The analysis, released by the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute, is an annual update of the think tank’s Family Budget Calculator that reflects new 2014 data. The Family Budget Calculator is a formula designed to determine the income “required for families to attain a secure yet modest standard of living” in 618 different communities across the country that the U.S. Census Bureau defines as metropolitan areas.
The Huffington Post
August 28, 2015
According to a new paper by the left-leaning think tank the Economic Policy Institute, most families subsiding on minimum-wage jobs would struggle to achieve a modest but secure quality of life, no matter where in the United States they reside.
Fortune
August 28, 2015
Josh Bivens, the progressive Economic Policy Institute’s research and policy director, applauded the Fed’s move away from an interest rate hike, but said the reason for the Fed’s decision confirmed the need for more grassroots activism. “A week ago the case against raising rates for the labor market was clear as day, but all of a sudden when wealthy people lost money in the stock market the tide turned against a rate increase,” Bivens said at Thursday’s press conference. “I’m happy rates are less likely to go up because of that, but it is a terrible reason.”
The Huffington Post
August 28, 2015
But an even more nuanced measurement of economic well-being is the Economic Policy Institute’s Family Budget Calculator, which was updated yesterday to include 2014 numbers. The EPI calculator estimates how much it costs to “attain a secure yet modest living standard,” and provides data on ten different family sizes (one or two parents, with zero to five children) across 618 distinct geographic areas and cities.
The American Prospect
August 28, 2015
But among black communities nationwide, DeKalb has actually fared relatively well. The area was hit hard by the downturn, but it remains the second-most affluent black-majority county in the country. By contrast, in Washington, D.C., a majority-minority city, black unemployment is a staggering 15.8 percent, more than five times the rate for whites, according to the Economic Policy Institute.
The American Prospect
August 28, 2015
A recent study by the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal advocacy group, found that the children of parents who worked unpredictable schedules could have inferior cognitive abilities, in areas like verbal communication, and struggle with anxiety and depression. “Parents’ variable schedules require irregular family mealtimes and child bedtimes that interfere with children’s healthy development,” the study said.
The New York Times
August 27, 2015
Think your city is expensive? Maybe you can use a little perspective. The Economic Policy Institute has updated its family budget calculator, which estimates what it would cost for someone to live what they describe as a “modest but comfortable” life in 618 metro and rural areas across the United States.
The Washington Post
August 27, 2015
Many workers in the Dallas area do not make enough money to support themselves or their families in a “secure yet modest standard of living,” according to the liberal Economic Policy Institute. It costs $27,617 for a single person with no children to meet his or her basic needs in the Dallas area, based on an updated Family Budget Calculator released today by EPI. That’s much higher than what a minimum-wage worker earns a year.
Dallas Morning News
August 27, 2015
Many workers in the Dallas area do not make enough money to support themselves or their families in a “secure yet modest standard of living,” according to the liberal Economic Policy Institute. It costs $27,617 for a single person with no children to meet his or her basic needs in the Dallas area, based on an updated Family Budget Calculator released today by EPI. That’s much higher than what a minimum-wage worker earns a year.
Business Insider
August 27, 2015
The comparison of the three cities was part of a study of 618 U.S. communities by the Economic Policy Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based research center. For the family of four, health care was the most affordable in Pittsburgh, at $621 a month, compared to $895 in Sacramento and $896 in Austin. The full report is online at www.epi.org.
Pittsburgh Post Gazette
August 27, 2015
Such concerns are not academic. According to the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal think tank, the U.S. lost 3.2 million jobs between 2001 and 2013 after China was given entry in the World Trade Organization. Three-quarters of those positions were higher paying manufacturing jobs.
CBS Moneywatch
August 27, 2015
Where do you think it costs more to live: D.C. or New York City? The Economic Policy Institute released a new report showing that in an economic comparison between the two cities, it’s cheaper to get by in the Big Apple. EPI created a calculator and entered in actual monthly costs for a family of four on things like housing, which in D.C. costs $1,469 a month and $1,440 a month in New York City, according to the report. When child care, transportation and health care are factored in, it ends up costing $106,493 a year to live in D.C. and $98,722 in New York City.
Fox 5 DC
August 27, 2015
The past week has been a dramatic one on Wall Street, but as a general rule, policy makers — particularly those at the Federal Reserve — should not overreact to short-term movement in the stock market. The market is a not a good gauge of overall economic health, and even large swings do not by themselves provide much ground for assessing economic health. Stock market volatility significantly affects the wealth of only a select group of the U.S. population — around 90 percent of stock wealth is owned by only 10 percent of Americans (this drops to a bit over 80 percent if you include indirectly owned stock wealth), and more than half of Americans own no stocks at all. In short, the stock market simply does not have a significant effect on the spending power of the vast majority of American households, and therefore provides little insight into the overall health of the economy.
The New York Times
August 27, 2015
A family of four can meet its basic needs for $49,114 a year in Morristown, Tenn.—about half the income needed to raise a family in New York or Washington. There are 140 communities and regions where a family can meet basic needs such as rent, health care and taxes for less than $60,000 a year, according to the Economic Policy Institute’s Family Budget Calculator released Wednesday. The data also shows how families in any part of the country can struggle to make ends meet, said Elise Gould, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank. Even in Morristown, two adults working full-time at the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour would fail to provide for their family without assistance.
Wall Street Journal
August 26, 2015
The average ratio, meanwhile, was 204 times median employee pay. That’s significantly less than past average ratios calculated by the AFL-CIO or the Economic Policy Institute, where the ratios topped 300 times median worker pay and were calculated using worker pay data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The Washington Post
August 26, 2015
The amount my family could expect to spend with another child would increase by about 21% to about $94,500, according to the Family Budget Calculator from the Economic Policy Institute. Of course these results are generalized and certain line items may not apply to you — you’ll spend less on child care, of course, if a family member watches your kids.
Time Magazine
August 26, 2015
A June report from the Economic Policy Institute said the chief executives of the nation’s largest companies make three times as much as they did 20 years ago, or 300 times more than typical working stiffs. Between 1978 and 2014, inflation-adjusted CEO compensation increased 997%, while a typical worker’s compensation increased 10.9%.
“This is not just something that might seem aesthetically displeasing to some,” said Larry Mishel, president of the Economic Policy Institute. “It’s a matter of this group grabbing a larger share of our national pie, and by doing so, there’s less pie available to other people.” You hear the argument that CEOs are merely reaping the benefits of their brilliant leadership, but Mishel says compensation has been nearly double the growth of the stock market in recent decades. And don’t forget this: “People who make a lot of money get to keep most of it these days compared to Walt Disney. If you had doubled his salary, 70% or more of it would have gone to the treasury,” Mishel said, because that’s how high the income tax rate was before President Reagan came to the rescue of the wealthiest Americans.
Los Angeles Times
August 26, 2015
Just getting by. Working class. Living paycheck-to-paycheck. Such often-used terms rarely have dollar amounts attached to them. So one person’s living paycheck-to-paycheck could be another’s middle class. In the Cleveland-Elyria-Mentor metro area a two-parent, two-child family needs to bring in $60,900 a year “to secure a decent, yet modest standard of living,” according to the Economic Policy Institute’s online family budget calculator released Wednesday.
Cleveland Plain Dealer
August 26, 2015
Robert Scott, the director of trade and manufacturing policy research at the Economic Policy Institute—a labor-affiliated think tank—said Walker could have gone much further in pushing back against China. Scott said Walker could have filed an unfair trade practices complaint with the World Trade Organization or pressured the Treasury to do more about China’s currency manipulation. “I’ve heard no efforts from the governor or anyone else on that front, until last week,” Scott said.
A spokesperson for the Wisconsin governor’s office didn’t respond to a request for comment on if Walker had (or could have) pursued any of those remedies. Scott added that canceling Xi’s state visit “could cause China to overreact.” “The Chinese are very sensitive to saving face,” he said, “and I think if you were just to insult the Chinese president, just for the sake of insulting him, I don’t think it would be useful in improving the relationship.” “I think it could cause China to dig in his heels,” he added.
The Daily Beast
August 26, 2015
Somehow, the opposite happened. According to the Economic Policy Institute, between 2001 and 2013, the trade deficit with China “eliminated or displaced 3.2 million U.S. jobs, 2.4 million of which were in manufacturing. These lost manufacturing jobs account for about two-thirds of all U.S. manufacturing jobs lost or displaced . . .”
New York Daily News
August 26, 2015
“Does the recent stock market decline make it more likely the Fed holds off? Probably not. The Fed really shouldn’t be reacting to bad financial market days in setting interest rates. But, the Fed should hold off regardless. A September rate hike was a bad idea a week ago, and remains a bad idea today.” — Josh Bivens, Economic Policy Institute
Wall Street Journal
August 25, 2015
There is ample evidence that, beyond the stock market hit, the U.S. economy is on solid ground. The unemployment rate has fallen to 5.3 percent, inflation remains low, and economic growth has rebounded from a disappointing first quarter to indicate the recovery is still underway. “The underlying health of the U.S. economy hasn’t really changed over the past week,” wrote Josh Bivens, research and policy director for the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute. “The stock market is a terrible gauge of overall economy-wide health.”
The Hill
August 25, 2015
On a larger level, putting people’s Social Security contributions into private accounts makes them far more exposed to the irrationality of the market. “What’s beautiful about Social Security is that in the long the return workers get on contributions is linked to productivity growth and wage growth,” said Monique Morrissey, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute. “Whereas markets are notoriously volatile and often behave in ways that are not based on the fundamental strength and weakness of the economy.”
Think Progress
August 25, 2015
Fewer receive pension benefits and if they do, it’s generally a more risky 401(k) rather than a traditional defined benefit plan. American workers receive fewer days of vacation than their foreign counterparts, a quarter receive no paid vacation at all, and approximately 40 percent don’t even use all of their time off. “Benefits grew strongly from 1948-’73, not so much since then, and not much in recent years at all,” says Larry Mishel, president of the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank.
The Boston Globe
August 24, 2015
Children of shift workers have poorer academic results, worse behaviour and take more risks as teenagers, according to international research by the University of NSW and the US Economic Policy Institute. The impact is most pronounced in the children of low income shift workers with little control over their hours. Leila Morsy, of the school of education at UNSW, said higher status shift workers, such as health care workers, can mitigate the effect of their irregular hours on their children. Dr Morsy and Richard Rothstein of the Washington-based Economic Policy Institute studied the children of parents with unpredictable schedules and found significant impacts spanning the toddler years through to adolescence.
Sydney Morning Herald
August 21, 2015
Economists at the liberal Economic Policy Institute wrote in a research paper this week that growing trade deficits and declining factory output are directly responsible for 5 million lost American manufacturing jobs over the past 15 years. “A rising trade deficit indicates that U.S. manufacturers are losing business to manufacturing industries in other countries like China and Japan,” authors Will Kimball and Susan Balding wrote, “who manipulate their currency to make their goods cheaper and therefore more appealing to consumers in the United States and elsewhere. This leads to reduced demand for goods produced by U.S. manufacturers, both at home and abroad.”
The Washington Post
August 21, 2015
And whether or not you graduate with debt, young people who are under 25 and just entering the job market are facing a daunting unemployment rate of 14.5 percent, based on figures from a 2014 report by the Economic Policy Institute.
New York Observer
August 21, 2015
Daniel Costa, director of immigration law and policy research at the Economic Policy Institute, described much of Trump’s proposal as “horrible stuff.” But he said his suggestion to increase the minimum wage for foreign workers as something that could and should be done. “It pains me to say, but that’s like the one thing that is a legitimate proposal in there that is workable and people on both sides have hope for,” Costa said.
McClatchy
August 21, 2015
Daniel Costa, of the labor-backed Economic Policy Institute, says data doesn’t support much of Trump’s rhetoric about unskilled immigrants driving down wages. But there is little doubt that corporations have abused the H-1B visa program, which gives corporations enormous economic bargaining power over workers whose immigration status they effectively control. The H-1B is good for an initial, three-year term and can be renewed for an additional three years. But there is no direct path from the visa to permanent residence, or “green card,” status. “Immigrants aren’t pushing down wages, but corporations are using temporary ‘nonimmigrant’ guestworker programs to push down wages,” Costa told IBTimes.
International Business Times
August 21, 2015
That’s because the problem is almost unfathomably large. In a report titled “The Unfinished March,” the Economic Policy Institute found that school segregation, black unemployment, lack of access to fair housing and living wages, and abysmal African American household wealth remain at essentially the same levels of disparity today as they did in 1963, when the March on Washington occurred.
The Washington Post
August 21, 2015