A third way of looking at it comes from a 2015 analysis by the Economic Policy Institute. Their data show the Midwest had the slowest income growth among the top 1% of earners over nearly three decades.
Quartz
February 4, 2016
Flint was also victim to these practices: maps from that era show heavily African-American neighborhoods shaded in red, which made them far less likely to attract loans. The result was both an ease of entry for whites who wanted to move to the suburbs, plus subsidies for their home purchases from the federal government, and the concentration of black people stuck inside the city limits. “Whites were able to leave because the federal government financed the suburbs,” explained Richard Rothstein, research associate at the Economic Policy Institute. “African-Americans couldn’t leave because they were prohibited by federal policy from moving out of the city.”
Think Progress
February 3, 2016
Over the past 35 years, with the exception of a few golden years in the late 1990s, the wages of low- and middle-income American workers have taken a beating. A new report from the Economic Policy Institute highlights an often-overlooked consequence of this trend: Low-income workers are increasingly reliant on government assistance to get by. “Arguably the largest economic challenge facing the United States right now is the problem of wage stagnation,” says David Cooper, the report’s author. “For the vast majority of workers, wages have basically barely budged since the late 1970s, and, in the case of low-wage workers, their wages have actually fallen when you adjust for inflation since the late 1970s.”
Pacific Standard
February 3, 2016
Josh Bivens, research and policy director at the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute, appeared to agree, and said “continuing economic weakness” was likely causing slow productivity growth. He recommended that the Federal Reserve refrain from making further interest rate hikes.
Politico
February 1, 2016
“This slow productivity growth is likely itself a function of continuing economic weakness,” Josh Bivens, research and policy director at the Economic Policy Institute, said in a statement Friday. “In short, today’s data highlights the need for policymakers – particularly the Federal Reserve – to make economic growth and full employment a top priority and the need to refrain from undertaking measures (like further interest rate increases) that would slow the pace of growth in the coming year.”
U.S. News and World Report
February 1, 2016
The Walton family, who own large shares of Wal-Mart stock, were recently estimated to be worth around $145 billion. Josh Bivens of the Economic Policy Institute estimates that their net worth exceeds that of 1.7 million families earning the median income, combined.
The Huffington Post
February 1, 2016
As research by the Economic Policy Institute demonstrates, the growth of arbitration clauses has drastically diminished the ability of workers to assert their rights when those rights are violated by their employer. Private arbitrators are more likely to side with employers over workers, and when they do side with workers they typically award far less in damages than federal judges.
Think Progress
February 1, 2016
Child care is a big bummer. Putting a 4-year old in day care in Missouri or Illinois costs three quarters of the tuition needed to send an 18-year-old to a state college, according to a recent study by the Economic Policy Institute.
St. Louis Post Dispatch
February 1, 2016
James Parrott of the labor-backed Fiscal Policy Institute said Tuesday that the nonpartisan, labor-backed think tank called the Economic Policy Institute has found most “low-wage earners” now making less than $15 an hour are working full-time and struggling. The Washington-based organization also found that 34 percent of children in New York would have a parent who would benefit from the higher minimum wage.
Newsday
February 1, 2016
Such clauses are increasingly common in employment contracts — and, according to critics, often to the detriment of workers. Plaintiffs are more likely to lose claims in binding arbitration than in the federal courts, and when they do win, damages are substantially less, a recent report from the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute found.
International Business Times
January 29, 2016
The Economic Policy Institute, a labor policy think tank, also examined the job and unemployment numbers for 2015 versus pre-recession levels.
Denver Post
January 29, 2016
Polls show that Mr Trump draws much of his support from white, working-class men with a high-school education. While the US economy has recovered from the global financial crisis, they have not sensed much improvement because of stagnant wages. According to the Economic Policy Institute, the median income for households, excluding the elderly, fell 12 per cent from 2000 to 2014.
Financial Times
January 29, 2016
See excerpt: The racial wealth gap is a long-standing vestige of racism and restrictive federal, state and local policies that explicitly excluded African-Americans from opportunities whites had to build wealth. According to the latest Survey of Consumer Finances, the median African-American family has about 8 cents in wealth for every dollar held by the median white family. The effects of this go beyond a single generation — inheritance is one of the factors contributing to a widening wealth gap. That’s because wealth affords any number of mobility-enhancing opportunities, including the ability to own property, pay for higher education, build a secure retirement and access to high quality health care. Wealth also provides a degree of economic stability against the uncertainties of job loss, major illness or death.
The New York Times
January 28, 2016
Here’s some good — and generally overlooked — news about the U.S. economy: Among major ethnic and racial groups, African Americans scored the biggest job advances in 2015. This conclusion comes from the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), a left-leaning think tank and advocacy group. It reports that black Americans made “notable employment gains . . . even as employment growth for whites and Hispanics slowed.” The evidence? EPI cites a statistic called the “employment-to-population ratio,” which is the share of adults who have a job.
The Washington Post
January 28, 2016
Still, as more workers found employment, paychecks were not similarly rebounding, said Elise Gould, senior economist for the Economic Policy Institute. An analysis of wage growth by the left-leaning Washington, D.C.-based think tank shows the median wage the last seven years has hovered around 2 percent year-over-year. EPI believes workers will begin to reap the benefit of an improving economy with wage growth at around 3.5 percent to 4 percent — the rate before the recession hit, Ms. Gould said. “Employers still hold the cards in setting worker contracts, in terms of wages and hours,” Ms. Gould said. Ms. Gould pointed to a slew of other factors tracked by the EPI that show the labor market has not recovered from the recession: Workforce participation is the lowest since the 1970s, meaning more workers are not actively looking for work; the “quit rate” is far from recovered, meaning fewer workers are comfortable leaving their current job for other positions; and workers’ share of corporate income remains far below pre-recession levels.
Pittsburgh Post Gazette
January 28, 2016
In a 2013 report published by the Economic Policy Institute, analysts found a strong correlation between the educational levels of a state’s workforce and the median wages in that state, and suggested investing in education instead of lowering taxes or cutting costs to businesses to boost economic prosperity.
New Orleans Times-Picayune
January 28, 2016
Similarly, a study by the Economic Policy Institute in Washington shows that the compensation of ordinary workers has lagged significantly behind the rise in productivity since the mid-1970s.
Financial Times
January 28, 2016
Data from the Economic Policy Institute reveal that the bottom 80 percent of households hold less than 10 percent of the value of the stock market; the top 10 percent holds 80 percent of the value; the top 1 percent, 35 percent of the value.
The Washington Post
January 27, 2016
As Richard Rothstein wrote last year for the Economic Policy Institute, “African Americans were prevented from moving to white neighborhoods by explicit policy of the Federal Housing Administration (FHA), which barred suburban subdivision developers from qualifying for federally subsidized construction loans unless the developers committed to exclude African Americans from the community.
CNN Money
January 27, 2016
The U.S. has lost about a third of manufacturing jobs since 2000, said Rob Scott, senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute in Washington. By not policing currency manipulation and product dumping, politicians and regulators bear some responsibility, he said.“We’ve been destroying middle-class jobs and generating grinding, get-by jobs,” Scott said. “That absolutely explains the angst out there.”
Dallas Morning News
January 27, 2016
For most senior drivers, the biggest advantage is the extra income. Many of those who continue working after 65 do so because they would be too poor otherwise, according to a new report from the labor-backed Economic Policy Institute that found the current retirement system inadequate
The New York Times
January 22, 2016
When it comes to wages, researchers on both sides of the debate have published studies with dueling conclusions. The left-leaning Economic Policy Institute has found workers in right-to-work states earn three percent less than their counterparts in other states after controlling for various demographic, socioeconomic and macroeconomic factors.
International Business Times
January 22, 2016
The Economic Policy Institute finds their data is better equipped to give the real picture of economic welfare in the country, rather than relying on poverty line thresholds. Comparisons to the poverty level show extreme cases of economic deprivation, but the calculator shows what a family of various sizes really needs to earn a living.
Houston Chronicle
January 21, 2016
Next, youth unemployment. As a May 2015 report from the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) on “The Class of 2015” helpfully notes, “The unemployment rate of young workers is typically slightly more than twice as high as the overall rate.” EPI defined young workers as “recent high school (age 17–20) and college graduates (age 21–24) who are not enrolled in further schooling.” I plugged this definition of “young workers” into the databases at the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ (BLS) website and zeroed in on specifically African Americans, ages 16 to 24. BLS youth data starts at age 16. The not-seasonally-adjusted data, while not ideal, do not support Trump’s claim.
The Washington Post
January 20, 2016
These numbers are from the International Monetary Fund. But Robert Scott, a trade expert with the Economic Policy Institute, told The Week that they’ve been looking at unpublished data from the World Trade Organization that suggests China’s total goods trade surplus with the rest of the world was around $1 trillion in 2014, and could be even higher for 2015. With a gross domestic product (GDP) of $10.35 trillion in 2014, that would put China’s goods trade surplus just below a whopping 10 percent of its economy.
The Week
January 20, 2016
As Republicans claim that the legislation would boost the state’s struggling economy, the research they are using to back up that assertion is coming under scrutiny. The labor-allied Economic Policy Institute is contesting the integrity of a report from researchers associated with the West Virginia University School of Business, who claimed that there is a causal relationship between right-to-work laws and a state’s employment growth rates. EPI says the report relies on flawed data and analysis and doesn’t follow best practices of similar studies in the past.
The American Prospect
January 20, 2016
Wealth inequality is far greater. According to an analysis of Federal Reserve data by the Economic Policy Institute, the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans control 35.6 percent of the total wealth of the country—more than a third.
How Stuff Works
January 20, 2016
The Huffington Post
January 19, 2016
The wages of middle-wage workers were either flat or in decline from the 1980s through the 2000s (except for a bump in the late ’90s), and wages for low-wage workers fell 5 percent from 1979 to 2013, according to an analysis from the liberal-leaning Economic Policy Institute.
The Christian Science Monitor
January 19, 2016
Wage hikes that became law prior to the present-day Fight for $15 era were more incremental and a matter of legislative “horse trading,” says David Cooper, an economic analyst at the Economic Policy Institute. But because the value of the federal minimum wage has eroded so much—it’s been $7.25 since 2009— recent efforts to increase minimum wages at the local, state, and federal levels have focused more on what a worker needs to earn to live comfortably in a certain geographic area. That—along with the attention given to the United States’ vast income inequality—has made the cost of living a more prominent talking point in legislative negotiations and among worker advocates, Cooper says.
Fortune
January 19, 2016