The Huffington Post
March 13, 2015
Lawrence Mishel, president at Economic Policy Institute, talks with Betty Liu about small business job openings and the outlook for wage gains in the United States.
Bloomberg TV
March 13, 2015
Just 23.1 percent of unemployed workers received state unemployment benefits at the end of 2014, according to a new analysis by the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal Washington think tank. The rate has hovered beneath 24 percent since 2011 and bottomed out at 22.1 percent in November 2013.
Huffington Post
March 13, 2015
The nonpartisan Economic Policy Institute, or EPI, conducted a study in 2011 on manufacturing job growth in Oklahoma after it passed its right-to-work law in 2001. The study found that manufacturing job growth actually has fallen each year since the law was passed after steady growth the previous 10 years. The total number of manufacturing jobs in the state fell by about a third in the 10 years after the law was enacted.
“This does not mean that right-to-work in itself caused a decline in the state’s manufacturing employment,” the study said. “Rather, it suggests that right-to-work had no positive impact on the manufacturing sector and, in the face of broader forces undermining the sector, right-to-work was simply impotent.”
St. Paul Pioneer Press
March 13, 2015
Elise Gould, an economist with the Economic Policy Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based economic policy research group, noted that wages only rose by 1.6 percent for non-farm production and nonsupervisory employees over the previous year. “Ideally, we would want to see year-over-year nominal wage growth at 3.5 to 4 percent,” she wrote in an economic analysis released Thursday. She said the lack of wage growth, combined with the low labor force participation rate, is an indication the labor market has still not completely recovered from the Great Recession.
Pittsburgh Post Gazette
March 13, 2015
“Right-to-work” laws deny unions the money they need to help employees bargain with their employers for better wages, benefits and working conditions. So it’s not surprising that research shows that workers in “right-to-work” states have lower wages and fewer benefits, on average, than workers in other states. Under federal law, no one can be forced to join a union as a condition of employment, and the Supreme Court has made clear that workers can’t be forced to pay dues used for political purposes. Right-to-work goes one step further and entitles employees to the benefits of a union contract — including the right to have the union take up their grievance if their employer abuses them — without paying any of the cost.
This means that if a worker who does not pay a union representation fee is fired, the union must prosecute that worker’s grievance just as it would a dues-paying member’s, even if it costs tens of thousands of dollars. Non-dues-paying workers would also receive the higher wages and benefits their dues-paying coworkers enjoy. Right-to-work laws have nothing to do with whether people can be forced to join a union or contribute to political causes they don’t support; that’s already illegal. The only freedom workers would receive is the ability to get something for nothing.
The New York Times
March 12, 2015
As Elise Gould of the Economic Policy Institute has shown, real wages fell for virtually every American in 2014, save only the poorest, and presumably least credentialed, workers. Wages for people at the 10th income percentile actually increased by 1.3 percent, chiefly due to minimum-wage increases enacted by cities and states.
The Washington Post
March 12, 2015
Ross Eisenbrey, vice-president of the Economic Policy Institute, says GM can increase share prices at the risk of everything else, or take the long view: investing in new equipment and the workforce. He says GM has to balance all of those things against a desire to reward shareholders.
Marketplace
March 12, 2015
According to a report last month by the Economic Policy Institute, “real hourly wages have declined for 90 percent of the workforce with four-year college degrees since 2007.” It’s called wage stagnation.
The Washington Post
March 11, 2015
The report, conducted by the Economic Policy Institute for the Alliance for American Manufacturing examined how a surge of illegally dumped oil tubular goods (OCTG) imports, primarily from South Korea, is flooding the U.S. market. These foreign steel pipes are priced below fair value and in deceptive ways are designed to circumvent international trade laws, according to the report.
Cleveland Plain Dealer
March 11, 2015
In “Stop Currency Manipulation and Create Millions of Jobs,” Robert Scott at the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) writes, “Rising trade deficits are to blame for most of the 5.7 million U.S. manufacturing jobs (nearly a third of manufacturing employment) lost since April 1998.” At Economy in Crisis, John Olen writes in “Lack of Jobs is Due to Our Trade Deficit“: Trade policy that encourages businesses to relocate production of goods to other nations without penalizing them for selling those goods back to this nation has resulted in millions of lost jobs. White House estimates show that for every $1 billion in goods exported, the economy creates 5,000 jobs. Unfortunately, that street goes both ways — data from the Economic Policy Institute shows that for every $1 billion in goods imported, the economy loses 9,000 jobs.
Huffington Post
March 11, 2015
I am impressed that some well-informed and much-admired economists on the left, like Larry Mishel of the Economic Policy Institute and Dean Baker of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, are congratulating Larry Summers for changing his views. I hope they are right. So why am I not convinced?
Another source of my skepticism is the practical problem of which political constituencies Democrats must be prepared to abandon this time—working people or financial contributors. EPI’s Larry Mishel pointed out that if Hillary Clinton embraces the Larry Summers agenda this “puts her in a bind, you might say.” She would be going against Robert Rubin, the Clintons’ most influential advisor. The Goldman Sachs and Citigroup banker opened the Wall Street money spigot in 1992 by assuring bankers Bill Clinton’s presidency would be good for the country and especially good for bankers.
The Nation
March 11, 2015
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