But one can’t help but wonder, if the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s pilot program has a hard time getting started in the city doing that much to end segregation, how will it work nationally? “Baltimore is actually trying to do something about segregation, which is more than a lot of places,” Richard Rothstein, a researcher at the Economic Policy Institute who has written extensively about segregation told VICE. “But there’s still resistance. There’s always resistance.”
Vice News
January 19, 2016
Black unemployment in South Carolina is 11.8 percent, compared to 4.6 percent among whites, according to the Economic Policy Institute. And while 2012 Census figures show the per capita income for whites in Charleston was $37,193, it was $15,168 for blacks.
MSNBC
January 19, 2016
It means China sold $342.6 billion more worth of goods and services to America than America sold to China. That, in turn, means demand generated by Americans isn’t producing jobs in America, but in China instead: Back in 2013, the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) estimated that we’ve lost 2.8 million jobs to China since 2001, mainly in manufacturing. This imbalance falls especially hard on the working class, since the jobs that are lost are overwhelmingly held by lower-income Americans. Where Trump goes awry is in recommending tariffs as a solution. As Robert Scott, EPI’s expert on the economics of international trade, explained to me, the basic problem is currency manipulation.
The Week
January 19, 2016
But for most of the economics profession, widening inequality of earnings has been primarily a reflection of widening differentials in worker skills in the face of changes in technology that require more advanced workers. Therefore, the logical cure is better education and training. Lawrence Mishel and colleagues at the Economic Policy Institute have been challenging this account for years. But only lately has the mainstream conceded that the EPI view is substantially right.
American Prospect
January 15, 2016
Same goes for inequality: Connecticut is the most unequal state as measured by the Economic Policy Institute’s top-to-bottom ratio, which divides the average income of the top 1 percent of taxpayers by the average income of the other 99 percent, but New York is almost tied with it, and Massachusetts comes in fourth place.
Bloomberg
January 15, 2016
Compensation of chief executive officers at top U.S. firms grew by nearly 1,000 percent since 1978, while a typical worker’s pay increased by just 11 percent during the same period, according to the Economic Policy Institute, a pro-worker research and advocacy group based in Washington.
Bloomberg
January 15, 2016
Donald Trump claimed the U.S. has “lost anywhere between 4 and 7 million jobs because of China.” Not exactly, according to the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute. A 2014 EPI report calculated that growth in the U.S. goods trade deficit with China eliminated or displaced 3.2 million U.S. jobs between 2001, when China entered the World Trade Organization, and 2013.
Politico
January 15, 2016
But numerous studies show undocumented immigrants aren’t stealing jobs – they are helping to expand the economy. “In the ongoing debate on immigration, there is broad agreement among academic economists that it has a small but positive impact on the wages of native-born workers overall: although new immigrant workers add to the labor supply, they also consume goods and services, which creates more jobs,” Heidi Shierholz, chief economist to the U.S. Department of Labor and formerly of the liberal Economic Policy Institute, wrote in a study funded in part by U.S. labor unions.
International Business Times
January 15, 2016
“Workers in the top 1 percent,” Bank found, “tend to be 40 to 60 years old, be men, have tertiary education, work in finance or manufacturing and be senior managers.” At worst, that’s a group ripe for rent-seeking. At best, it doesn’t sound much like the innovators Graham is so worried about discouraging. The liberal Economic Policy Institute has done similar work on America’s top 1 percent, and found that at least a quarter of its increased income share since 1979 can be attributed to finance.
The Washington Post
January 14, 2016
Lawrence Mishel and Veronique de Rugy talked about the economic policies and goals put forth by President Obama in his State of the Union address.
C-SPAN
January 14, 2016
Unemployed workers over the age of 50 “really have a hard time finding work,” said Ross Eisenbrey, vice president of the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute. Proponents of wage insurance programs see them as a way to ease people back into the labor force while softening the blow that comes from accepting a job with lower wages.
Al Jazeera America
January 14, 2016
The gains of economic recovery have certainly been beneficial to those of great wealth – including the culprits behind the crash – but have meant little to the average American. Of course, that has everything to do with the structure of the US economy since Ronald Reagan swept to power. Consider this: according to the Economic Policy Institute – a thinktank close to the embattled US labour movement – between 1979 and 2007, the top 1% seized 53.9% of the entire increase in US income.
The Guardian
January 14, 2016
If you look over the last 10 years, even after recent losses, the S&P 500 is up more than 50%. During that same time, an employee who managed to remain employed through the recession and earned nine 2.5% raises is earning just 25% more now. An analysis by the Economic Policy Institute shows that “workers’ share of corporate income hasn’t recovered” since the recession.
Fortune
January 14, 2016
Others, still, argue that artificially dirt cheap currencies in Asia – including in China, whether it’s a TPP party or not – could wipe out all of the economic gains from a ratified trade deal. Notes Rob Scott, from the Economic Policy Institute: China, as the world’s largest currency manipulator, could affect trade in the TPP in at least two ways. First, as a result of relatively weak rules of origin, the U.S. and other countries would be vulnerable to increased imports from China through the TPP. Second, currency manipulation by China could influence other TPP members to adjust or manipulate the value of their currencies, in order to remain competitive with China, and thereby nullify some or all of the benefits of the TPP to the United States.
Alliance for American Manufacturing
January 14, 2016
Larry Mishel, president of the Economic Policy Institute, took issue with the president’s assessment of the root causes in wage stagnation. Instead of blaming technological improvements, Mishel told CNBC, Obama would have done well to point to “policy choices over many decades that worked to lessen the ability of the typical workers to get a good deal from their employer: lowered minimum wage, rules that make it harder to collectively bargain, bad trade deals, excessive unemployment and failure to enforce wage standards.”
CNBC
January 13, 2016
The American economy still has major weaknesses. As organizations like the Economic Policy Institute have pointed out repeatedly, wages aren’t rising that quickly.
The Huffington Post
January 13, 2016
David Cooper, senior economy analyst at the Economic Policy Institute, which researches the impact of economic trends and policies on working people, gave the TradeWinds move luke-warm approval. “Even though $1.50 an hour doesn’t seem like much, if someone is working full time year-round, that’s more than $3,000,” he said. “If you’re annual income at $8.50 was $17-18,000, that $3,000 raise can be significant.” But he noted that EPI calculates that a single adult with no children would require an annual income of just over $28,000 to achieve a “modest yet adequate” standard of living in the Tampa Bay area. At just over $20,000, “they’re just not going to get there,” Cooper said.
Tampa Tribune
January 13, 2016
Interview with Elise Gould.
Minnesota Public Radio
January 13, 2016
The Economic Policy Institute released a report last week detailing just how much impact a $15 minimum wage in New York—a policy that Governor Cuomo has proposed—would have. The findings? More than 2.4 million workers (more than 75 percent of them over the age of 25) would directly benefit from a $15 minimum.
American Prospect
January 12, 2016
Stronger unions have not only helped ensure that essential public services are more efficient and effective; they have also led to higher wages and better benefits for workers. According to a report by the Economic Policy Institute, public employees in states with fair-share fees enjoy nearly the same compensation as their private-sector counterparts, while those in states that have banned such fees get 9 percent less.
The New York Times
January 11, 2016
Nearly half of public employees in states with such provisions were represented by unions, compared with 17% in states that prohibit the fees, according to an October report from the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute. Of the latter group, between 2000 and 2014 about 20% were workers who declined to pay dues, the institute said.
Wall Street Journal
January 11, 2016
The unions have seen the consequences quite recently when Republican-dominated state governments eliminated fair share fees. In 2012 union membership in Michigan declined by 7 percent, and “free-riding” more than doubled, after the state enacted a public-sector right-to-work law and prohibited school districts from collecting union dues by payroll deduction, according to the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank.
NPR
January 11, 2016
Larry Mishel, president of the Economic Policy Institute in Washington, D.C., pointed out that the decline in unions has been linked to wage stagnation, growing inequality, and the overall slippage of the American middle class.
The New Republic
January 11, 2016
From 2004 to 2014, the average CEO of a large American firm got a 15 percent raise, according to data compiled by the Economic Policy Institute. The stingiest raise for a Power Five commissioner during that time: 258 percent, for the ACC’s Swofford.
The Washington Post
January 11, 2016
Elise Gould, senior economist at the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute, said the Fed should hold off from further hikes to short term interest rates given the slow growth in wages.
Politico
January 11, 2016
The creation of more than 292,000 jobs in December was “an indication of a relatively strong labor market in 2015, especially compared with the Great Recession and the beginning of the recovery”, said Elise Gould, senior economist at the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute. She added that the US economy still had a “way to go before we reach full employment”.
The Guardian
January 11, 2016
“While the Fed has already nudged up short term interest rates, these weak wage data are an indication that they should hold off on further hikes. We need to see strong and sustained wage growth, above 3.5 percent, before it’s safe to say we are at full employment and the Fed could act to slow the economy.” –Elise Gould, Economic Policy Institute
Wall Street Journal
January 11, 2016
I spoke to economist Valerie Wilson, director of the Economic Policy Institute’s Program on Race, Ethnicity, and the Economy, about the decline in black unemployment. She cautioned that it’s hard to tell how much is real or sustainable employment growth in one month. As we always say here, never put too much stock into one month’s numbers. But, Wilson noted that we’ve seen bigger decreases in black unemployment in recent years thanks to “the economy getting better as a whole.” When the unemployment rate decreases 1 percentage point nationally, it usually translates to about a 2 percentage point drop in black unemployment, she explained. “You get bigger changes in African American unemployment rate when the labor market gets tighter, because they are the ones left who are still looking for work.” Yet, the disparity between unemployment rates remain: The black unemployment rate is still almost double the white unemployment rate of 4.5 percent.
PBS News Hour
January 11, 2016
Despite the progress, there was a lot of room for improvement. Blacks still have higher unemployment than every other demographic. White unemployment is 4.5%, Hispanic unemployment is 6.3% and Asian unemployment is 4%. While it’s “an important improvement,” the black unemployment rate “would be unacceptable if that were the national rate,” says Valerie Wilson, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute, a think tank.
CNN Money
January 11, 2016
Now, the bad news is how far below fully maxing out the economy’s employment capacity we still are, and how long it may still take to get there. Back at the start of 2015, the Economic Policy Institute estimated we’d need to average 246,000 jobs a month in order to return to the balance of forces we enjoyed at the peak just before the 2008 crash. And even then we wouldn’t get there until the summer of 2017.
The Week
January 11, 2016