Media clips
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In a powerful report published this year by the Economic Policy Institute, author Algernon Austin notes: “…The average unemployment rate for blacks over the past 50 years, at 11.6 percent, is considerably higher than the average rate during recessions of 6.7 percent.” Even worse, Austin noted that over the last 50 years, the black unemployment rate remained at a level either even or higher than during a typical recession.
The Daily Beast December 6, 2013 -
But others criticized attempts to shape the results to serve a particular reform agenda and downplayed the significance of the test. Richard Rothstein of the Economic Policy Institute and Martin Camoy of Stanford University’s Graduate School of Education attacked Duncan for holding a day-long event with policy experts whom they argue share the administration’s thinking.
“Those with different interpretations of international test scores will see the reports only after the headlines have become history,” they wrote in a blog post.
Both authored a study last year pointing out that PISA doesn’t provide data broken down by socio-economic groups until well after the initial release, and the level of inequality in the U.S. helps explain its mediocre scores. When controlling for income, the U.S. ranks far better, they argued. The OECD, in turn, acknowledges differences in background have a “significant impact.”
Governing December 5, 2013 -
Critics of the media circus surrounding PISA Day, like the Economic Policy Institute, a labor-oriented think tank, contend that politicians, business leaders, and journalists like to focus on PISA rankings because PISA is the test on which American students do the worst—and thus the results paint a portrait of failing American schools that are responsible for our economic woes. These critics point out that some nations that have historically done well on international exams, like Iceland, were especially hard hit by the recession, and thus there is little reason to believe that better performance on these tests would aid the U.S. economy. After all, we are already producing more college graduates than we can employ in good jobs.
Richard Rothstein and Martin Carnoy write:
Today, threats to the nation’s future prosperity come much less from flaws in our education system than from insufficiently stimulative fiscal policies which tolerate excessive unemployment, wasting much of the education our young people have acquired; an outdated infrastructure: regulatory and tax policies that reward speculation more than productivity; an over-extended military; declining public investment in research and innovation; a wasteful and inefficient health care system; and the fact that typical workers and their families, no matter how well educated, do not share in the fruits of productivity growth as they once did.
That statement contains a lot of sense, and gets to an important underlying point: that test results and education policies are too often considered in isolation from other social and economic realities.
Slate December 5, 2013 -
This graph, from the Economic Policy Institute’s David Cooper, neatly illustrates the minimum wage’s precarious relationship to the poverty line. The dotted blue line at right shows what would happen if Congress were to pass the current bill proposed by Senator Tom Harkin and Representative George Miller (their bill would gradually raise the wage in three steps):
All of the historic dollar values are converted into 2013 dollars. Historically, the poverty line has remained relatively constant.
It’s important to note that families living just above the federal poverty line are still struggling by many measures. But as long as the federal government bothers to identify a basic income threshold essential to scrape by, it seems only fair to hold the same government to that standard in its minimum wage policy.The Atlantic December 5, 2013 -
But despite his skepticism, Baker said there was reason to be encouraged. He and other liberal activists applauded Obama’s embrace of the minimum wage ahead of an expected Senate vote to raise pay to more than $10 per hour.
Lawrence Mishel, the president of the Economic Policy Institute, said he was also pleased to see Obama insist on the need for broad-based wage growth — something absent from his summertime economic push.
The Hill December 5, 2013 -
After proposing an increase to $9 in February, Obama last month endorsed a Senate bill that would raise the rate to $10.10 over two years.
“The president is talking about what I think the country ought to be talking about,” says economist Lawrence Mishel of the Economic Policy Institute, a Washington-based research group that focuses on the needs of lower-income workers. “It does reflect a shift in the center of gravity.”
Bloomberg December 5, 2013 -
As the president pointed out:
“The problem is, that alongside increased inequality, we’ve seen diminished levels of upward mobility in recent years. A child born in the top 20 percent has about a two in three chance of staying at or near the top. A child born into the bottom 20 percent has a less than one in 20 shot at making it to the top. He’s 10 times likelier to stay where he is.”
The Economic Policy Institute’s “State of Working American, 12th Edition,” released last year, echoed that sentiment, finding that “U.S. mobility is among the lowest of major industrialized economies.”
The New York Times December 5, 2013 -
The following hard-hitting post on the release of the PISA scores was written by Richard Rothstein, research associate at the Economic Policy Institute, a non-profit organization created to broaden the discussion about economic policy to include the interests of low- and middle-income workers, and Martin Carnoy, education professor at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Education. It explains what international test score results really mean and what they don’t mean, and also explains why the authors believe the U.S. Education Department is attempting not only to inform the public about the results but “to manipulate public opinion.” This piece will appear on the EPI website.
The Washington Post December 2, 2013 -
“I personally have Clinton fatigue,” said Lawrence Mishel, president of the labor-backed Economic Policy Institute, noting that it was a Clinton team that has been running Obama’s economics. “A Clinton administration seems like a continuation of the same team.”
Some consider the debate an opportunity for Hillary Clinton to embrace a more populist message. Bill de Blasio, a Democrat who was her New York campaign manager in 2000, was just elected mayor of New York on an inequality agenda.
The Washington Post December 2, 2013 -
For the past two years, unemployment has been higher for only one other racial or ethnic group: blacks. Unemployment for Native Americans has remained above 10 percent for five years, weighing in at 11.3 percent for the first half of this year, according to the Economic Policy Institute, a think tank focused on the needs of low- and middle-income workers.
The Washington Post December 2, 2013 -
Now, Lawrence Mishel, Heidi Shierholz and John Schmitt have released a new study that questions SBTC as an explanation for increasing wage inequality. Mishel et al. argue that “job polarization,” the premise that more jobs have been created in low-wage sectors and high-wage sectors, thus driving wage inequality, doesn’t actually explain the problem. On the one hand, high-wage occupations have not significantly expanded their share of the workforce since 2000. On the other, low-wage jobs have not increased as a total share of employment since 1979.
Salon December 2, 2013 -
Economic Policy Institute: Low Wages and Scant Benefits Leave Many In-Home Workers Unable to Make Ends Meet
Market Watch December 2, 2013 -
He pointed to a study by economists at the Federal Reserve in Chicago, which found that a dollar-an-hour increase would translate into a $700 increase in spending per quarter the year after enactment for each household with a minimum-wage earner. Nearly four million workers earn the minimum wage, but the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal think tank, estimates that wages for 30 million workers would be lifted if Congress approved an increase to $10.10 an hour. Mr. Krueger was co-author of a landmark study that found that a modest increase in the minimum wage did not result in hiring cutbacks.
The New York Times December 2, 2013 -
So a minimum-wage increase would help low-paid workers, with few adverse side effects. And we’re talking about a lot of people. Early this year the Economic Policy Institute estimated that an increase in the national minimum wage to $10.10 from its current $7.25 would benefit 30 million workers. Most would benefit directly, because they are currently earning less than $10.10 an hour, but others would benefit indirectly, because their pay is in effect pegged to the minimum — for example, fast-food store managers who are paid slightly (but only slightly) more than the workers they manage.
The New York Times December 2, 2013 -
Switzerland is hardly unique in that. For example, the ratio of earnings between CEOs and typical workers at the 350 largest U.S. corporations is now 273-1, according to the Economic Policy Institute. Everywhere you look, company bosses have been getting richer and richer. It is a global trend — and there is very little sign of it ending. If anything, the extremes keep getting worse.
MarketWatch November 22, 2013 -
There are also questions about whether the test scores show what they pretend to show. A report released early this year by Martin Carnoy of the Stanford University’s Graduate School of Education and Richard Rothstein of the Economic Policy Institute raised questions about whether the average scores in the 2009 PISA were reported lower than they should have been.
The Washington Post November 20, 2013 -
The national unemployment rate for Native Americans stands at 11.3 percent and has been in the double digits since 2008, according to Economic Policy Institute economist Algernon Austin.
The African-American jobless rate is now 12.7 percent and has been above ten percent since July 2008, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Phoenix Business Journal November 20, 2013 -
“This fraud would have to be so widespread, to affect enough of the survey takers to affect the top-line numbers, that it seems implausible on the face of it,” said Heidi Shierholz, an economist who studies unemployment at the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank.
The 0.3-percent decline in unemployment in September 2012 was not an unusually large change, Shierholz pointed out — the unemployment rate tends to be volatile. Unemployment also fell by 0.3 percent in November 2011, less than a year earlier. September’s drop, though large, was not out of line with the overall trend in unemployment, which has continued to decline steadily, if slowly, in the year since the election.
The Huffington Post November 20, 2013 -
According to a study by the Economic Policy Institute, the economy would have needed to add about 90,000 jobs a month to keep up with the increase in the population since 2007. Based on this figure, the U.S. would have needed to add 8 million more jobs to provide for the number of people joining the workforce in the last six years.
CBS Moneywatch November 20, 2013 -
So you have a crisis here. But the expiration will also have a real impact on the economy. The Economic Policy Institute has said the failure to extend the program would cost 310,000 jobs.
The Washington Post November 20, 2013 -
The left-of-center Economic Policy Institute has estimated that the expiration of the emergency jobless benefits program would reduce job growth by 310,000 positions next year because consumers over all would have less money to spend. Michael Feroli, chief United States economist at JPMorgan Chase, has estimated that it would drain about four-tenths of a percentage point from first-quarter economic growth.
The Washington Post November 19, 2013 -
That growth brought the total number of one-percenter households in the area to just under 54,000. You might be wondering: Who, exactly, are those people? How do they get their money? We wondered the same thing, and we asked the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal think tank with a lot of experience studying the make-up of the 1 percent nationally, to help us figure it out. It analyzed detailed Census data and produced the charts you see below.
The Washington Post November 19, 2013 -
Larry Mishel of the Economic Policy Institute and his colleagues have been on this research beat for a while: As Mr. Porter noted:
Mr. Mishel’s preferred explanation of inequality’s rise is institutional: a shrinking minimum wage cut into the earnings of the nation’s least-skilled workers while falling trade barriers, deregulation and the decline of labor unions eroded the income of the middle class. The rise of the top 1 percent, he believes, is mostly about executive pay and the growing footprint of finance.
The New York Times November 19, 2013 -
A recent study by the Rand Corporation predicted out-of-pocket medical expenses will decline for most people who are newly insured or change their health plans. Then there are the almost nine million more people who will be covered by Medicaid, says Josh Bivens with the liberal Economic Policy Institute. Others will get subsidies to buy insurance.
“In my mind this is kind of like a delayed, small stimulus program, because it’s actually providing people who are otherwise cash-constrained to give them more income in the next couple years,” Bivens says.
Marketplace November 19, 2013 -
It’s hard to say exactly how many of Washington’s households in the top 1 percent draw their incomes from the broad business of serving, supplying or influencing the government. But an analysis of tax data by the Economic Policy Institute shows that the area’s 1-percenters are most likely to be lawyers and executives, or people who work in management consulting or IT. Nearly 1 in 10 of those households is headed by a government worker.
The Washington Post November 18, 2013 -
“It’s slowing the recovery from the recession because people have less money in their pockets to spend on goods and services provided by other businesses,” noted Ross Eisenbrey, vice president of the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal think tank. “These young people are delaying their saving for retirement, their ability to accrue capital to buy a home—all of the things a middle-class person does.
CNBC November 18, 2013 -
While unemployment is a problem for both men and women, a recent report by the Economic Policy Institute found that although women fared better than men in the great recession that began in 2007, in the sense that more men lost their jobs than women did, during the economic recovery, men are seeing stronger gains in employment than women are. For example, while both men and women saw employment gains in the health care and social assistance sector, male employment grew by 50 percent more than female employment. As the author of the report, Hilary Wething explained, “While the jobs gap for men is larger than it is for women, men are nevertheless seeing strong gains than women within most industries.”
The Washington Post November 18, 2013 -
The left-of-center Economic Policy Institute has estimated that the expiration of the emergency jobless benefits program would reduce job growth by 310,000 positions next year because consumers over all would have less money to spend.
The New York Times November 18, 2013 -
“It is absolutely clear that educational wage differentials have not driven wage inequality over the last 15 years,” said Lawrence Mishel, who heads the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal-leaning center for economic policy analysis. “Wage inequality has grown a lot over the last 15 years and the educational wage premium has changed little.”
… In coming weeks, Mr. Mishel and two co-authors, Heidi Shierholz of the Economic Policy Institute and John Schmitt of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, expect to publish a study called “Don’t Blame the Robots: Assessing the Job Polarization Explanation of Growing Wage Inequality.”
The New York Times November 13, 2013 -
Massachusetts had the highest rate of employer-sponsored health insurance coverage in the country during 2011-2012, according to a study by the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank in Washington.
The study found that in 11 of the past 12 years, rates of employer-sponsored health insurance have declined. Between 2011 and 2012, the national figure was 58.4 percent. In Massachusetts, it was 70.8 percent.
Boston Business Journal November 12, 2013