Media clips
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The right has long had a set of institutions that serve a similar role. The best known of these is the Heritage Foundation, which after its establishment in 1973 helped craft the conservative policy revolution that started with the election Ronald Reagan and crested, finally, during the presidency of George W. Bush. Heritage served multiple roles during that span—as an incubator of ideas, a supplier of arguments, and a source of talent. The brains and money behind Heritage saw the think-tank as an antidote to the prevailing liberal consensus in Washington, as put forth by places like the Brookings Institution (and academia generally) and reinforced by the New York Times(and rest of the media establishment). But there was a certain irony in this mandate: Whatever the ideological sympathies of these supposedly liberal institutions, or the people within them, they were not avowedly political organizations. On the contrary, they strove to maintain—and, I would argue, succeeded in maintaining—a strict posture of non-partisanship and even non-ideology. Other think-tanks and organizations had more clearly progressive outlooks, but even they tended to be heavily analytical and/or narrowly focused. They did invaluable work. (The Economic Policy Institute‘s annual State of Working America may be the single most important non-government report on inequality.) But one niche remained unfilled.
The New Republic October 24, 2013 -
Week in Charts: India has fastest inflation of G20, and marijuana license fees
Still recovering from the all-night kegger your colleagues threw to celebrate annual Boss’s Day on Wednesday? Here’s a statistic to sober you up: The CEO-to-worker compensation ratio was 273 in 2012, down from 383 in 2000, but far higher than 20 in 1965, according to analysts at the Economic Policy Institute. Those statistics are based on the 350 publicly owned firms with the largest revenue each year, and take into account realized options.
Wall Street Journal October 24, 2013 -
The gap between skyrocketing CEO pay and relatively stagnant compensation for everyone else has been widening for decades. While annual CEO compensation increased by 726.7% between 1978 and 2011, average worker compensation only went up 5.7% during the same time, according to a 2012 study by the Economic Policy Institute.
MSNBC October 24, 2013 -
The recession could be the defining event in the lives of millennials. According to data from the Economic Policy Institute, young college graduates faced an unemployment rate of 10.1 percent in 2011, but an underemployment rate almost twice that. Furthermore, pay for new graduates decreased 8.5 percent between 2000 and 2012.
The Washington Post October 24, 2013 -
The Economic Policy Institute points out a big hole in the BLS calculations:
In today’s labor market, the unemployment rate drastically understates the weakness of job opportunities. This is due to the existence of a large pool of “missing workers”—potential workers who, because of weak job opportunities, are neither employed nor actively seeking a job. In other words, these are people who would be either working or looking for work if job opportunities were significantly stronger. Because jobless workers are only counted as unemployed if they are actively seeking work, these “missing workers” are not reflected in the unemployment rate.
By EPI’s gauge, there were in August, 4.97 million “missing workers.” If they were seeking work, the unemployment rate for that month would have been 10.1 percent, not the actually reported 7.3 percent.
Daily Kos October 24, 2013 -
The Labor Department announced Tuesday that the unemployment rate took a dip last month, falling slightly to 7.2 percent from 7.3 percent in August.
Not accounted for in that calculation were the more than 5 million people who have given up looking for work. Known as “missing workers,” these Americans have vanished from the job market and subsequently the official calculation of the country’s unemployment rate. As you can see, their ranks continue to swell:
As noted by the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute (who produced the two graphics in this post), if these missing persons were counted in our nation’s jobless rate, the situation would look a lot worse — like above-10-percent bad:
The Huffington Post October 24, 2013 -
Let’s start with the basics: 148,000 jobs were added in September. “If we were to put the 148,000 in context, it’s lower than the previous 12 month average, which was 185,000 jobs per month,” says Elise Gould from the Economic Policy Institute. “We also see that the unemployment rate was little changed. It went from 7.3 percent in August to 7.2 percent in September.”
Gould says that overall, this report tells us that the U.S. is far from a full recovery. But, looking at the jobs numbers from month-to-month doesn’t always give the most accurate assessment of the economy. The yearly data often paints the clearest picture.
Marketplace October 24, 2013 -
An increase will add vitality to the D.C. economy by putting money in the pockets of people who are most likely to spend it. A $10.10 wage — the rate proposed for the entire country by Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) and Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.) — would help 36,000 D.C. workers, according to the Economic Policy Institute. The estimated $58 million in increased wages would be spent at markets, clothing shops and hardware stores, aiding D.C. businesses large and small. The direct and indirect effects would help thousands of children. And arguments that minimum-wage earners are dominated by teenagers don’t hold up to scrutiny. Almost all affected workers — 95 percent — would be age 20 or older. Economists have studied the impact of minimum wage increases for decades. And the vast weight of the research finds that they raise workers’ take home pay without leading to notable job cuts.
The Washington Post October 18, 2013 -
The sequester is merely one manifestation of Congress’s love for austerity in the post-recession era. From the inception, recovery programs have never been as large or robust as they needed to be, despite evidence that even harsher austerity regimes kept much of Europe mired in slumps.
The Economic Policy Institute displays the harvest graphically (see above). The chart shows that the recovery has barely progressed, falling well below the growth of every recovery period since before the 1980s. Josh Bivens and Heidi Shierholz of EPI have more here. If post-2008 government spending had matched that of earlier recoveries, 5 million more people would be employed today.
Los Angeles Times October 18, 2013 -
Everything will be backed up: Mortgage applications, work permits, backpay for furloughed workers. Stier says after the government re-opens, people will have to wait weeks or even months to get the services they need.
Meanwhile, the backlog will keep getting bigger.
“There’s real damage being done here,” says Josh Bivens, head of policy at the Economic Policy Institute. “There’s really a loss of productivity both going into the shutdown and then another period of low productivity as you sort of ramp it all back up.”
As far as long term effects go, Bivens says this could permanently lower confidence in the US economy, both for foreign investors and people just trying to get a mortgage application in.
Marketplace October 18, 2013 -
Indeed, some experts fear that any remedies lawmakers might devise as part of future budget talks, such as a proposed plan to slow the growth of Social Security payments, could prove worse than the cure. Josh Bivens, research and policy director with the liberal Economic Policy Institute, warns that a renewed focus in Washington on deficit-reduction could hurt the recovery by diminishing people’s income. Consumer spending accounts for roughly 70 percent of economic activity in the U.S.
CBS Moneywatch October 18, 2013 -
That huge gap between the top and the middle is the result of a boom in executive compensation, which rose eight hundred and seventy-six per cent between 1978 and 2011, according to a study by the liberal Economic Policy Institute. In response, we’ve had a host of regulatory reforms designed to curb executive pay. The latest of these is a rule, unveiled by the S.E.C. last month, requiring companies to disclose the ratio of the C.E.O.’s pay to that of the median worker. The idea is that, once the disparity is made public, companies will be less likely to award outsized pay packages.
The New Yorker October 18, 2013 -
The US has seen a net loss of 5.7 million manufacturing jobs since 1998, according to the Economic Policy Institute (EPI). The gaping trade deficit with China alone “displaced” 2.7 million US workers between 2001 and 2011, the EPI’s Robert Scott says.
New York state lost some 100,000 manufacturing jobs in the last five years. And the recovery of all the local jobs lost during the Great Recession is masked by thousands of new, lower-paid jobs with reduced benefits.
Lee Conrad, national coordinator in New York for a small group of union-affiliated IBM workers, said his group uncovered the latest local IBM cuts. IBM has stopped reporting head count by location in recent years.
New York Post October 11, 2013 -
Last year, the federal poverty line was set at $23,283 for a family of four, which, according to the Economic Policy Institute, is one-quarter of the cost of living in New York City and one-third the cost of living in St. Louis. EPI found that in 615 cities across the country, a family with three children requires a total income of at least twice the federal poverty line to afford basic expenses such as housing, childcare, healthcare and food. The number jumps considerably if the family owns a car or wishes to send its children to college. Car insurance is a significant expenditure and college tuition continues to skyrocket.
US News and World Report October 11, 2013 -
Given that small businesses are both created and destroyed at a pace that differs from larger establishments, the lack of real-time data remains a problem.
“Once you account for the age of a business, then small business does not contribute disproportionately to overall job growth,” said Heidi Shierholz, a labor economist for the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal economic think tank, who supports efforts to find better measures. “It helps us know whether we really should give preferential treatment in support of them as disproportionately strong job creators.”
McClatchy October 11, 2013 -
Unlike earlier recessions, however, there has not been a sharp drop in the share of part-time workers during the recovery. The Fed report says that “reflects a slow recovery of the jobs lost during the recession rather than permanent changes in the proportion of part-time jobs.”
Heidi Shierholz, a labor economist at the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute, said what’s happening with part-time workers is emblematic of the slow recovery.
Once businesses start seeing new demand for their goods and services they will start hiring workers again and converting some of their part-timers to full-time employees. That change will come as a result of economic fundamentals that will hold sway despite the insurance mandate.
“I don’t think part-time work is taking over,” she said. “When we do generate a robust job recovery, all of the data point to that we will return to the pre-recession share of part-time work as a share of overall employment.”
Roll Call October 11, 2013 -
Washington Post reporter Dylan Matthews featured EPI’s new missing workers economic indicator on Wonkblog’s new “Know More” resource, writing, “You probably think the unemployment situation is bad. This chart shows it’s much, much worse.”
The Washington Post October 11, 2013 -
Soon after the Crain and Crain report was released in 2010, CPR published a white paper that demonstrated the unreliability and implausibility of the Crain and Crain report’s methodologies and findings. A few months later, the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service (CRS) released its own analysis of the Crain and Crain report, and its findings were equally damning. Then the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) separately analyzed the Crain and Crain report, and concluded the Crain and Crain report was based on a “flawed economic model and faulty data.”
The Huffington Post October 4, 2013 -
Payscale’s findings are just the latest in a slew of research that indicates the sluggish economic recovery has not been beneficial for most of us. Income inequality in the U.S. is at a new high as skyrocketing income gains for the top one percent are met by stagnating wages for practically everyone else. In 2012, an average CEO of one of the nation’s largest companies was paid 273 times more than his or her workers, according to a study by the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank.
The Huffington Post October 3, 2013 -
More broadly, the lockdown is a distraction for the government, and will harm its efficiency even once the present crisis is sorted out, wrote Josh Bivens, research and policy director with the liberal Economic Policy Institute.
CBS Moneywatch October 3, 2013 -
“More than 177,000 Blacks [lost] jobs in the public sector” from 2007 to 2012, according to a May 2012 report by the Economic Policy Institute. The report found the continuing high rate of black unemployment is partly a result of a “sizable and continuing drop in the number of African-Americans employed by state and local governments,” reported TheGrio.com. The August 2013 unemployment rate among Blacks is estimated at 13 percent. The national unemployment rate is almost half that—at about 7 percent.
Ebony October 1, 2013 -
The Economic Policy Institute (EPI) has released a new study, “Trading Away the Manufacturing Advantage,” that puts the blame for the loss of U.S. manufacturing jobs squarely on an increase in the U.S. trade deficit. And the main culprit is China:
Most traded goods are manufactured products. In 2011, about 97.8 percent of U.S. imports from and 66.7 percent of U.S. exports to China were manufactured goods. Trade deficits displace or eliminate jobs, especially in manufacturing.
Yahoo Finance October 1, 2013 -
The growing trade deficit between the world’s two largest economies cost the U.S. $37 billion in lost wages in 2011, a study by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) has found, and is likely to cost the economy more as the deficit widens further.
According to the study, 2.7 million jobs have been lost in the U.S. between 2001, when China entered the World Trade Organization, and 2011, the bulk of which were in the manufacturing sector. The report took 2011 as a snapshot of the cost of these losses and found that when these displaced employees were re-employed in non-trade-related industries, they lost an average of $13,504 per worker in 2011, creating a total of $37 billion in wage losses over the year.
CNBC October 1, 2013 -
Trade with China is driving down U.S. wages and resulting in big job losses for Americans, according to a study released today by a Democratic-leaning Washington think tank.
The study by the Economic Policy Institute found that the growing trade deficit with China has cost the U.S. billions of dollars in lost wages: $37 billion in 2011 alone.
Between 2001 and 2001, the trade deficit eliminated 2.7 million U.S. jobs, with nearly 77 percent of them in the manufacturing sector, the study said.
McClatchy October 1, 2013 -
It is going to be increasingly important to watch the entire board as Washington lurches from crisis to crisis over the next month or so. While we’re all worrying about what will happen in the general brawl over the Affordable Care Act, and transfixed by the beautiful flames that rise when Republicans light their own hair on fire, and the national economy with it. there very likely will be some real mischief going on off-stage. (Keep an eye on anything involving our old pal, the Keystone XL pipeline.) It would not surprise me in the least if the deficit-hawks seized the moment to declare themselves not only “the only grown-ups in the room,” but also the “champions of bipartisanship,” and, eventually, “the people who can get things done.”
For example, this morning, Fred Hiatt’s special-class at The Washington Post chose this particular moment to warn us again that, unless more people who are not Fred Hiatt are forced to feel a little pain, The Deficit will eat us all in our beds. This is, by my count, the third time that the class has set this warning aloft since June. Over the past three years, through rain and sleet and derisive laughter, the Post has continued to feed Vaal. This time, in addition to continuing the meretricious technique of including Social Security in the doomsaying, the Post is worried about what’s going to happen in 2038. (They have a CBO report to use for an economic panic room.) In this, the Post has more than a few allies on the Democratic side, especially in the consultant community and, perhaps, even in the White House. This whole mess is going to become, as the corrupt lawyer Lama Parmentel said of New Orleans in The Big Easy, a marvelous environment for coincidence.
Esquire September 27, 2013 -
In May 2012, researchers from the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) took a stab at calculating the overall CEO-to-worker compensation ratio with the information already available. Here’s what they found: In 2011, the average CEO’s compensation was equal to 209.4 times that of the average worker, at least when stock options were included in compensation. That was up substantially from the 18.3-to-1 ratio found in 1965, but barely half of the 411.3-to-1 found in 2000.
MSNBC September 27, 2013 -
Is it 147-to-1, the reported ratio in Germany, the economic powerhouse of the European Union? Is it 58-to-1, the ratio from the late 1980s, according to the Economic Policy Institute, before the stock options craze of the 1990s really got going? Or to be purely arbitrary (if more realistic), should it be 100-to-1?
Even by that more generous figure, the “right” amount of executive pay today, according to Drucker, would be about $1.3 million (and that’s using a worker pay figure calculated by the Economic Policy Institute that it says “clearly overstates” typical worker pay).
The Washington Post September 27, 2013 -
EPI Director of Health Policy Research Elise Gould discussed with The Wall Street Journal’s Carl Bialik the limitations of the official poverty threshold, saying, “To use one poverty line to measure whether or not people are doing well across the country is absolutely inadequate.”
Wall Street Journal September 27, 2013 -
No matter which side of the trade debate a group is on, it is almost certain to invoke a recent study on jobs to bolster its argument.
Labor unions and other critics of recent trade deals argue that the pacts have cost U.S. workers good jobs, as big corporations send manufacturing work offshore to countries with fewer worker protections and lower wages.
In the debate over data, unions and other trade skeptics have focused on a recently implemented free-trade deal with Korea, one the Obama administration renegotiated to include additional labor incentives. The 18 months of data show that U.S. exports to Korea have declined since the pact took effect.
In a study this summer titled “No Jobs from Trade Pacts,” Robert Scott of the Economic Policy Institute looked at the Korea numbers and projected the Trans-Pacific Partnership could be “much worse than the over-hyped Korea deal.”
Scott wrote that even though President Barack Obama said the U.S.-Korea deal would increase U.S. goods exports by $10 billion to $11 billion, supporting 70,000 American jobs, “things are not turning out the way the president predicted.”
Roll Call September 27, 2013 -
“It matters how many jobs you’re creating in what context. You need to know how many jobs you should have created just to sort of stay at neutral,” says Doug Hall, director of the Economic Analysis and Research Network—a group of state and local policy organizations—at the liberal Economic Policy Institute. “You’re really only doing well if you’re actually ahead of that benchmark.”
The Washington Post September 27, 2013