to live in poverty as the rest of the workforce, according to numbers from the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute. They’re nearly twice as likely to rely on food stamps, and among those who have families, 40% of their children qualify for free lunches. Of the 10 lowest-paid jobs in America, seven are in the restaurant industry, according to the Department of Labor.
Buzzfeed February 4, 2016 -
The authors used what’s known as the United Nations Global Policy Model, which unlike the classical model does not assume TPP trading partners are at full employment. “From the starting gate, they’re beginning from two very different assumptions,” said Josh Bivens, research and policy director at the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank, also based in Washington.
International Business Times February 4, 2016 -
Two-thirds of people on needs-based public assistance are either working or have a family member who’s working, a briefing paper published Wednesday by the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute states. Additionally, about half of all recipients of public assistance are working full-time. Indolence and apathy aren’t driving up the welfare rolls, according to the research. Low pay is the more likely culprit. “As corporations achieve extraordinarily high profit levels and executive pay reaches new heights, it is appropriate to question whether employers are effectively passing off a portion of their societal responsibilities on to taxpayers,” wrote the paper’s author, David Cooper.
International Business Times February 4, 2016