The New York Times
March 10, 2015
Right-to-work laws can also have the benefit of increasing face-to-face contact between union staffers and members, Ross Eisenbrey, vice president of the Economic Policy Institute, pointed out. “There’s nothing they can do [about free riders] than try to persuade them,” he noted. But this extra effort also means that staff resources are sapped by trying to get everyone to pay, which means they end up “chasing after people to get their dues instead of researching, meeting with the employer, or organizing other units, doing all the things that the union would need to do to build strength.”
Think Progress
March 10, 2015
According to a study by the Economic Policy Institute, a Washington D.C. non-partisan think tank that focuses on issues facing low-and middle-income workers, 81.3 percent of the state’s short-term unemployed didn’t receive benefits last year. Only 18.7 percent — less than one out of five of Florida’s short-term unemployed — did. While that might seem low, three other states — South Carolina (14.8 percent), South Dakota (15 percent), and Louisiana (16.9 percent) — had even lower recipiency rates.
Tampa Bay Times
March 10, 2015
For U.S. workers who were jobless at some point last year, unemployment insurance benefits that replace income and spur economic growth were scarce. A report released Monday by the nonpartisan Economic Policy Institute, a Washington think tank, states the proportion of jobless workers who received benefits from state-run programs fell to 23.1 percent in December, a level not seen since the previous record-low of 25 percent in September 1984.
“The point of unemployment insurance is to help workers who are out of work through no fault of their own, and give them a chance to support themselves and their families while they look for another job,” said Will Kimball, an EPI researcher. “When states cut the generosity and length that benefits were available, they failed the workers who need help the most.”
International Business Times
March 10, 2015
Another way, as Elise Gould of the liberal Economic Policy Institute put it this morning, is that the economy still has a lot of healing left to do: “Despite a year of solid job growth there is still ample slack in the labor market.” You won’t see much wage growth, if that’s true, until a lot more people have jobs, both folks who are looking for work now and those who had given up looking for work.
The Washington Post
March 9, 2015
At the Economic Policy Institute, a think tank in Washington, D.C., Elise Gould, a labor economist, was looking at wages. “Solid job growth but sluggish wage growth has been a constant refrain over the last few months,” she said in her review of the report. Ms. Gould said the economy has gained more than 200,000 jobs a month for the last 12 consecutive months, but wages are still “sluggish.”
“In the last couple of weeks, we’ve seen some employers take a step forward and make a choice to pay higher wages,” she said. “Corporate profits are near all-time highs, so employers can pay their workers more without having to raise prices.” She also noted that the labor market is showing a lot of slack, with 6 million people who would be expected to be working not even looking for work.
Pittsburgh Post Gazette
March 9, 2015
Although productivity (defined as the output of goods and services per hours worked) grew by about 74 percent between 1973 and 2013, compensation for workers grew at the much slower rate of only 9 percent during the same time period, according to data from the Economic Policy Institute.
The Atlantic
March 9, 2015
Those who have given up are often referred to as “missing workers”. According to Alyssa Davis at the Economic Policy Institute, there are about 1 million young missing workers – under 25 years old – and if they were included, the unemployment rate for young Americans would be closer to 16.2%.
The Guardian
March 9, 2015
Summers supports looking past income inequality to the distribution of wealth. During our conversation, he pointed out that “a large fraction of capital gains escapes taxation entirely” through “the stepped up basis at death. ”Stepped up basis refers to an I.R.S. provision reducing the capital gains tax liability on inherited assets so that the beneficiary’s capital gains tax is minimized. Revenue losses from the stepped up basis amounted, in the 2014 fiscal year, to $36.4 billion according to the Office of Management and Budget. Summers’s policy proposals have been praised by former critics
Asked for his assessment of Summers’s views, Lawrence Mishel, president of the liberal, pro-labor Economic Policy Institute, emailed “I very much appreciate that Larry Summers has recently highlighted the need for a ‘high pressure economy’ and the need to ‘expand worker bargaining power.’ ”
The New York Times
March 4, 2015
Black workers have also suffered twice as large a reduction in median hourly wages: down 3.6 percent for black workers; 1.7 percent for white workers. The report, by the Center for Popular Democracy, a liberal advocacy group, and the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal think tank, is part of a broader campaign to persuade the Federal Reserve to persist in its economic stimulus campaign. “The Federal Reserve needs to craft monetary policy that tightens the labor market sufficiently so that all Americans, and African-Americans in particular, have an opportunity to benefit from the shared prosperity that a full-employment economy provides,” the two groups argue in the report, which presents unemployment and wage data for each of the Fed’s 12 regions to put a local face on the problem.
The New York Times
March 4, 2015
The activists say the nation’s 5.7% jobless rate understates the underlying weakness of the labor market, pointing to high long-term and black unemployment as symptoms of an economy that is still ailing. The unemployment rate for blacks was 10.3% in January. “The Federal Reserve has the power–and responsibility–to foster stronger economic conditions that create opportunity for all communities,” the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal Washington think tank backing the demonstrations, said in a statement.
Wall Street Journal
March 4, 2015
In the two-thirds of states for which data are available, the median real wages of African-Americans fell between 2000 and 2014, while pay for whites rose 2.5 percent during the same period. Two liberal think tanks, the Center for Popular Democracy and the Economic Policy Research Institute, argued in a report released today that these job-market disparities indicate the Federal Reserve should resist pressure to raise interest rates.
CBS News
March 4, 2015
Today, we get two different perspectives on how to manage the widening income gap in the United States. We’ll hear from voices on both sides of the political spectrum and get their perspective on income inequality. We’re joined by JAMES PETHOKOUKIS of the American Enterprise Institute, and by LAWRENCE MISHEL, president of the Economic Policy Institute.
WHYY
March 4, 2015
The economic recovery seems to have picked up steam in recent months, with the unemployment rate approaching pre-recession levels and the stock market reaching all-time highs. But for many, the economic indicator that matters the most, wage growth, has remained stubbornly flat. Today, a conversation about the causes, history, and potential fixes for an economic problem that is quickly becoming a national political issue.
New Hampshire Public Radio
March 4, 2015
Wages have not increased for the state’s lowest-paid workers in decades, rising 8 cents an hour between 1979 and 2013, adjusted for inflation, to $9.06 an hour, according to the Economic Policy Institute, a Washington, D.C., think tank that advocates for lower-income families.
Boston Globe
March 4, 2015
Gordon Lafer, whose work on this issue is indispensable, points out the following: “There are many organizations that, like unions, require membership dues. For instance, an attorney who wants to appear in court must be a dues-paying member of the bar association. One may dislike the bar association, but must still pay dues if he or she wants to appear in court. Condominium or homeowners associations similarly require dues of their members. A homebuyer can’t choose to live in a condominium development without paying the association fees. Yet the national corporate lobbies supporting RTW are not proposing a ‘right to practice law’ or a ‘right to live where you want.’ They are focused solely on restricting employees’ organizations.”
Finally, economists Heidi Shierholz and Elise Gould do the rigorous statistical analysis to quantify Plumer’s “appear to tilt” point. They look at the difference in pay between RTW and non-RTW states and find that the “raw” difference, with no effort to control for the wide variety of wage determinants, is about 14 percent in favor of non-RTW states.
The Washington Post
March 3, 2015
Over the weekend, a few thousand union members gathered outside the statehouse in Wisconsin. They were there to voice their opposition to so called right-to-work legislation. If signed into law, which is expected, Wisconsin would become the 25th state with right-to-work laws on the books. These laws ban workers from having to pay union dues. Organized labor leaders say it’s another blow to their diminishing numbers. Supporters say the laws attract business and are good for economic development. Guest host Tom Gjelten and our guests discuss right-to-work laws and the future of unions.
Diane Rehm Show
March 3, 2015
This is not a unanimous point of view. Josh Bivens, research and policy director at the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute, told me he continues to see practically no pressure on wages in the US economy. Bivens thinks that Walmart reacted mostly to political and social pressure. He doesn’t see the wage decisions by Walmart and TJX having much influence on competitors over the next year or two. “Is this actually going to show up in economic data?” he asked. “The answer is pretty much ‘no.’ Walmart is big, compared with other companies, but compared with the overall economy it’s not big.”
Boston Globe
March 3, 2015
The Wisconsin Policy Research Institute now is telling us that the key to economic improvement is cutting wages by adopting a so-called right-to-work law. The goal of right-to-work is to weaken or eliminate private sector unions. WPRI explains that “unionization increases labor costs (and this) makes a given location a less attractive place to invest” in. Right-to-work is supposed to solve this problem by weakening unions, thereby cutting wages and luring more companies into the state. Right-to-work succeeds in lowering wages. The premier research on the matter — whose author Heidi Shierholz is now chief economist at the U.S. Department of Labor — shows that the impact of right-to-work is to lower wages for both union and nonunion workers and make it harder for people to get health insurance or pensions. But while right-to-work succeeds in cutting wages, it fails in attracting new companies.
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
March 2, 2015
All this has been known for a long time, and groups like the liberal Economic Policy Institute have produced dozens of papers documenting the problem. But middle-class wage stagnation, and the inequality that has resulted as compensation at the top has surged, has never been the central economic preoccupation of Washington. It is becoming so now.
The New York Review of Books
February 27, 2015
According to the Economic Policy Institute, a think-tank, if employment had followed the trend of the average recovery in the years since 1945, then an extra 1.2m manufacturing jobs would have been created by the third quarter of 2014.
The Economist
February 27, 2015
A recent Economic Policy Institute study says that eliminating currency manipulation would reduce U.S. trade deficit by as much as $500 billion in three years. This would increase annual U.S. GDP by between $288 billion and $720 billion and create as many as 5.8 Million jobs. About 40 percent of the jobs gained would be in manufacturing.
The Hill
February 27, 2015
A recent study by the Economic Policy Institute found that real wages fell or were stagnant in 2014 in all income percentiles, except the bottom 10 percent of wage-earners. Wages for that income-decile rose 1.3 percent in 2014, because, EPI says, eighteen states raised their minimum wage above the federal minimum wage, which has been $7.25 per hour since 2009.
Marketplace
February 26, 2015
At the same time, there’s much national debate about what is a “living wage,” or enough money for a worker to make in order to make ends meet. Most retail workers already make more than the federal minimum wage but not much more. In fact, more than half of retail workers make $10 or less, according to David Cooper of The Economic Policy Institute.
Associated Press
February 26, 2015
Wages are stagnant, and in fact, of all educational groups, workers with bachelor’s and advanced degrees saw the largest decline in real wages between 2013 and 2014, according to the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute.
PBS News Hour
February 26, 2015
One characteristic of America’s slow economic recovery is the extraordinary number of people who have fallen into the ranks of the long-term unemployed, those unable to find jobs for 27 weeks or more. An estimated 3.4 million fit this description, by the Economic Policy Institute’s measure.
The Washington Post
February 25, 2015
Though productivity (defined as the output of goods and services per hours worked) grew by about 74 percent between 1973 and 2013, compensation for workers grew at a much slower rate of only 9 percent during the same time period, according to data from the Economic Policy Institute.
The Atlantic
February 25, 2015
Fifteen million Americans are still stuck in the low wage range between $7.25 and $10 according to the Economic Policy Institute.
CNN Money
February 24, 2015
The trends mirror those in the country at large, where labor has similarly stumbled. Real hourly wages fell for almost everyone nationwide in 2014, according to the Economic Policy Institute, except for the low-wage sector, bolstered by minimum wage increases at the state and local level.
Salon
February 24, 2015
With the early stages of the 2016 presidential campaign underway and millions of Americans still hurting financially, both parties are looking for ways to address wage stagnation. That’s the good news. The bad news is that both parties are offering tax cuts as a solution. What has hurt workers’ paychecks is not what the government takes out, but what their employers no longer put in — a dynamic that tax cuts cannot eliminate. Wage stagnation is a decades-long phenomenon. Between 1979 and 2014, while the gross domestic product grew 150 percent and productivity grew 75 percent, the inflation-adjusted hourly wage of the median worker rose just 5.6 percent — less than 0.2 percent a year. And since 2002, the bottom 80 percent of wage earners, including both male and female college graduates, have actually seen their wages stagnate or fall. At the same time, taxation does not explain why middle-income families are having a harder time making ends meet, even as they increase their education and become ever more productive. According to the latest Congressional Budget Office data, the middle 60 percent of families paid just 3.2 percent of their income in federal income taxes in 2011, less than half what they paid in 1979.
The New York Times
February 23, 2015