For one, women-owned businesses make only about 25 cents for every dollar their male counterparts earn. That’s a much larger gap than the one that exists in the overall labor market, where the median earnings of women were about 83 percent of men’s, according to data from the Economic Policy Institute.
The Atlantic
April 17, 2015
The leaked drafts describe a tribunals system called Investor-state Dispute Settlement (ISDS) that would allow corporate interests to sue countries over an alarming range of actions intended to defend the public interest. ISDS represents a warped version of a basically reasonable idea, according to the Economic Policy Institute’s Josh Bivens. Traditional trade tribunals are meant to protect foreign businesspeople from having their investments in a country snapped up by soldiers and nationalized. “If a US corporation opens a big production facility somewhere else you don’t want foreign governments to just come in and take it from them,” Bivens said.
But the ISDS system used in modern trade deals goes far beyond protecting investors from forceful expropriation of their factories. It allows corporations to punish countries for things like environmental regulations and work safety laws. “Corporations have been known to bring suit based on, ‘You have passed a regulation that I did not expect when I opened this factory, so my return is lower than I expected,’” Bivens said.
Think Progress
April 17, 2015
This week, Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT) will reportedly introduce “fast track” (trade promotion authority) legislation in the Senate, to help President Obama complete the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a trade and investment deal with 11 other countries in Asia and the Americas. “Fast Track” authority would allow the president to submit trade agreements to Congress without giving members of Congress the opportunity to amend the deal. Experience has shown that these trade and investment deals typically result in job losses and downward pressure on the wages of most American workers. The last thing America needs is renewal of fast track and more trade and investment deals rushed through Congress.
Moyers & Company
April 17, 2015
Unbalanced trade leads to more job loss. As the Economic Policy Institute recently surmised, increased trade deficits push jobs out of better-paying industries. And at a time when income inequality is running rampant in the U.S., workers don’t need even more “free” trade agreements that will further strip this nation’s economy of middle-income jobs. Enough is enough!
The Huffington Post
April 17, 2015
Simply raising the hourly minimum in line with wage and price inflation would put it at about $11 today; adjusting it for productivity growth would put it at about $18.
The New York Times
April 17, 2015
Big employers, cutting back on full-coverage health care as Obamacare’s ‘Cadillac Tax’ begins to bite.
NPR
April 16, 2015
According to a recent study from the Economic Policy Institute, this is life for about 17 percent of the labor force. So called “just-in-time scheduling” is far more common for those who work for hourly wages or are part-time employees, or both. Part-time workers—more than six million Americans—are more than twice as likely to have unpredictable hours than full-time employees.
The Atlantic
April 16, 2015
That language struck a chord with members of the alliance. As part of a new five-year plan, the organization is urging donors to contribute to an expanded suite of advocacy groups and think tanks devoted to economic inequality including Americans for Financial Reform, the Economic Policy Institute and the National Employment Law Project.
The Washington Post
April 16, 2015
The Clinton campaign said she was relying on a study by the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank, which found that at the top 350 U.S. firms, in terms of sales, average chief executive compensation in 2013 was $15.2 million. It concluded that this was 295.9 times higher than the average compensation of workers at those companies, which was a decline from a peak of 383.4-to-1 in 2000 but far higher than a 20-to-1 ratio in 1965.
So how does the organization come up with this ratio?
EPI has published a fairly detailed description of its methodology. For chief executives, it originally used an annual survey published by the Wall Street Journal, and then later switched to buying the information –at a cost of $10,000 a year, according EPI president Lawrence Mishel—from Compustat, a division of Standard & Poor’s. The database includes data on the compensation of the companies in the S&P 1500 Index dating back to 1992, but Mishel says they focus on the top 350 in order to remain consistent with the WSJ data going back to the 1960s.
The Washington Post
April 16, 2015
Traditionally, the Clinton wing of the Democratic Party has emphasized promoting “opportunity” over reducing inequality. As Lawrence Mishel, the president of the liberal Economic Policy Institute, pointed out in a blog post last week, that approach has sometimes enabled centrist Democrats to “avoid confronting the top 1 percent’s capture of the lion’s share of income growth. After all, addressing runaway executive pay and a runaway financial sector—the main causes of the top 1 percent’s income gains—smacks of redistribution; and besides, those folks are their donor base.” With Hillary and her staff about to hit up hedge-fund managers, investment bankers, tech moguls, and other rich folks for hefty campaign contributions, the suspicion lingers that, when it comes down to it, her campaign will punt, rather than directly confront, the entrenched problems of income and wealth inequality.
The New Yorker
April 14, 2015
For example, recent research by the Economic Policy Institute shows that men still outearn women at every rung of the income ladder. The higher up the ladder, the bigger the gap. In 2014, women in the 95th percentile of female earners made 79 percent of wages for men at the 95th percentile, while women in the lowest 10th percentile made 91 cents for each $1 earned by their male counterparts.
The New York Times
April 14, 2015
Last week, the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute released a report on irregular scheduling. It found that 17 percent of the U.S. workforce has “unstable work shift schedules” of some kind, whether due to on-call work schedules or rotating shifts. The report suggests the actual percentage may be higher.
“Just to get even one hour paid for if someone is sent home before their shift time ends or if they show and there’s no work at all, which I think is the most common complain, that would get employers to reconsider those kind of practices,” said Lonnie Golden, a professor of economics and labor-employment relations at Penn State University and the author of the EPI report.
The New Republic
April 14, 2015
In 1965, CEOs earned about 20 times what a typical worker brought home, according to research by the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal think tank. In 2013, CEO compensation was nearly 300 times the pay of the average worker, the EPI study said.
Reuters
April 14, 2015
Clinton can call on a wide range of experts, and a number of detailed proposals that Democratic think tanks, such as the centrist Center for American Progress and the liberal Economic Policy Institute have laid out in recent reports. The ideas range from raising the minimum wage and encouraging the growth of trade unions, to changing the tax code and investing in infrastructure.
The New Yorker
April 13, 2015
It’s well known that the employment outlook for young workers is dismal: a report released in May, 2014, by the Economic Policy Institute, for example, pointed out that the unemployment rate for those under the age of twenty-five in 2013 was two-thirds as high as the general rate, and the underemployment rate (which measures skilled workers performing in low-paying or low-skill jobs, and part-time workers who would rather be full-time) nearly four-fifths as high as the rate for all workers.
The New Yorker
April 13, 2015
Academic research shows that the worker-to-C.E.O. gulf has been widening. According to a 2014 study by Alyssa Davis and Lawrence Mishel at the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning advocacy group in Washington with a reputation for rigorous studies, chief executive pay as a multiple of the typical worker’s pay rocketed from an average of 20 times in 1965 to 295.9 in 2013.
The New York Times
April 13, 2015
Nationwide, the crisis has reduced the size of the financial sector but only slightly. After falling to 6.2% of GDP during the crisis, it is now back to 7.2%. “They crawled about a third of the way back since the crisis,” said Josh Bivens, director of research and policy at the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute. Manufacturing continues to fall and is now at 12.1%.
Los Angeles Times
April 13, 2015
See excerpt: This week, Senator Hatch will reportedly introduce “fast track” (trade promotion authority) legislation in the Senate, to help President Obama complete the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a trade and investment deal with eleven other countries in Asia and the Americas. “Fast Track” authority would allow the President to submit trade agreements to Congress without giving members of Congress the opportunity to amend the deal. Experience has shown that these trade and investment deals typically result in job losses and downward pressure on the wages of most American workers. The last thing America needs is renewal of fast track and more trade and investment deals rushed through Congress.
The administration has claimed that the TPP will create jobs, but it will not. There are other policies that have attracted bipartisan support, including ending currency manipulation and rebuilding infrastructure that could each create millions of U.S. jobs. President Obama has limited political capital to expend with the Republican-controlled Congress and he must choose his policies wisely.
The Huffington Post
April 13, 2015
At least 17 percent of the U.S. workforce is coping with an unstable schedule, ranging from irregular or on-call hours to rotating shifts, that adds stress and leads to unpredictable earnings, according to a study published by the left-leaning think tank Economic Policy Institute.
CBS News
April 13, 2015
The only brief time since 1979 that we’ve had strong wage growth at all income levels was in the late 1990s under Bill Clinton (in fact, according to the Economic Policy Institute, wage growth then was strongest for the bottom 40 percent).
Daily Beast
April 13, 2015
In this mix, where does Hillary Clinton see labor reforms like strengthening workers’ ability to bargain collectively and paid family sick leave? How would she work with Congress to pass such measures? (Josh Bivens, Economic Policy Institute).
The Nation
April 13, 2015
Changes were then made to immigration law to reduce admissions, decreasing the foreign-born population until it fell to about 9.6 million by 1970. Meanwhile, during this low-immigration period, real median compensation for U.S. workers surged, increasing more than 90 percent from 1948 to 1973, according to the Economic Policy Institute.
American Prospect
April 10, 2015
Changes were then made to immigration law to reduce admissions, decreasing the foreign-born population until it fell to about 9.6 million by 1970. Meanwhile, during this low-immigration period, real median compensation for U.S. workers surged, increasing more than 90 percent from 1948 to 1973, according to the Economic Policy Institute.
The Washington Post
April 10, 2015
If you want a perspective on the losses from the trade status quo and so-called free trade agreements, you’ll find it at the liberal-leaning Economic Policy Institute, including this essay on potential job losses and lower wages if TPP is approved.
Seattle Times
April 10, 2015
The liberal Economic Policy Institute releases a new report this morning on workplace scheduling that confirms two commonly held assumptions: that poor workers are more likely to have erratic work schedules and that such scheduling has a negative effect on family life. “By industry, irregular scheduling is most prevalent in agriculture, personal services, business/ repair services, entertainment/recreation, finance/ insurance/real estate, retail trade, and transportation communications … The prevalence is reduced for union members, married workers, government employees, whites, men, and workers with a higher level of education.”
Politico
April 10, 2015
Thornswood’s experience is more widespread than you might think. At least 17 percent of all workers have irregular schedules that don’t look like the typical 9-5, Monday through Friday, according to a new study from the Economic Policy Institute. About 10 percent is given irregular and on-call shifts, while another 7 percent have split (two different shifts in one day) or rotating ones.
Think Progress
April 10, 2015
But Wyden opponents say his stance on trade is particularly problematic in Oregon, where more than 60,000 jobs have been lost in the past decade due to liberalized trade deals, according to a study by the Economic Policy Institute.
Daily Beast
April 9, 2015
A Yale Law School student said in a panel discussion last month that Rolling Stone contributor Sabrina Rubin Erdely had contacted her as she narrowed her focus for what would be “A Rape on Campus,” the now-retracted expose on sexual assault at the University of Virginia. “She called me a couple months before and asked if I knew anyone at Yale,” said the student, Alexandra Brodsky, at a March 12 event presented by the American Constitution Society, the American Prospect and the Economic Policy Institute.
The Washington Post
April 9, 2015
That complaint about NAFTA, whatever its merits, is informing much of the liberal opposition to the TPP. It shouldn’t: Supporters and opponents of the TPP largely agree that its direct effect on the U.S. economy will be minor. “There are going to be very few jobs that will be affected,” said Robert Scott, the director of trade and manufacturing research at the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute, who opposes the deal.
The New Republic
April 8, 2015
Although hiring slowed, layoffs dropped sharply, providing some evidence that businesses might have temporarily put the brakes on filling their openings because of the cold winter. “The report generally corroborates that story, the recovery hasn’t stalled, but it isn’t doing much better than simply chugging along,” said Elise Gould, chief economist with the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute, in a blog post.state
The Hill
April 8, 2015