Media clips
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Heidi Shierholz, of the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute, agrees.
“We’ve been seeing this just long, decades long, decline in men’s labor force participation,” Shierholz says.
NPR August 13, 2014 -
In contrast with unadjusted figures that show a drop in disparity, the World Bank’s Gini coefficientmeasuring the extent of income inequality barely budged during those decades, according to preliminary adjustments by economists Christoph Lakner and Branko Milanovic.
“With a ‘top heavy’ adjustment, the decrease in inequality — present when we use all other adjustments — almost entirely dissipates,” they wrote in a December paper.
That’s surprising for a period when poverty was falling sharply: The number of people living on less than $1.25 a day dropped to 1.22 billion in 2010 from 1.91 billion in 1990 after adjusting for inflation, World Bank data show.
If earning gaps haven’t narrowed around the world even as the impoverished population declined, that could “really change the way economists think about the last 30 years,” said Lawrence Mishel, president of the Economic Policy Institute in Washington, which advocates for workers’ rights.
Bloomberg August 8, 2014 -
The Labor Department characterized the unemployment rate in July as “little changed,” with an uptick of one tenth of a point to 6.2 percent. The labor-force participation rate of 62.9 percent “has been essentially unchanged since April,” the report said.
In other words, the job market is moving along at a decent, steady pace. But the upswing is still not strong enough to change the prospects for the long-term unemployed or the involuntary part-timers, or to drive significant raises for workers.
“July’s 209,000 jobs is solid, but is a decline from the strong second quarter, when 277,000 jobs were added each month on average,” said Heidi Shierholz, an economist with the Economic Policy Institute. “At July’s pace, it would take nearly four more years to get back to pre-recession labor market conditions.”
The White House said the report confirms that the economic recovery has made huge progress, but has left behind millions of Americans.
NPR August 8, 2014 -
Many workers aren’t even getting the pay they’ve been promised for the work they do. Complaints of wage theft, like that experienced by NFL cheerleaders, jumped by 400 percent between 2000 and 2011. It’s rampant in some industries: 89 percent of fast food workers say they’ve been made to work for free off the clock, denied overtime pay, or simply paid less than minimum wage. More is stolen from low-wage workers than is robbed from banks, gas stations, and convenience stores combined. Lawmakers in a handful of cities and two states, Colorado and New York, have passed anti-wage theft ordinances to crack down on companies that steal wages and make it easier for workers to bring claims.
But that’s just a start. There are other ways to reconnect hard work and decent pay that don’t involve government action, but instead hand employees more power so they can ask for more. Historically unions have played a significant role in this equation. But falling unionization rates have coincided with a drop in middle class incomes and an increase in income inequality. It’s become harder to unionize, but easing the way for workers to band together and demand better pay would start to balance the power. “We’re not really going to get wages to grow in line with productivity without a more robust system of collective bargaining,” Lawrence Mishel, president of the Economic Policy Institute, told me. One way to get there would be to “develop a system where collective bargaining can emerge that covers an entire occupation or an entire industry,” he suggested, rather than shop by shop as it is now, particularly in sectors like fast food, where each location is owned by a different franchisee. (Although the path to unionizing fast food workers may now be easier with the National Labor Relations Board saying that McDonald’s is responsible for what happens in all of its stores, franchises or no.)
The New Republic August 8, 2014 -
Retail workers who don’t have a supervisory role earned an average of $14.02 an hour in 2013, according to calculations of government wage data compiled for NBC News by the Economic Policy Institute. There were 12.9 million such workers in the U.S. in 2013, according to EPI, accounting for nearly 86 percent of all retail workers.
After adjusting for inflation, that’s a 12.2 percent decrease from the average hourly wage those workers earned in 1979.
Over that same period, the overall pool of similar production and nonsupervisory workers — who accounted for nearly 83 percent of all private-sector workers in 2013 — saw hourly wages increase by 6.2 percent, according to EPI’s calculation.
The declines follow a period in which retail wages grew substantially. According to EPI, average wages for those nonsupervisory retail workers increased by 62.7 percent, after adjusting for inflation, between 1947 and 1979.
That was a time when department stores and other retail innovations were coming into vogue, providing relatively good jobs both to men and to the growing number of women coming into the workforce, Plunkett said.
Mishel, of the Economic Policy Institute, said the wage declines that followed are at least partly a result of the dramatic changes that took place after that, when retail became more concentrated among big-box stores competing to get Americans their favorite goods for the lowest price.
NBC News August 1, 2014 -
Nearly 40 million Americans — almost 40% of the private-sector workforce — don’t have paid sick leave, according to a report by the Economic Policy Institute. And two-thirds of them are at the bottom 25% of the pay scale — the country’s lowest earners, according to the Labor Department.
CNNMoney July 31, 2014 -
In fact, according to the Economic Policy Institute in Washington, the vast majority of unaccompanied children crossing the border are designated for deportation once they come before a judge. The problem is that wait time for a hearing in immigration court is measured not in weeks or months, but in years.
According to Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC), there was a backlog of 375,503 cases in the immigration court system as of the end of June. That’s more than twice the number of pending cases in 2008. It also translates into an average wait time, according to TRAC, of 587 days for an initial hearing, with wait times in some jurisdictions averaging much longer.
The Fiscal Times July 28, 2014 -
If you’re familiar with American history and housing policy, this shouldn’t come as a surprise. The explicit housing discrimination of the mid-20th century has left a mark—arguably a scar—on the landscape of American homeownership. The combination of redlining, block-busting, racial covenants, and other discriminatory measures means that, even now, a majority of blacks live in neighborhoods with relatively poor access to capital and mortgage loans. What’s more, this systematic discrimination has left many black households unable to afford down payments or other housing costs, even if loans are available.
And in the event that black households are able to save and afford a home, they aren’t as financially secure as their white counterparts. To wit, middle-class African-Americans are more likely to belong to the lower middle class of civil servants and government workers—professions that, in the last five years, have been slashed as a consequence of mass public-sector downsizing. All else being equal, a black schoolteacher who loses her job to budget cuts is less likely to have savings—and thus a safety net—than her white counterpart.
Slate July 28, 2014 -
US poverty (less than $19,090 for a family of three): 46.5 million people, 15 percent
Children in poverty: 16.4 million, 23 percent of all children, including 39.6 percent of African-American children and 33.7 percent of Latino children. Children are the poorest age group in the US
Deep poverty (less than $11,510 for a family of four): 20.4 million people, 1 in 15 Americans, including 7.1 million children
People who would have been in poverty if not for Social Security, 2012: 61.8 million (program kept 15.3 million people out of poverty)
Moyers & Company July 28, 2014 -
The long-term unemployment rate, which soared in 2009 to heights not seen since the Great Depression, is finally declining rapidly. The proportion of the work force that has been unemployed for at least 27 weeks has fallen to 1.98 percent, less than half the record high of 4.4 percent reached in 2010.
Since the end of 2013, “the long-term unemployment rate dropped 0.5 percentage point, thereby accounting for almost the entire decline” in the overall unemployment rate, pointed out two Federal Reserve Board economists, Tomaz Cajner and David Ratner, in a note published by the Fed this week.
As a result, for the first time in five years, less than a third of all unemployed workers have been out of work for at least six months. In the first six months of 2014, that figure dropped at the fastest rate in more than half a century.
“The improvement in the labor market is reaching the long-term unemployed,” said Heidi Shierholz, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute. “They are benefiting from the modest but measurable improvement in the labor market.”
The New York Times July 28, 2014 -
Evidence, however, tells a different story, namely that the economy is and has long been too weak to create enough jobs, even for experienced and skilled workers and for young people graduating from college. According to the latest federal labor data, there were still more than twice as many job seekers as job openings in May. That means that if all the job openings were filled tomorrow, more than five million of the nation’s 9.8 million officially unemployed workers would still be out of work, as would an estimated six million nonworking people who are not included in the unemployment statistics but who most likely would be working or looking for work if the labor market were stronger.
Equally telling, unemployed workers outnumber job openings in every industry. Even in health care, a field that creates many jobs, there are significantly more jobless workers than job openings. Such findings indicate that the problem is lack of demand for workers, not a widespread lack of skills. In addition, if there were a skills gap in the economy, wages and salaries would be rising in fields where employers had to compete for scarce skilled labor. Wages and salaries have long stagnated, even for college-educated workers.
The New York Times July 28, 2014 -
Their struggles point to a broader lack of demand in the labor market, economists say.
“These are the most technologically competent, recently trained skilled workers,” said Lawrence Mishel, president of the Economic Policy Institute, a Washington economic think tank. “If they don’t have jobs at rising wages, then employers must not be desperate for them.”
Cody Hounanian graduated in 2013 from UC Santa Barbara and has a steady job as a manager at Whole Foods in his hometown of Santa Clarita.
He’s happy to be working, but he had planned for an entry-level position at a law firm — the first step toward applying for law school. But the competition was steep.
“There’s a lot of people fighting for those jobs,” he said. “I don’t dog on myself; I think I’m doing pretty good. But I could be a lot closer.”
Los Angeles Times July 24, 2014 -
Stagnating tipped wages lead to other inequalities, according to a report released this month from the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank. Tipped workers are more likely to be in poverty and on government services than other workers. The majority of tipped workers are female and over 25 years old.
When adjusting wages for minimum wage, the situation is more poignant.
“There are certain places where tipped workers are doing quite well,” according to David Cooper, an economic analyst at EPI. “It’s wages at diners in rural Pennsylvania that are really suffering from this policy.”
Wall Street Journal July 24, 2014 -
Dana Katz, 27, is watching peers from Pennsylvania State University’s School of Hospitality Management in State College pay the price for graduating with the Class of 2009.
“I have a lot of friends, countless kids who I graduated with, who should have been put into a better place out of school because they were really promising, but there was nothing available,” said Katz, who works at Kimpton Hotels in Washington as an assistant director of finance. “Kids got put into a bad place to start, and it’s been reflected in their career path.”
Job-market healing is under way, so the Class of 2014 may fare better than their predecessors. Today’s graduates “are entering into a stronger labor market, full stop,” said Heidi Shierholz, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute in Washington.
Bloomberg July 24, 2014 -
Studies have shown increased immigration is a windfall mainly for the rich. The more immigrants enter the country, the bigger the pool of labor to choose from. That’s great for top executives and anyone who owns a lot of capital, as the rise in labor supply, all else equal, tends to depress wages and therefore drive up profits and share prices. Needless to say, having more workers typically doesn’t bode well for those competing with immigrant labor, especially when unemployment is high amid a slow growing economy.
This affects both skilled and unskilled workers. The H-1B visa program that sets quotas for immigrants in “specialty occupations” has had a major wage-depressing and job-displacing effect on highly educated and skilled native-born tech workers, according to a 2013 report by the Economic Policy Institute.
Fortune July 22, 2014 -
Year over year, the states with the largest employment increases are Texas, up 371,000 jobs; California, with 356,400 more jobs; and Florida, which is ahead 237,500.
California’s unusual distinction — it’s a leader in both job gains and one of the states with the highest unemployment rates — shows how deep a hole the U.S. sank into economically in the last recession. When you lose a lot of jobs, it’s easier to show big gains on the way back, says David Cooper, of the liberal-leaning Economic Policy Institute.
By EPI’s analysis, 31 states still aren’t back to the employment levels they had when the recession started in December 2007. And given the growth in population since then, a healthy economy should have added 6.5 million jobs by now on top of regaining all the lost jobs, Cooper says.
“Things are getting better, but it’s taken so long for us to get there we can’t celebrate that much,” Cooper says.
USA Today July 22, 2014 -
Although California has now recovered all the jobs lost during the recession, economists caution that it is more of a symbolic milestone. As the state’s population grows, more people are entering the workforce. In July 2007, for instance, the state’s unemployment was far lower — at 5.4%.”It may have some psychological effect, but it’s an economically meaningless benchmark,” said Heidi Shierholz, a senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute in Washington.
Los Angeles Times July 22, 2014 -
Domestic workers, including homecare workers, have long struggled to gain the legal benefits and protections that other workers in our society enjoy. It wasn’t until the 1970s that most domestic workers were finally covered under the Fair Labor Standards Act, which offers overtime protections and a minimum wage. Even so, one category of domestic worker was exempted from the FLSA: workers who provide “companionship services,” a group that includes homecare workers. Precisely because the traditional New Deal–era legislation offered no remedies to this group of workers, they need unions to fight for their rights. According to the Economic Policy Institute’s Ross Eisenbrey, because of union contracts, “this almost entirely female workforce has made huge improvements in wages and benefits, in training, and in respect in the states that provide for collective bargaining.” But those gains are seriously threatened by the actions the court took in Harris.
The Nation July 18, 2014 -
As graduation parties wrap up and summer stretches on, college and high school grads may be throwing themselves into the job search.
The task before them is not an easy one.
There’s plenty of competition, for one. In addition to job seekers, the number of “missing workers” younger than 25 — individuals who would like to work but who have dropped out of the labor force for lack of opportunities — is near 1 million.
While that’s down from the peak of 1.72 million a few years ago, it’s more than three times as many as when the recession began in 2007, according to a recent study by the Economic Policy Institute.
“Things have been so weak for so long that there’s this big pool of people who are out of the workforce,” said Heidi Shierholz, a labor market economist at EPI who co-wrote the study.
Chicago Tribune July 18, 2014 -
1. A four-year degree is an increasingly uncertain investment. It still pays big time to get a college degree. According to data from the Economic Policy Institute, the pay gap between those with a four-year degree and those with no college reached an all-time high last year, with degree holders earning more than 1.8 times as much as high-school graduates.
But the income gap between those with some college and a high-school education has remained flat for years. And as the cost of college is increasing faster than inflation, the return on getting just some college is dropping quickly. While we’d like to live in a world where every student has the desire to and is capable of obtaining a four-year degree, this trend will undoubtedly make students on the margin think twice about the expense of college, and will lead many to experiment with cheaper and less labor-intensive forms of training like online courses or vocational school.
Fortune July 18, 2014 -
Long-term unemployment — the portion of those out of work at 27 weeks or longer — has improved to the lowest level in five years, Labor Department data released July 3 show. Yet at 32.8 percent, the rate still far exceeds the 12.8 percent average from 1948 until the start of the last recession.
The long-term jobless rate in 2013 was stuck above pre-recession levels for every education, age, gender, ethnic, occupation and industry group, according to data compiled by Washington-based Economic Policy Institute, which conducts research on the condition of low- and middle-income workers.
Bloomberg July 18, 2014 -
The 10 most endangered jobs – aside from buggy repairmen – all have something to do with paper. They include mail carriers, lumberjacks, printing press operators, and, erm, newspaper reporters.
Only 11% of U.S. workers are eligible for overtime – and workers would benefit from getting more overtime pay, says the Economic Policy Institute.
Nothing says “I love you” like a wedding at McDonald’s. Mickey D’s has hosted about a dozen wedding parties in Singapore and expanded the number of restaurants offering the service to 15 from 3.
USA Today July 18, 2014 -
2. Making money in the new economy. According to “The Economist”, the share of corporate income that goes to workers, as opposed to shareholders, has been going down for 30 years, and not just in America, but also across the world. In a separate report, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development estimates that the share of worker income has decreased from 66 percent to 62 percent since the early 1990s. That’s why, according to a study by the Economic Policy Institute, after-inflation wages have gone up only about 10 percent (and the minimum wage hasn’t gone up at all), but the stock market has enriched investors including Wall Street bankers, as well as retirees, pension funds and school endowments by about 400 percent.
US News and World Report July 18, 2014 -
Despite escalating costs and recent debates as to whether obtaining a four-year degree is worth it, having a college education is still the best route to financial success.
The Economic Policy Institute found that those with a four-year college degree made 98 percent more per hour on average in 2013 than those without a degree.
As college tuition and education-related expenses continue to escalate, it’s more important than ever to calculate how much you need to save and start saving early. And enrolling in a college savings program can help you meet your financial goals.
WTOP July 18, 2014 -
As the Economy Policy Institute (EPI) notes,
Tipped workers — whose wages typically fall in the bottom quartile of all U.S. wage earners, even after accounting for tips — are a growing portion of the U.S. workforce. Employment in the full-service restaurant industry has grown over 85 percent since 1990, while overall private-sector employment grew by only 24 percent. In fact, today more than one in 10 U.S. workers is employed in the leisure and hospitality sector, making labor policies for these industries all the more central to defining typical American work life.
EPI also cites research that the poverty rate of tipped workers is nearly double that of other workers (as the chart below indicates), and that tipped employees are 3 times more likely to be on food stamps.
VOX July 18, 2014 -
— The vast majority of white students, including poor students, are in classrooms with other students who aren’t poor. But most minority students are in classrooms with other students living in poverty. The Economic Policy Institute: http://bit.ly/TmoGmC.
Politico July 10, 2014 -
The issue in part is that STEM is in many ways too broad a classification to describe the complicated job market right now. A May 2014 report from the Government Accountability Office found that employment and wage outcomes could vary widely between healthcare STEM jobs, so-called “core STEM” jobs, and other STEM jobs.
“STEM makes no sense as a category. What you have is science and engineering, and then you have this IT labor force,” says Hal Salzman, a professor of planning and public policy at Rutgers University. “It’s a non-differentiated category that makes no analytic sense.”
Lumping all STEM occupations together can therefore muddy the waters of studying the supposed STEM shortage. On the other hand, STEM is a good descriptor of where America’s job applicants are falling short, says another expert.
VOX July 10, 2014 -
So far, the federal government has largely stayed out of the way. Congress has not taken up President Barack Obama’s call to raise the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour from $7.25. And with the exception of a few companies, like Costco, In-N-Out Burger and Boloco, businesses haven’t taken the initiative to create higher paying jobs.
Puzder made $4.4 million in 2012, according to Forbes. That’s about 291 times what a minimum wage worker makes in a year, if they’re earning the federal minimum and working full-time. The average fast food CEO made 721 times what minimum wage workers took in in 2013, according to a recent report from the Economic Policy Institute.
Huffington Post July 10, 2014 -
“It’s really a political talking point that’s managed its way into legislation,” said Tom Quaadman, vice president of the capital markets center for the Chamber of Commerce, during a 2012 effort by business groups and congressional Republicans to repeal it.
A report released last month by the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning Washington think tank, found that top executives at the nation’s 350 top publicly traded firms are getting paid nearly 300 times that of the average worker, earning an average of $15.2 million each in 2013.
“The fact that CEOs make almost 300 times what workers make should set off alarms,” said institute President Lawrence Mishel about the report.
“CEOs are making more and more while workers are making less — even when worker productivity is skyrocketing,” he said.
The Hill July 10, 2014 -
The ruling evokes the problems that hindered organizing back in the 1990s, when SEIU first started reaching out to home health aides in California. The high turnover and poverty wages made it a challenge to persuade workers to invest in any organizing project. But the union combined grassroots outreach with community education to enlist both local officials and consumers behind the union, and Illinois followed in 2003, turning homecare workers into official state employees and weaving together a strong union shop from thousands of individual providers in separate homes.
Unionization paid off once the workers were hooked into the collective bargaining system. According to the Economic Policy Institute, wages jumped by 65 percent over a decade, workers gained health insurance coverage and job training, and recently negotiated to establish a formal grievance procedure. Home healthcare programs in California and Washington have seen similar gains in wages and benefits, which would otherwise be extremely rare in the in-home workforce.
The Nation July 10, 2014